Sharing the Addiction

We have been using Blip.tv to host quite a few CORE videos recently. We went with Blip as it allows you to embed private videos which we needed – especially with Google Video disappearing (and the quality of Google Video was pretty dire too!). CORE did need to pay to have a Pro account but it was a very reasonable price.

At first I was frustrated with what I perceived to be limited options for the players that would contain the videos when they were embedded on another site. I used an older version of the player as I thought it was the only option where people wouldn’t be given a link to go back to Blip or the option of embedding the video themselves. It was only when I sent a message off to the help desk about removing the ‘More’ button at the end of the video that I found out just how customisable the newer player can be. I am able to choose which buttons to place underneath the video, what site I want to have the video link to in the bottom corner and a host of other things about how the video plays. I can also set the colour scheme for the player and can upload a thumbnail image of my choice that is visible before playing the video. They have a list of all the different ways the player can be customised on a wiki (need to log in to access it so I won’t link to it here).

I certainly found this very handy and thought others using Blip might want to know where to go to do the same. To make your own customised player in Blip which you can then save as a preset and use for future videos, get to the settings by going to your Dashboard and then clicking on ‘Manage Show Players’ under the Quick Tasks heading on the right.

Here is an example of a modified player – I just uploaded a brief clip of how the sliders in the EPS2.0 tool work. Note the branding on the player and the link back to the EPS website. The video quality isn’t that high as I cut it down in size to upload quickly but you can get the idea.

This could be an option for schools wanting to have videos hosted cheaply but without worrying about advertising or people being directed towards other sites or inappropriate videos after viewing any embedded video.

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