MediaElementPlugin

Cross-browser embedding of videos and audios

This plugin adds media support to Foswiki using MediaElement.js. MediaElement.js is an easy cross-browser HTML5 audio and video player in pure HTML and CSS while providing a Flash or Silverlight fallback for older browsers. MediaElement.js is a fully skinnable player with features like support for the <track> element, fullscreen video, and even Ambilight. It provides a consistent experience regardless of what codecs and plugins browsers support.

Note that MediaElementPlugin is not implementing a streaming media server, nor is it converting audio and video files in appropriate file formats understood by today's browsers.

It is recommended to secure your attachments using Foswiki:Extensions/XSendFileContrib and not using Foswiki's native viewfile method. This will relive Foswiki from the pure delivery of the media files and instead delegate the actual process of sending over files to the HTTP server in use.

Usage

To embed a video or audio file into Foswiki, just upload it and add

%VIDEO{"myvideo.mp4"}%

to the topic page. You should get something similar to this:

Similarly, add

%AUDIO{"mysong.mp3"}%

to render an audio player for your song as part of the page.

Syntax

VIDEO

Parameter	Description	Default
"..."	video file to be displayed, or comma-separated list of videos in alternative file formats being presented to the user's browser
topic	topic to look for the video file	current topic
mime	specify mime type of the video file	derived from video file
width	width of video player	320
height	height of video player	240
controls	boolean to switch on/off controls of the player	on
preload	boolean whether the player should pre-load the beginning of the video when the page is loaded	off
autoplay	boolean whether the video should immediately start playing when the page containing the %VIDEO macro is loaded	off
rotate	degrees to which the video should be rotated; this comes in handy when videos have been uploaded from a mobile camera	0
poster	url of still image to be displayed as long as the video didn't start playing yet	extracted from video using Foswiki:Extensions/ImagePlugin
frame	the frame of the video to be extracted as a poster	0
id	HTML id for the video element holding the player	random
skin	name of the skin used for the player: "default", "ted" or "wmp"	default
stretch	configure stretching of video geometry	responsive (unless a width and/or height are specified)

AUDIO

Parameter	Description	Default
"..."	audio file to be displayed
topic	topic to look for the audio file	current topic
preload	boolean whether the player should pre-load the beginning of the audio file when the page is loaded	off
autoplay	boolean whether the audio should immediately start playing when the page containing the %AUDIO macro is loaded	off
skin	name of the skin used for the player: "default", "ted" or "wmp"	default

Installation Instructions

You do not need to install anything in the browser to use this extension. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the extension on the server.

Open configure, and open the "Extensions" section. "Extensions Operation and Maintenance" Tab → "Install, Update or Remove extensions" Tab. Click the "Search for Extensions" button. Enter part of the extension name or description and press search. Select the desired extension(s) and click install. If an extension is already installed, it will not show up in the search results.

You can also install from the shell by running the extension installer as the web server user: (Be sure to run as the webserver user, not as root!)

cd /path/to/foswiki
perl tools/extension_installer <NameOfExtension> install

If you have any problems, or if the extension isn't available in configure, then you can still install manually from the command-line. See https://foswiki.org/Support/ManuallyInstallingExtensions for more help.

Dependencies

Name	Version	Description
Foswiki::Plugins::JQueryPlugin	>=9.20	Required
Foswiki::Plugins::ImagePlugin	>=5.00	Required
Foswiki::Contrib::XSendFileContrib	>=3.00	Optional

Change History

27 Oct 2020:	update to mediaelement-4.2.16; don't hard-code defaults for width and height; new stretch parameter
18 Nov 2019:	upgraded to latest version of mediaelement.js; removed support for flash and silverlight
05 Mar 2018:	added missing png file
13 Sep 2017:	only initialized video and audio elements of type .jqMediaElement
01 Dec 2016:	upgraded to mediaelement-2.23.4; use Foswiki::Func api to read files (oops)
02 Sep 2016:	updated to latest release of mejs
12 Dec 2014:	initial release