Scripps launches video player update
Disclaimer: I am the project manager for the Scripps video player.
The E. W. Scripps Company has rolled out an update to their video player, which we've dubbed "Flaven," that improves browse-ability and adds several new features. I wrote about this player in a previous entry titled "How Scripps makes video findable."
We aren't finished rolling out the updated player to every newspaper site yet, but you can see it on the Memphis Commercial Appeal currently.
The video player builds on it's inherent SEO qualities by keeping with the list-detail organization Django does so well. But now we've added a tabbed interface for the archive page that sorts videos by latest, most-viewed, highest-rated, most-commented and most-emailed. Users can also sort videos by section.
Other new features include:
- RSS feeds automatically generated for each section that contains videos
- Custom video credits that sites can tailor to each staff members' job
- Improved video to story relation; when the individual video player is added to a story it's automatically related to the video and is linked on the detail page.
- One-to-five star rating system for ranking videos by user preference
- Tracking of user-views for ranking videos by most-viewed
- Widget for displaying random videos, videos in related section and custom list (on video detail page)
- Archive widget similar to the video archive page that is displayed on the video detail page
- Modal windows for sharing videos on social networks, linking to and embedding videos, emailing videos and (on the video detail player) enlarging the video
As with the previous version of the video player, all content is stored in the Django/Ellington interface (FLVs on a static server or elsewhere). User analytics are gleaned from Omniture -- we've greatly improved our tracking with this version -- and ads served by DoubleClick. In this way, newsrooms don't need to relearn the systems they already use to manage content.
All of the Scripps newspapers should have this latest version of the player by the end of the month.
But we aren't stopping there, no.
Our developers -- the awesome Shawn Therrien and Luc Nuytten -- are polishing the code to be more lightweight and efficient. We're also planning more ways to drive users to related content using the player.
If you visit a Scripps' Web site, or if you just appreciate outstanding Web apps, please post a comment or send me a message with your feedback.
Two comments
Patrick,
Slick. Best Django based videos page/ player I've seen.
@Jason
Thanks for the compliment dude!
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