Blip.tv - No simple blimp on the radar screen
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
This series of postings is all about finding a free video player to use for presenting videos on your site. Since we are focusing on video players offered by the video sharing sites, I would recommend you check out Blip.tv’s Flash player.
The playback quality is quite good, I think it has much to do with the fact that they accept video up to 640×480 in size and they suggest you encode your video using the highly popular H.264 “codec” known for its superior results.
Although I am not aware of any customization options for their player, their default design is quite nice with all the controls appearing below the video window.
The only small negative I encountered was that the playhead (the slidebar graphic that moves to the right as the video progresses) has no numerical indicator of how long the complete video is, it only shows elapsed time.
Blip.tv follows the standard process and provides an easy to use snippet of “embed” code that you simply copy and paste into your Web site…in that one step you get both the video and their player.
By the way, Blip.tv provides a very nice help center environment they call their Learning Center. Filled with links and helpful advice for those interested in online video it also provides video segments featuring experienced online videographers sharing their extensive “how to” knowledge about producing Internet video.
