Setting Your HTML5 Video Delivery Options

This document describes how you can configure your Video Cloud account to use smart players, which are video players that work in both HTML5 and Flash. Smart players automatically detect whether the viewer's device supports Flash or HTML5 and deliver your video in the appropriate format.

For an overview about how Video Cloud smart players can make a video player work in either Flash mode or HTML5 mode, and the current limitations for HTML5 deployments, see Delivering Video with HTML5 and Smart Players and the following video:

You can configure how your Video Cloud players use HTML5 player delivery on the Video Cloud Studio Account Settings: Publishing Settings page. To set your HTML5 player delivery options for your account:

1. Sign in to Video Cloud Studio.
2. On the Video Cloud Studio Home page, click the Account Settings link at the top right below the navigation bar. You must have Administrator privileges to access this area of the Studio.
3. On the Account Settings page, click Publishing Settings.
4. Under Publishing Settings: HTML5 Player Delivery, click Edit.
   
    
5. Select the HTML5 player delivery options you want for your account:

• Select Enable HTML5 player delivery for this account if you want Video Cloud smart players to use HTML5 when necessary. Leave this unchecked if you never want a Video Cloud smart player to use HTML5.
• Under Existing Players, select Turn on HTML5 if you want all your existing players to use HTML5 when necessary, and Turn off HTML5 to prevent your existing players from using HTML5. Note: if your account includes 100 or more existing players, this option will not display. In that case, to turn on HTML5 for all your existing players, please contact Brightcove Customer Support. You can still turn on HTML5 for your players individually in the Publishing module.

6. Click Save Changes.

Enabling HTML5 player delivery for individual players

If you have enabled HTML5 player delivery for your account, you can enable or disable it for individual players as well. To enable or disable HTML5 delivery for a player:

1. Open the Video Cloud Studio Publishing module and select the player.
2. Click Settings.
3. On the Edit Settings: Global tab, under Web Settings, select Enable HTML5 Delivery to enable, or clear it to disable, HTML5 delivery.
4. Click the Save Changes button.

This player-level configuration setting is not available if you have disabled HTML5 player delivery for your account; however, if HTML5 player delivery is enabled for your account, you can use the player-level configuration setting to override your account's default HTML5 player delivery setting.

Configuring enhanced player security

Smart players by default use an enhanced player security feature. With enhanced player security, some communications between a Video Cloud player in the user client and the Video Cloud servers require the presence of an encrypted player key. The player key is found in the playerKey configuration parameter in the player publishing code.

Any time you get the player publishing code in the Video Cloud Studio, it includes the playerKey configuration parameter. The playerKey configuration parameter has been included in player publishing code generated since the Brightcove 4.2 release on August 14, 2010, but would not be present in players published before that date.

What happens if a player doesn't have the playerKey configuration parameter in the player publishing code?

Single video players will load and play back video normally in HTML5 mode with or without the playerKey configuration parameter. However, playlist players in HTML5 mode will not be able to load content, resulting in the player displaying a "no content" message.

In Flash mode, all videos load and play in all players regardless of the presence or absence of the playerKey configuration parameter.

How can I make sure existing playlist players can work in HTML5 mode?

There are two ways to make sure your existing playlist player can play back videos in HTML5 mode:

• Add the playerKey configuration parameter to the player's player publishing code, as described in Adding the playerKey
• Disable enhanced player security for your smart players, as described in Disabling enhanced player security.

We recommend that you choose the first way. You should choose the second way and disable enhanced player security for your smart players only if:

1. You have existing playlist players without the playerKey parameter (published before August 14, 2010) that you cannot update and you want those players delivered as HTML5, and
2. You understand that disabling enhanced player security (which enables access to your content by use of the playerId, rather than the encrypted playerKey) enables your content metadata to be more easily discoverable by other parties.

Adding the playerKey

To use enhanced player security with your existing smart players in HTML5 mode, you need to update the player publishing code for each of your existing players that include a playlist, so that the player publishing code includes a playerKey configuration parameter. To update the player publishing code:

1. Sign in to the Video Cloud Studio.
2. Go to the Publishing module and select the player.
3. Click Get Code to copy the player publishing code to your clipboard.

From this point, what you do next depends on what your player publishing workflow is like. You could:

• Paste the player publishing code directly into the web page that hosts your player.
• Add the playerKey configuration parameter to the player's entry in your content management system.

Disabling enhanced player security

To set disable enhanced player security for your smart players in your account:

1. Sign in to Video Cloud Studio.
2. On the Video Cloud Studio Home page, click the Account Settings link at the top right below the navigation bar. You must have Administrator privileges to access this area of the Studio.
3. On the Account Settings page, click Publishing Settings.
4. Under Publishing Settings: HTML5 Player Delivery, click Edit.
5. Select Disable enhanced security to preserve existing players.
6. Click Save Changes.