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Have you ever seen an embedded video on a blog and noticed that it had the YouTube logo but the player didn’t resemble the normal YouTube player? It looked something like this:

This player is the JW Player which gives you the publisher more functionality, customization options and control over the videos you embed on your WordPress blog. The easiest way to use JW Player to play your embedded YouTube videos on you WordPress blog is to simply upload and activate the “JW Player Plugin for WordPress”.

You can download the plugin at its plugin page at wordpress.org.

Or you can search for “JW Player Plugin for WordPress” on the Add New > Install Plugins section on your wordpress dashboard. I find this method easier since you don’t have to manually ftp the plugin to the right directory.

Once you upload and activate the plugin you’ll notice a link to complete the installation. After clicking that link, installation should be complete and a JW Player will be shown with a “Big Buck Bunny” video showing that installation was successful.

One of the first things you’ll notice on your WordPress dashboard is the JW Player Admin section. Here you can Set up and configure the JW Player, Purchase a License, and Upgrade the JW Player. I’ll get to the specifics on a later post but for now I’ll just give you a run down on installation and how to post a YouTube video using the JW Player.

How to Enable JW Player to Play a YouTube Video

Now to the fun and suprisingly easy part. Now that you have the “JW Player Plugin for WordPress” installed and activated you can now easily start embedding JW Players into your WordPress post. You do this by clicking on the “Add Video” icon, from there the media overlay should be displayed. Go to “External Media” where you will paste the URL of your YouTube video. Click on “Add Media” and from there you’ll see media info of your YouTube video. WordPress automatically inputs the YouTube video information for you if available such as the Title, Description, and Thumbnail URL. Last thing to do is click the blue “Insert JW Player” button and your JW Player/YouTube video will appear on your post.

You will notice the code displayed to post your video is:

This is the shortcode system that the JW Player Plugin uses for embedding. We’ll get more in-depth with the basic syntax at a later time but for now, enjoy embedding your YouTube videos with the JW Player.

Ever wonder what all those embed options mean when you click
the embed button on a youtube video? Here’s a breakdown of
each option.

Include Related Videos

Clicking on this option removes “?rel=0″ of the video url source code. This removal allows related videos to become included once the video has stopped playing.

Enable Privacy-Enhanced Mode

This feature allows you to protect your users privacy. Youtube uses cookies to collection information and data on the user watching the embedded video. By enabling privacy enhanced mode this disables the cookie from being set. Continue Reading…

Ever forward a YouTube video to a friend or embed a video on a blog but actually want to show them only a certain portion of the video? You might have to include a notice like “Wait till 1:36″ or “funny part after 16:45″. Not everyone has the patience to wait or forward the video to the exact point of time in the video mentioned. By adding a couple of characters to the end of the YouTube video url you can actually set the start point of the video where you want.

This magical set of characters to append at the end of the YouTube video url is simply:

where X is the video runtime minutes and Y is the video runtime seconds. So if you want the start point to be set at 16 minutes and 34 seconds into the video, you would add #t=16m34s to the end of the YouTube video url. If the start point is at 9 minutes and 9 seconds you would use #t=9m9s.

Posting a YouTube comment of a YouTube Video hyperlink with a set starting point

You can also set a start point link in the comments section of the YouTube video. By placing XmYs, in which you specify the minute and seconds, in the comments section of the YouTube video; XmYs will become a hyperlink to the video at that specific time in the video.

Entering 1m44s in the YouTube video comment section will create a link of the video with a starting point at the 1 minute 44 second mark.

Every video that is uploaded on YouTube generates 4 default thumbnail images. Three of the images are sized 120×90 and the fourth is sized 480×360. The three smaller images are generated to give the owner of the video a choice of which image to display for the video.

To obtain these images you will need the unique 11 digit alphanumeric Video ID found on the YouTube video.

To find the Video ID is simple. If this is the youtube video link:

Then the Video ID for this url would be:

You will then replace the Video_ID in the url’s below with the 11 digit alphanumeric Video ID to obtain the YouTube videos thumbnail images..

How annoying is it to watch an embedded YouTube video and try to pause it and accidentally click on the video screen and have your browser open up a new tab to the video on youtube.com? With the new YouTube player the video actually pauses when the screen is clicked instead of opening a new tab to the YouTube video.

There are other new features but that by far is the most important in my opinion. You want visitors staying at your site and not lead them to venture off. But don’t worry, the option to view the original video on YouTube is still there with the help of a handy button. We’ll get to that later.

How to Embed the New YouTube Player

Simply add

to the end of the player’s URL parameters.

If you use the default iframe embed code simply add

at the end of the iframe src value i.e. after "rel=0".

An example of the default YouTube video iframe embed code:

An example of the default YouTube video iframe embed code with

added in order to embed the new YouTube video player.

Now if you prefer using the old embed code which uses the movie parameters instead of iframe, you will need to insert

twice. Once at the end of the movie param url and also at the end of the embed src url.

An example of the default YouTube video old embed code:

An example of the default YouTube video old embed code with

added in order to embed the new YouTube video player.

Here’s an example what the new player looks like:

New Features:

1. Clicking the Video Screen pauses the YouTube Video

As I mentioned earlier in the post if you try clicking on the video screen you can now pause the video (just as they have it on youtube.com) instead of opening a new tab for the original video on YouTube. As a web publisher you don’t want visitors at all costs leaving your site, so this feature is an important one to retain readers. On a side note, one thing that irritated me about the old embedded video is that when you clicked on the video screen not only does the new tab/window open for the video on youtube.com but it causes the current video your watching to pause and likewise the same video opened on youtube.com is automatically played in the beginning. A lot of wasted time if you ask me. So for the sake of web publishing and viewers, by all means this code is a must when embedding YouTube videos.

2. Watch Later Button

This feature allows visitors to add the embedded YouTube video to their playlist on their YouTube account. The visitor will have to be logged into their YouTube account for this feature to appear.

3. New Right Click Options

A couple of new options have been added such as “Copy Video URL”, “Copy Video URL at Current Time”, and “Copy Embed HTML” among others. These options may be a time saver in terms of getting the YouTube video code.

4. YouTube “Watch on YouTube” Logo Button

Pretty self-explanatory, this button opens up a new tab to watch the embedded video on YouTube.

Overall the new video player scores a high mark for me as a web publisher and YouTube viewer. How has your experiences been with the new YouTube Player?