How to Overlay Video Using JQuery Tools and Flowplayer

In my previous tutorial, i’ve explained the basic usage of Flowplayer as your web video player. In this tutorial, i’ll will show you a little bit advanced usage of Flowplayer combined with Jquery Tools. JqueryTools is used to overlay video with a simple apple effect. This feature is usefull when making a video gallery, where users directly play a video in larger size in an overlay mode without having to move to a new page.

How to Setup

Flowplayer

Follow the instructions in my previous tutorial to setup Flowplayer

JQuery Tools

• Download Overlay component from Jquery Tools download’s page and save it as jquery.tools.min.js. You can download it with jQuery (v1.3.2) as a single file (20.82 kb) or as a separated file (1.59 kb) if you already have jQuery.



• Include the jquery.tools.min.js with in the HEAD section of your HTML

<script src="scripts/jquery.tools.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/flowplayer-3.1.4.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

or

<script src="scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/jquery.tools.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/flowplayer-3.1.4.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

How to Use

To overlay a video,   use two div containers, one is for displaying video information (title and duration) and a splash image  as a video’s thumbnail and the second is for overlaying the video. To get thumbnail and duration of a video, you can use mplayer tool as explained here.

Overlay Single Video Player

HTML

<div class="video" style="background-image:url(images/splash_01.jpg)">
        <a href="#" rel="#orel">
            <img src="images/play.png" alt="play" title="play" border="0">
        </a>
        <div class="info">
            PMDG Virtual Cockpit
            <span>00:27</span>
        </div>
</div>

<div id="orel" class="overlay"><a href="video/video01.flv" id="player"></a></div>

line 01: container for video information, splash image, play button, and video title and duration.
line 02: trigger button (play button), the button image is inside the a tag that has rel tag (orel) that match with the video overlay container’s id (line 11)
line 11: container for video overlay

CSS

div.overlay {
	z-index:9999;
	padding:40px;
	width:476px;
	display:none;
	background-image:url(../images/gray.png);
}
div.overlay div.close {
	background:url(../images/close.png) no-repeat;
	position:absolute;
	top:2px;
	right:5px;
	width:35px;
	height:35px;
	cursor:pointer;
}
div.overlay a {
	height:370px;
	display:block;
}
div.video {
	height:150px;
	width:200px;
	border:2px solid #fff;
	outline:1px solid #ccc;
	-moz-outline-radius:4px;
	cursor:pointer;
	text-align:center;
	float:left;
	margin:5px;
}
div.video img {
	margin-top:50px;
}
div.video div.info {
	height:40px;
	background:#000 url(../images/h80.png) repeat-x;
	opacity:0.7;
	color:#fff;
	margin-top:2px;
	text-align:left;
	padding:5px 5px;
	font-family:"bitstream vera sans","trebuchet ms";
	font-size:11px;
	border-top:1px solid #ccc;

}
div.video div.info span {
	color:#99FF99;
	display:block;
}

The CSS style definition for vide overlay

JavaScript

$(function() {
      var player = $f("player", "swf/flowplayer-3.1.5.swf");

      $('a[rel]').overlay({
            expose: '#111',
            effect: 'apple',

            onLoad: function() {
                 player.load();
            },

            onClose: function() {
                player.unload();
            }
       });
});

line 02: install flowplayer into it’s container
line 04: the overlay function, fired when user clicks on play button
line 05: expose color
line 06: overlay effect
line 08: load the player
line 12: unload the player when user clicks on close button

Overlay Multiple Player

<div style="float:left">
   <div class="video" style="background-image:url(images/splash_01.jpg)">
      <a href="#" rel="#orel1">
         <img src="images/play.png" alt="play" title="play" border="0">
      </a>
      <div class="info">
          PMDG Virtual Cockpit
          <span>00:27</span>
       </div>
   </div>

   <div id="orel1" class="overlay"><a href="video/video01.flv" class="player"></a></div>
</div>

<div style="float:left">
   <div class="video" style="background-image:url(images/splash_02.jpg)">
       <a href="#" rel="#orel2">
          <img src="images/play.png" alt="play" title="play" border="0">
       </a>
       <div class="info">
            PMDG Virtual Cockpit - Dark
            <span>02:38</span>
       </div>
    </div>

    <div id="orel2" class="overlay"><a href="video/video02.flv" class="player"></a></div>
</div>

line 01: container for video 1
line 03: rel tag must have a unique value for each video (orel1 & orel2 for the two videos)
line 12: overlay container, it’s id must match the rel tag in line 03
line 15: container for video 2

CSS

Look at example 1

JavaScript

$(function() {
    $("a[rel]").overlay ({
         effect: 'apple',
	 expose: '#111',

         onLoad: function(content) {
             this.getOverlay().find("a.player").flowplayer(0).load();
         },

         onClose: function(content) {
              $f().unload();
         }
     });

     $("a.player").flowplayer("swf/flowplayer-3.1.5.swf");
});

line 07: load video, overlay function looks for a element with player class name within it’s container to load the video
line 11: unload video
line 15: install flowplayer

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