Displaying Multimedia Overview

This chapter outlines some of the aspects of working with multimedia players in Drupal. Our mantra here is as always that there are a great many possibilities of how to do this.

Some of the one that we are going to look at are

• JW player (video)
  
• 1 click out player (audio)
• SWF tools (integration of those players)

Let's give an overview of the functionality of these players. 

JW player

The JW player when used for video looks a bit like the screen shot below.

It's a player that can work with flv files, you can skip to any point in the file, adjust the volume etc.

You can also use the player to dispay subtitle captions over the video.

The other functionality which is really useful is the ability to use an RSS feed or xml file as a playlist for the layer and to display the items in the play list in a sidebar. 

 

If you set up this kind of player based on a playlist then clicking on any of the items will start that video playing. When the video episode has finished playing you can set it to return to the menu again.

There is information about how to install JW player in the chapter Installing Multimedia players.  

1 Pixel out player

The 1 pixel out player is a very simple but stylish player for audio. When it is not being played it looks liek the screen shot below.

When you click on the play icon, the player expands to give you more information about the file you are playing.

There is more information about how to install the player in the chapter Installing Multimedia players.