Anyone know of a feature rich flash media player for use on the web?

April 1, 2009 11:46 AM

Anyone know of a feature rich flash media player for use on the web?

OK, I have a website with a couple friends. We make songs and the occasional video. We're looking to redesign our site to be more based around a main media player. Something that can have a playlist of our songs and videos, maybe showing an image during the songs.

I know about these:
http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/
http://wpaudioplayer.com/
http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

But while those all do their thing very well, none of them are worth basing a site around, know what I mean?

So I'm wondering what my options are. Am I dreaming to big for the open source world? Is there something that Google can't help me find?

Thanks for your help,
Tony

posted by toekneebullard to computers & internet (9 comments total)

But while those all do their thing very well, none of them are worth basing a site around, know what I mean?

No. Could you use some more words to describe what you're looking for?
posted by rhizome at 11:54 AM on April 1

The JW flash player does all those things. Did you investigate the skinning ability?
posted by unixrat at 12:01 PM on April 1

The increasingly-poorly-named SlideShowPro supports music, video and images and can be easily customized with a simple text file, or extensively customized with Flash experience.
posted by odinsdream at 12:08 PM on April 1

Rhizome: Since most of our content is music, with some video, we're looking to make this player the main focus of the site. So while I COULD use one of those listed flash players, that being the main focus of a site wouldn't be very impressive.

Odinsdream suggested SlideShowPro, which is obviously more based around images, but looks very impressive, and may just have answered my question (though I don't want to discourage anyone else from throwing an idea in)

Thanks again guys,
Tony
posted by toekneebullard at 12:17 PM on April 1

That's the unfortunate part. It's a very powerful (and cost-effective) program for lots of media types, but the name implies only slideshows. I would recommend getting it along with SlideShowPro Director (either hosted or self-install) for managing it, as that really makes everything shine.
posted by odinsdream at 12:24 PM on April 1

Unixrat, I just looked through the JW Player skinning stuff, and you're right, it is very customizable.

Odinsdream, do you have any examples of SlideShowPro playing music? Since MOST of our content is music, I'd be interested in seeing how it handles playlists and the like.
posted by toekneebullard at 12:36 PM on April 1

Check out the Examples page on their site. The first one shows video and the Cuba one shows music playing over images. Each music item would be represented as a Gallery in their system, with a Playlist being a collection of Galleries (album). It may get a little tedious if you don't customize the interface to make it clearer to your visitors.
posted by odinsdream at 12:47 PM on April 1

Correct Examples link.
posted by odinsdream at 12:47 PM on April 1

As I look at JW FLV Player, it really is very functional once you look into skinning it and adding plug-ins. Thanks for pushing me in that direction unixrat!
posted by toekneebullard at 2:20 PM on April 2