Customize players

You can create and publish a customized single recording or playlist player to any web or blog page using the Flash player wizard. It offers a wide range of options for sizes, colors, images, and branding, including HTML headers and footers to add promotional messages and links. Note: This is the method for including images in your players.

To begin, select one of these four “foundations” for building a player: (1) My Recordings (all public recording in your account), (2) single recording, (3) Album, or (4) Group.

Click on the “Customize a player” link. The Evoca Express Flash Player Wizard will appear. How to find the “Customize player” link:

• For playlist players for your entire account, an album, or group, it is just above the toolbar as “Customize player and get embed code”
• For single recording players, click on “Embed” drop-down menu in either the My recordings dashboard view or in the Page view; click on the “Customize player” link at the bottom of the menu

Note: As you are building your player, you can press the “Preview” button at the bottom of the wizard to see how each change you make will change the appearance of the player. You can also get the copy/paste HTML code each time you preview the player; certainly you will get and use it when you are completely satisfied with your player.

Orientation:

The drop-down menu lets you choose how to position the display, control bar, playlist, and images. For example, you can place an image to the left and the playlist to the right, or an image above and the playlist on the bottom. Or you can choose to have no image at all. Naturally, a single recording player will contain only one recording in its playlist. It’s all up to you. Make sure to pick one, though, because, if you don’t the player won’t appear at all.

Basic Options

The basic options allow you to name and control the size of your player. When you choose an orientation, the default values for a player will appear. Be sure to choose your own values to create a player that will fit into your web page and make the best use of your images.

Name – Enter a name for your player

Height + Width of player :

Enter the width of your player. Consider the size of the image for your player and how much space you will allocate for the entire player on your web page.

Image Height + Width:

Enter the width of the image for your player. You may have to try a few different sizes until you select the final size.

Skin:

In web design language, a “skin” is the basic overall design. The drop-down menu lets you choose between a rounded skin or a square skin. If you are building an audio slideshow player, you must choose the square skin option.

Viral player option (adding a “share” button):

The Viral Player Option enables visitors to your website to post your player widget on other websites, blogs, and social networking sites such as Facebook and more. The visitor simply clicks on the “Share” button to post the widget to more than 70 of the most popular social networks, blog platforms and bookmarking sites – all without leaving your site.

To create your viral widget, make sure you click on the ‘Show Share Button’ option in the Flash Player Wizard. This will prompt the viral player option once you have completed all the Flash Player Wizard steps.

HTML header and footer:

The HTML header and HTML footer fields provide an excellent option to add images, links, or text to your player.Moreover, each field can be used as a means to generate advertising revenue, link to donation pages, and promote affiliate site referrals. These links can be inserted into the Header and/or the Footer. That means you can generate revenue, referral, donation, and promotional activity from your Flash player not only when it appears on your site but when it is embedded as a “widget” on other sites as well.Simply paste the HTML code for the header and/or footer in the respective field.As their names suggest, HTML Header code will appear at the top of the player and the HTML Footer code at the bottom.

Color Options

The color options allow you to create a unique look for your player. Simply click on the ‘pick’ button and choose your color pallet. Each color has a specific HEX code, a six-character identification needed for a color to appear on the Web.

You can either hand pick a color or enter the HEX code. For more information on HEX codes, visit:

http://www.webmonkey.com/reference/Color_Charts

Display Appearance

Logo to put over the display:

This is a very effective way to promote your brand and generate more traffic to your website, as it is a live link. Set this field to the URL of the specific image which will serve as a “watermark” logo in the top right corner of the display.

Default image:

Set this field to the URL of the default image that will appear in the display. If you leave it blank, by default it will use the image that is attached to your recording, album, or group.

Stretch images:

The drop-down menu enables you to fit the image to the display – depending on the size of the image in relation to the fit of the player. The default option in this field stretches the image to fill the display. However, you can choose not to stretch the image, disproportionately stretch the image, or stretch the image to fit the display.

Display click behavior:

This field controls what happens when a user clicks in the middle of the display. The default is set to play/pause the recording. However, from the drop-down menu, you can set the player to follow a recording link, show nothing, mute the player, or advance to the next recording. For an audio slide show, it is likely that you will want to select “advance to the next recording”.

Playback Behavior

Automatically start playing:

The default setting is set to “false,” which means a user must press the Play button to listen to recordings. Set this field to “true” in the drop-down menu for the player to start automatically when it loads. Keep in mind that some visitors to your website may not want to hear the first recording as soon as the webpage loads if they are in a public location.

Repeat play:

The default setting is set to “false,” which means the player will not repeat playing of the recordings. Set this field to “true” in the drop-down menu for the player to automatically repeat all files. Set to “list” to play back an entire playlist once.

Shuffle playback:

The default setting is set to “false” to play back recordings sequentially (first to last) instead of shuffle. Set to “true” for the player to automatically playback in “shuffle” mode.

Volume:

This field sets the volume for playback of audio tracks. Volume ranges from 0 to 100 (or 0% to 100%). The default volume is set at 80. Test the volume setting so you select the volume your visitors might like to hear. You know their preferences.

Feed Options

Maximum recordings:

Determine the maximum number of recordings in your playlist player.

Hint: For a single recording player, you should set the maximum number at “1″. This will enable you to “replace” the single recording with a new one without having to create a new player. The player will simply play the most recent recording.