Is it possible to pass parameters to the Flash player...

Hi ruthyruth,

Unfortunately what you want to achieve is not directly possible with Ninja Shadowbox.
First because the flv player used is an old one and doesn't have the the caption as subtitle feature build in.
On the other hand, I'm afraid srt is not supported with flv's but only with mp4's. But that I'm not sure of.

However, the reason we are called Ninja's is to try to find a different approach to make it work because of the challenge, may it be by doing a lot of research, which I did.

Also, your syntax is not right. Notice that you have double & (ampersands) in there. Only one & is enough. Plus you are using lightbox instead of shadowbox in the rel attribute. I would suggest to use shadowbox although using lightbox doesn't do much harm..but..just for the record.

Since you use the old flv player where srt's are not supported, you must have the current JWPlayer / FLV Player installed into the Ninja Shadowbox directory OR you can load the player from a different location which is optional in the advanced settings of Ninja Shadowbox OR just as you did by calling the player directly but then on a standalone base.

Also, the reason it doesn't work is that you have to call the captions plugin in your syntax.
In general your syntax should look like this (compare the differences with yours):

Replace every & with &

<a href="http://www.elevenfox.de/jwplayer/player.swf?autostart=true&amp;

plugins=captions&

captions.file=http://www.elevenfox.de/media/polysics-each-life-each-end-budokan.srt&

file=http://www.elevenfox.de/media/polysics-each-life-each-end-budokan.flv" 

title="POLYSICS - Each Life Each End - LIVE at Budokan" 

rel="shadowbox;width=624;height=360">KAYO  カヨ</a>

To make it work you need to do the following:

- unzip the attached JWplayer5 and upload the folder to your server.
- call the player directly like you did in your syntax. Make sure the path is correct.
- unzip the attached crossdomain.zip and upload the crossdomain.xml to the root of your joomla dir.

For more detailed useful information I refer to the following website:

http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/addons/captions-plugin/14974/captions-plugin-reference-guide

Note that this is a basic work around, you have to gain more information by yourself to make it work correctly in case things don't work.
I tested it by myself and it worked for me so far.

I hope this helps.
Let us know how it goes.

Kind regards,
John

Hi RR-san,

Great to hear you were able to get it work. Good job!

Thanks very much for your very kind en pleasant phrases about being a master and such, but I'm just a simple Ninja who can get to the bottom of things (not always but most of the time).
Besides that, using/building (multi)media within websites is my kind of department.
The true Ninja's and Masters are the dev Ninja's here at Ninja Forge, which I'm not.

Honestly, my struggle was the fact that the SRT file that I used wasn't saved as UTF8.
Luckily I found out soon at the LongTailVideo website.

...the "full screen" button on the player does not work...

Hmm...strange. Does work for me.
Try to add this somewhere in the syntax (in case you didn't try this already):

&allowfullscreen=true

Otherwise try to choose the script library "Dojo" within the settings of Ninja Shadowbox, often this will help to avoid script conflicts.

Of course now I'm being picky because I don't like the skin of the player

Try this to call a different skin (note that you have to download a skin first from the LongTailVideo website. Afterwards you have to upload the zip to your Joomla dir and point to it in the syntax):

&skin.file=http://your_domain/joomla_dir/skin_folder/skin.zip

Question: Why does the Ninja Shadowbox Joomla module not have the latest version of the JW Player?

Complicated to explain, I believe this has to do with certain license policy's (especially for the shadowbox script).
On the other hand, any user is free to choose which FLV Player to use. Because it's optional in the Advanced Settings within Ninja Shadowbox. If a user wants a different/better advanced player then the user simply can point to it by using the option. Makes perfect sense to me, you know :)

Well, that would be it. Let us know how you are doing.

Thank you for this nice challenge ;)

Kind regards,
John

ruthyruth-san

Like I said...Quit a nice challenge you've got here :)

Although it's not exactly the way Ninja Shadowbox is expected to work.
Good job on the skin, though. Just keep using the zips because that will be the most effective way since you are using the latest JWPlayer.

The problem is the way you combine Ninja Shadowbox with calling directly the FLV player and it's parameters.
Other needed internal scripts, parameters, commands are by-passed this way.

Now, some of the parameters for the FLV player which are called directly within the syntax, will do their job but some are hardcoded in the internal scripts from Ninja Shadowbox. I tried to find a way to modify it for you but that could be conflicting when you use Ninja Shadowbox for other purposes.

But since I love Ninja Shadowbox and it's way you can play around with stuff, I like it to approach things in another way. There are more ways that lead to Rome, you know.

One important thing is that the JWPlayer makes use of FlashVars.
These are simply parameters needed to pass to the FLV player to make it fully functional.
Some of these FlashVars are hardcoded, and some are not, within Ninja Shadowbox.
FlashVars are components of the Adobe Flash Player, which you have to install locally in order to be able to watch Flash based movies (FLV, SWF, etc).

So, this is something that can't be controlled by Ninja Shadowbox nor by the JWPlayer. They only make use of it by passing the needed parameters.

Normally, if you use the JWPlayer as a standalone player you can pass parameters all you like.
But that will only work properly if you make use of the <object> and <embed> HTML tags.
Or in other cases you can use javascript to embed Flash movies in a website page.
But, using it with shadowbox is yet to discover how.

Since I'm a fan of Ninja Shadowbox and multimedia used in websites, I've experimented a lot with it.
I think I'm able to make it work the way you want.

In fact you use the standalone version of the JWPlayer (for use with subtitles) since you call it directly in your syntax.
This way Ninja Shadowbox listens only to the rel attribute command to popup the shadowbox window and passes only customized parameters (set in the Module and Advanced Parameters). But still loads all the scripts needed for Ninja Shadowbox. This might give a conflict between things.
Also, the scripts from Ninja Shadowbox are a bit outdated (due to license policies), so the general coding is based on the scripts used/integrated at that time. I have no other explanation, but I think it's fairly close.

That said, we still don't have a proper workaround.

So I'm going to give you this work around to make it work.

1) Paste this in the article where the FLV link is, use the html editor to do so:

<script src="http://www.elevenfox.de/jwplayer.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

2) Replace your current syntax with this one (allowfullscreen is gone, not needed anymore):

<a href="http://www.elevenfox.de/player.swf?autostart=true&amp;skin=http://www.elevenfox.de/beelden.zip&amp;plugins=captions&amp;captions.file=http://www.elevenfox.de/media/polysics-each-life-each-end-budokan.srt&amp;file=http://www.elevenfox.de/media/polysics-each-life-each-end-budokan.flv" title="POLYSICS - Each Life Each End - LIVE at Budokan" rel="shadowbox;width=624;height=360;">KAYO &nbsp;カヨ 2</a>

3) unzip the attached modified shadowbox-swf.js and upload it to /modules/mod_ninja_shadowbox/ninja_shadowbox/js/player/ (backup original first).

This should do the trick ;)

Note that this a work around based on this topic.
Might not work for other users.

Let me know how it goes.

Have a nice a nice day ;)

-John

Hi RR-san,

Thanks for your feedback.
Yea, that's something to consider to suggest these modifications to the dev team.

Actually, I meant that you can put the script call/declaration in the article where the FLV thing is by using Joomla's html editor, if you use TinyMCE as editor for instance.
Just put it above all other html content within the html editor. Doesn't really matter as long as the script is declared in the same article where your FLV thing is.

Sure, if you like you may put it in the <head> section of your template.php or index.php.
Even a better way then put in the article.
I was not sure how familiar you are with this so I suggested the easiest way to declare a script.

I hope things are clear to you.
If not then please feel free to ask.

Some literal years ago for me that I did some headbanging.
But too much music will never be too much for me.
For me it's better to stay on coffee ;)

Let me know how you are doing.

-John