Aaron Winborn

Made some progress last night with the Drupal Media Player that I blogged about recently. Dynamic logos!

This was created with an hour of tweaking the OpenLaszlo XML, and then pasting the following into this node: print theme('media_player_player', 'http://spindowners.com/files.dm/videos/20051210-w50s.flv', array('logo' => '/sites/aaronwinborn.com/files/my-logo.png');

Couldn't be simpler! I see a dev release as soon as we have an icon for the play button!

Of course, playlists and the like will take more. We've talked about including several players, including a light-weight and one with all the bells & whistles, and have the module call the proper one according to passed parameters.

Here's a sneak peek of the new flash Drupal Media Player, developed by yours truly with OpenLaszlo!

Obviously, it's still rough on the edges, and all the options in the theme function aren't hooked up yet. Although it works already (after a fashion), don't use it yet unless you're willing to suffer the consequences.

When it's done, this module will come with its own player, fully GPL'd, and will support others out of the box as well, such as JW Flash Media Player and Wimpy. But who's going to want those anymore?

The module adds theme functions and a simple API that should be easily usable by other media modules, such as Embedded Media Player, jQuery Media and whoever else wants to jump on board. The other modules won't need to worry about where a particular player lives or how to invoke it; the theme functions provided will be robust enough to handle player colors, sizes, icons (including placement, layout, and other customization options), splash screens, playlists and more. Administrators will be able to override any of the defaults, including player of choice. Additionally, it'll be easy enough to invoke manually as well:

print theme('media_player_player', $filepath);

And best of all, since it's in OpenLaszlo and GPL, with the source included in the module, it's easy for developers to modify even the player, without even needing a Flash IDE. (The whole thing is created with an XML.)

Kudos to EclipseGc for nudges and encouragement to get this project going!

Next on the list: volume controls, playlists, override color/logo/splash options, settings pages, pull in the other players, youtube/blip.tv/other provider support, tie into other media modules

(Cross-posted at gdo.)