Comment to: YouTube Chromeless Player with Google Analytics Event Tracking - Savio.no

Comment by: Maria

Maria — 14.04.2010 21:41:27

Hi,
I found this demo and it looks perfect for my project however I can't seem to get it to work. I installed all the files as you specified but for some reason the iframe is empty. I would really appreciate your guidance?

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 19.03.2010 00:07:25

Dette nettstedet benytter gammel ASP ja. PHP-delen er ikke hentet fra noen plasser, det var et halvveis forsøk for lenge siden på å knote sammen noe PHP uten å kunne kode PHP.

Om noen har laget (eller kan lage) en PHP-versjon setter jeg pris på det.

Comment by: Stine Kveen

Stine Kveen — 18.03.2010 18:33:06

Hei.

Fint eksempel

Kan du fortelle hvor du har hentet PHP-delen fra, siden det ikke virker? Det er ASP du bruker på din egen side?

Vennlig hilsen
Stine

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 17.03.2010 23:53:54

See also my article about Video Analytics using Google Analytics API and Excel.

To make the video analytics data tracked with this player more understandable I have made an Excel 2007 spreadsheet that is connected directly to Google Analytics using the Google Analytics API.

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 14.03.2010 21:04:01

The player has been updated. New functions:

Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking. The player is now using Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking
Improved time tracking. The end time is tracked also if the browser is closed and a movie is either playing, paused or buffering.

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 02.09.2009 21:31:16

Hi, and sorry for my delayed answer.

Yes you should be able to make the video autoplay on load, but I haven't done it my self.

The easiest method (but not a pretty one) is to add
startNewVideo('videoID', 0); to your body onload code. But at least that should get you started.

Hope it was to some help.

Comment by: wwwcoder

wwwcoder — 22.08.2009 00:55:08

Great example. I implemented a right side playlist using the YouTube API, I have it set up so when I click on the video in the nav it loads it in the video player via an Ajax call. What I would like it to do is autoplay. Is there any way I can get the video to autoplay on load?

Comment by: Chris

Chris — 07.06.2009 09:53:05

Nope. Sure didn't. Wow that's embarrassing

Thanks for all your help. I'm seeing the same stuff in HTTP headers now. Thanks again.

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 07.06.2009 09:24:14

Hi Chris

Since I haven't seen your test site, it's impossible to know why it doesn't work. I assume you have replaced the UA account number in the example with your own?

You are right that the createEventTracker() has been deprecated, but it works splendid on my site.

To debug I would use Firefox and Live HTTP Headers extension. Then you don't have to wait for your data to show up in Google Analytics, you can see it right away if data are being sent to Google Analytics.

As an example, below is some of the data logged by Live HTTP Headers when I clicked on pause on the Marit Larsen video.

http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmwv=4.3&utmn=2140778241&utmhn=www.savio.no&utmt=event&utme=5(YouTube%20Video%20Player*Video%20-%20Pause* Marit%20Larsen%20-%20If%20a%20Song%20Could%20Get%20Me%20You)

Hope this helps a little bit.

Comment by: Chris

Chris — 07.06.2009 00:35:35

Okay, so I finally had the balls to remove the regular youtube player from my site and put your chromeless player implementation in (had it up on test site).

The trouble is that it's not logging any events in GA.

According to Google's website, the "createEventTracker()" function has been deprecated, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't work, right?

The video plays fine and everything looks good to the end user (which is great) but it's not tracking any events (which defeats purpose).

Any ideas on where to start troubleshooting this? I appreciate your help.

Comment by: Chris

Chris — 08.05.2009 00:02:26

Thanks Eivind - that did it. It works now. I don't understand WHY it works...but that's a fight for another day.

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 07.05.2009 19:50:30

Hi Chris

Your question is not stupid, the PHP file contained (or do perhaps contains errors, I'm not a PHP programmer).

Server.HTMLEncode is not PHP, my fault. I think the correct code should be etc. Any PHP programmers, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Regarding the function "startNewVideo()" it should transfer the videoID parameter. I am however not the person behind that part of the code, here is the original code:
http://sandbox.epikone.us/ytanalytics/index2.txt

Comment by: Chris

Chris — 07.05.2009 18:28:21

Forgive me as I'm new to developing (JS, PHP, etc). So this might be a VERY stupid question.

I am getting this error:
"
Line 42 in my code is this:

', 0);">
/0.jpg" alt =" " width="463" height="347" />

I noticed a couple of things that I don't understand:
1.) the function "startNewVideo()" is defined as taking no parameters. Yet here it is being called and given TWO parameters:
a.) ''
b.) 0

Is that valid Javascript? Can a function that is defined as accepting no parameters be CALLED with parameter?

2.) Is "Server.HTMLEncode()" even PHP? I looked up that phrase on Google and it appears to be ASP

Again, I'm sure this is a very stupid question - but its completely holding me up none-the-less.

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 06.03.2009 19:54:02

Thank you for your useful feedback Andy.

As you correctly writes, index.php hasn't been tested.

Do you have a working PHP version that you can share? That will be appreciated.

And please keep me/us posted when you have a proper object-oriented apporach working.

Comment by: Andy Geers

Andy Geers — 06.03.2009 12:22:15

Thanks for the great work. Found a couple of bugs:

* The included index.php obviously hasn't been tested (fair enough) - for anybody having troubles: it still contains a few ASP tags where there should be PHP, it lacks a number of closing brackets, and you need an explicit "print" after each occurrence "
* I find that pressing "stop", whilst it does bring back the "play" button overlay, doesn't actually stop the video! I haven't found a way to fix this, so I just added a call to "pauseVideo" before stopping

* At the moment, sadly, you can only have one video per page. I'm working on turning it into a proper object-oriented approach so that you can have one javascript object per video

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 21.12.2008 22:02:10

A small bug fix is made, pluss tracking of time played if a visitor leaves the video/page.

If a visitor didn't finish watching the video, or didn't press Stop, time played wouldn't be recorded in the previous version. This is now fixed, and will be tracked as
Video - Stop Left Page.

Happy playing!

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 13.10.2008 20:55:26

Hi Jay

According to my knowledge you can't.

Anyway, the player is built upon the YouTube API, and I don't think there exist an API for Google Video:

http://code.google.com/more/

Comment by: Jay

Jay — 13.10.2008 15:57:24

Could I get this same player to work for google video? or would it take too much coding?

Regards, Jay

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 10.09.2008 21:49:18

No problem at all.

Since we are talking about Firefox. When I started to make this player I wasn't able to make it work in Firefox 3.0.1, so I wrote that in an earlier Norwegian blog post. Later I got corrected, it was Firefox on that particular pc that had the problem. A fresh reinstall solved the problem (and some other problems).

I also know that an add-on for Firefox called Flashblock can cause problems.

Comment by: Håvard Pedersen

Håvard Pedersen — 10.09.2008 19:56:49

Sorry for sounding a bit harsh. I'm looking at it now in Chrome on Windows XP and the player works pretty sweet indeed. :) I know the Mac Flash Player has some issues from time to time, it could be that you stumbled upon some of them.

Comment by: Eivind Savio

Eivind Savio — 10.09.2008 16:49:47

Thanks for your feedback Håvard. I have tested the solution in IE6, IE7, IE8 Beta, Opera, Google Chrome and Firefox 3.0.1 on different computers, but not on Mac.

I have sometimes also experienced buffering problems with the high quality videos, and this potential problem is also mentioned in the O'Reilly Hi-Res YouTube Hacks (linked to earlier in this article).

Note that the hi-res videos take longer to load and are more prone to stalling during playback.

—David Battino

I have however never experienced this as so problematic as you describe it. I would appreciate if someone else with Mac and Firefox also could give me feedback on this, and perhaps test the videos over at O'Reilly also. One of the videos is embedded as "normal" YouTube video, except from the Hi-Res Hack.

Comment by: Håvard Pedersen

Håvard Pedersen — 10.09.2008 09:33:08

Nice in theory, but it came off as completely useless (FF3, Mac OS X 10.5.4). The video playback was so choppy, it was close to unwatchable. And the pause button didn't really work (10 seconds after I pressed it, the video spontaneously restarted though).

The video seemed to have ample buffer for playback, and I don't normally have problems viewing high quality Youtube videos.