Tag Archives: Audio

WordPress 3.6 to Have Audio/Video Support in Core

Apr 10, 2013 by Matt | Posted in WordPress One Comment

Here’s some great news from the WordPress development blog: WordPress 3.6 is going to have built-in support for audio/video playback. You will be able to upload a media file, and WordPress will handle playback with the MediaElement.js. Shortcodes will be available, as well as template tags for theming support.

…there is now native support for Audio and Video in core! There has been great support for embeds by way of WP_Embed and oEmbed providers for a while, but, if you wanted to play an MP3 from your Media Library, you had to install a plugin. Supporting audio and video in core gives bands, podcasters, vloggers, et al the ability to easily and beautifully expresses themselves through sounds and moving pictures without using an external service.

This should go nicely with the coming changes to Post Formats—unless the plans have change, a UI based on the one by Crowd Favorite is going to be a part of the WordPress core, hopefully making post formats actually useful. (I’ve been using the Crowd Favorite plugin on my personal blog for awhile now, and it’s great.)

Another part I find interesting is the addition of embed handlers for common media files. You will be able to paste an URL to an AAC/MP3/etc. into a post and it will be seamlessly replaced by a media player, just like how oEmbed works.

Audio / Video support in Core [Make WordPress]

Syncing Content With HTML5 Video or Audio

Apr 11, 2011 by Matt | Posted in Coding No Comments

This is one of the coolest Smashing Magazine articles I have seen in awhile: Syncing Content With HTML5 Video.

Using the generic HTLM5 video and audio elements and a bit of JavaScript, the timeupdate event in particular, you can synchronize script events to the media playback. The timeupdate event returns the media’s timecode, which you can then use to fire off DOM changes.

<script>
(function(){
    var v = document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0]
    var t = document.getElementById('time');
    v.addEventListener('timeupdate',function(event){
      t.innerHTML = v.currentTime;
    },false);
  })();
</script>

There are so many applications where this could be useful. You could supply show notes synchronized to a podcast, for instance, or additional information to supplement a video tutorial.

Syncing Content With HTML5 Video [Smashing Magazine]

MediaElement.js WordPress Plugin

Dec 3, 2010 by Matt | Posted in WordPress No Comments

MediaElement.js is a nifty jQuery plugin that allows you to use the HTML5 video and audio elements while still supplying a Flash or Silverlight backup for compatibility.

There’s now a convenient MediaElement.js WordPress plugin that gives you easy-to-use shortcodes for use in the post editor. To embed a video when you have the plugin installed, all you have to do is put this in your post:

[video src="http://example.org/video.mp4" width="640" height="480"]

The MPEG 4 video will be served-up to supporting browsers, and others get the Flash backup. Supported formats also include WebM, MP3 and Ogg Theora. Multiple formats can be specified in one shortcode, if you have encoded multiple versions. You can serve Safari and Mobile Safari an MP4 version, Firefox an Ogg Theora, and Chrome the little-supported WebM.

3 Flash Web Players For Audio

Sep 15, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts 2 Comments

Do you produce podcasts, or otherwise make use of audio files on your website? Here are a few Flash players to enable your listeners to easily stream audio from your server.

JW FLV Media Player

Jeroenwijering’s player is one of the wider-known ones, and one of the first. It plays MP3s, AACs, H264 video, FLV video, and it can even stream video from YouTube. It’s very customizable too. Get it here.

1 Pixel Out Audio Player

This one is very popular among WordPress users. It’s available as a WordPress plugin or as a standalone solution. It’s very compact and simple. Get it here.