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iFrame Embedding - HD quality on toolbar, rarely works.

I have consistently poor streaming results across all browsers, buffering doesnt seem to effect anything. My original video is in 1080p and using other embed skins like reEmbed I can force 1080p autoplayback perfectly, works in all browsers immediately. Annoyingly, reEmbed doesnt allow for 'hide controls' so I am trying jwplayer.

A. I cant seem to force playback using APi in the html code - doesnt work.
B. The HD toggle on the jwplayer toolbar rarely if ever works at all, I click on 1080p and the video remains stuck in something like 720p - I'm not even convinced its that high.
C. I'm on a ramped up macbook pro, have 40mb speed broadband and test this at all times of day - it's not a computer or broadband issue, its jwplayer.

Does anyone have any code similar to the usual '?vq=hd1080' that I can put into the jwplayer html that will force 1080p on load?

I can;t understand why many other skin players do this job really well using the above mentioned code, but jwplayer doesnt.

Thanks!

7 Community Answers

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Todd

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Can you provide a link to a page where we can reproduce this? My suggestion would be to check which quality version we have selected (and why) with the jwplayer().getVisualQuality() call from our API. Please see https://developer.jwplayer.com/jw-player/docs/developer-guide/api/javascript_api_reference/ for more details.

And what is reEmbed?

I am not familiar with “the usual ‘?vq=hd1080’” you mention. You can force our player to use a 1080p video with our Javascript API’s jwplayer().setCurrentQuality(index) call in the .on(‘firstFrame’) event, but I would not recommend doing this, as viewers on slower internet connections or smaller screens will not benefit from a 1080p video.

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n...

User  
0 rated :

Hi Todd, thanks for getting back to me.

I can't show the page with the video on, the site is not live and in development, but all it is, is a single page with zero other elements on it. It's simply the embedded iframe code that jwplayer produced. It doesnt matter what browser I view it in, the playback is very temperamental and inconsistent - safari in particular, the 'hd' button never works, the resolution is stuck at a low resolution and cant be made to play 1080p.

reEmded is an online tool that works virtually the same as jwplayer, albeit in a slightly simpler set-up. Like many other 'skinning' tools - here is another one http://www.classynemesis.com/projects/ytembed/, you can force the 1080p playback and it puts ?vq=hd1080 after the youtube video ID, its super easy and works like a charm every time across all browsers.

I'm not a developer so I havent a clue how to use Javascript, or where to put it unfortunately. I use Adobe Muse to create sites, so I don't even think JS can be altered.

I thought there might be a simple fix, but no worries! I'll just have to use a different tool or just embed Vimeo vids instead. My company is a high end fashion label so its crucial that visuals are played in high def no matter what.

Thanks again!


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n...

User  
0 rated :

Hi Todd,

A question; is there a way to specify in jwplayer set-up a responsive video with custom dimensions? If I select a fixed video (instead of responsive) there are options on jwplayer to input exact dimensions.

I suddenly thought of something that might be causing the problem of HD playback, when I bring over the jwplayer code into my page and embed it, it is bringing the video in at a very small size (which is pre set in jwplayer and cannot be altered if you select responsive).

To make it responsive on my page, I then have to set the width to 100% and I change the height setting to a larger 640px.

Because I have now scaled up the video on my page, does this mean that it is still somehow reading the original code and will only play at a fixed resolution because it thinks the video is being played at the original smaller size that I embedded? I'm not sure how jwplayer actually works, i.e does it somehow link back to the settings created on the jwplayer website?

Thanks

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Todd

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Are you using your JW Player account dashboard to configure your players, or are you writing the embed code directly via Javascript? Both options enable you to enter fixed dimensions, but you cannot have both fixed and responsive dimensions in the same player as far as I know. Perhaps your best option is to set the player to be responsive:

width: '100%',
aspectratio: '16:9'

but then put the player <div> inside a fixed width wrapper <div> on your page that could potentially resize or be partially responsive.

For the YouTube 1080p playback, have you tried simply appending the ?vq=hd1080 at the end of your YouTube URL? Our player will simply request whatever URL is present in the file: ’’ parameter.

As far as Vimeo goes, I know they have some convenient built-in tools. Our player enables you to do a lot more in terms of customization.

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n...

User  
0 rated :

Hi Todd,

I'm copy/pasting the iframe code from JWplayer account dashboard - I set the player to be 'responsive' 16:9 inside the dashboard, and then when I have the code, I swap out the dimensions to width 100% and height 648px - the responsive thing isn't such a huge headache, I can get that working.

And answering your question about appending the ?vq=hd1080 at the end of my YouTube URL - this is precisely what I do, but using jwplayer code, it has absolutely no influence on playback at all, no matter what browser.

If I use the code created from other 'skin' engines, using that append code works perfectly on all browser, the video opens every time at 1080p.

Even just using this basic embed code which includes the 'force 1080p' setting works perfectly:

<iframe width="1138" height="648" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RnlUGyvencI?vq=hd1080&modestbranding=1&autoplay=1&rel=0&theme=light" frameborder="0"></iframe>

So, I don't know why the code jwplayer generates doesnt work when I use exactly the same process, simply add ?vq=hd1080 to the end of the URL.

V frustrating.

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Todd

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

You are correct, if you have a responsive player configured in your dashboard, the <iframe> embed code we give you does not have responsive dimensions in the embed code. I will check with our engineers to see if this is something that can be changed.

Perhaps the vq=hd1080 parameter used to work, but I do not see it included in Google’s documentation any more: https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters#Manual_IFrame_Embeds

There’s a Stack Overflow thread about this too: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23145257/is-there-a-way-to-link-someone-to-a-youtube-video-in-hd-1080p-quality and the consensus is that it doesn’t work. If you host the videos with us instead of YouTube, you can not only change the quality version automatically with the .setCurrentQuality() call in our API, you could also delete all but the 1080p transcode from your video(s) to assure the only stream we send to your viewers is 1080p.

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Allison

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Hello Nathan,
Thank you for the feedback and details you have provided with this iframe embed code issue. We have verified that this is indeed a flaw in our system and we have written up a fix for this. We should be able to release a fix so that responsive settings remain intact with the iframed embed code, in the next few weeks.

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