Question about video controls

Hey Laura,

I’m glad you like the plugin!

That’s an interesting problem. I’ve not seen this type of issue before. I went to your site in Firefox in Windows 7, and was able to view the videos (and the controls worked).

Basically this plugin just creates a “wrapper” of sorts so that the videos play using the VideoJs library (https://videojs.com). It does not handle any playback or detection of which kind of video should play for a particular browser – this is all handled by VideoJs. The first thing I would try is to have your sister go to the VideoJs site and see if the controls work for her on the home page. This will eliminate if there is something weird happening on her computer. I’ve occasionally seen issues arise when a javascript file does not load properly, so you might have her refresh her browser to see if that takes care of the problem.

You might also have someone else take a look at the site in Firefox on Windows to see if anyone can replicate the problem.

Let me know how it turns out and if there’s anything I can do to help troubleshoot.

Dustin

Have you had any luck troubleshooting this further?

Dustin

Hi Dustin,

The problem seems to be mostly on Firefox/Windows 7. She went to the
https://videojs.com site. She can play the video there, but she cannot use the pause control. Would you say it’s a glitch with how she has her operating system set up? I don’t have a problem viewing them from various browsers and operating systems, and I haven’t heard any comments from her visitors that they can’t play them, but I think the problem is just the controls. She says she can play the video, but cannot use the controls.

Laura

Laura,

Sorry for the delay – I simply forgot to respond to this email!

If she is unable to use the controls on the VideoJs site, then I would say it has something to do with the configuration of her browser or system. It may be a javascript error or a flash setting (once the video starts playing it may be sitting on top of the controls, which would prevent her from being able to click the pause button).

She can check the developer console to see if there are any errors showing up. Have her go to the “Tools > Web Developer > Web Console” menu item within Firefox. There should be a tab for JS (javascript). Any warnings or errors related to javacript should show up there. If that is clean the only other thing I would recommend is updating Firefox and Flash. Other than that, there may not be much else to do unless she wants to use another browser.

Let me know if there’s any way I can help!

Dustin

Hi there,
I was wondering if there is a way to put my own video controls on the player?
Thanks.

Zewster,

It is technically possible to create your own video controls, but this is not for the feint of heart. And there are some serious drawbacks to the current techniques. You should definitely know what you’re getting into before attempting this. But, if you’re interested, here are the basic steps:

1. Create a custom instance of your player. If you’re using this WP plugin, you’ll want to set the controls to false in the shortcode.
2. Create some javascript functions that will interact with the VideoJs API to get the state of the player and the actions a video can perform (like play, pause, fullscreen, etc).
3. Hook up the click events of your custom controls to the VideoJs API.

You can see an example of soem custom video controls I made recently:

https://bankhumanagain.com

This example is using some javascript objects to store the states of the players because we are using YouTube for hosting the videos. That site is not using WordPress, VideoJS, or this plugin.

It is also important to know that your custom controls will not be used when falling back to flash unless you also create a corresponding SWF file with the controls in it.

All in all, I would recommend against creating custom controls when using this plugin.

Dustin