Over the last couple of weeks, I've been involved in setting up a couple of Joomla sites that have relied heavily on video. Man, it was frustrating.

After a day or so, I ended up with a website full of every conceivable mambot, module and component, but none of them would work correctly:

• In content, modules and other components
• In all browsers
• With the ability to resize each individual video

The Best Way is the YouTube Way

Why not copy the best?

From Wikipedia: "YouTube converts videos into .FLV (Adobe Flash Video) format after uploading...YouTube officially accepts uploaded videos in .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, MPEG and .MP4, formats".

So thats what we set out to do. With the help of the excellent Seyret Video Component, follow these three steps to run all videos perfectly in Joomla, regardless of browsers, plugins, mambots, scripts or anything else that might get in your way:

1) Convert all videos to .FLV

Unlike YouTube, Seyret can't do this automatically. However, there's cheap software available that can allow you to easily convert all video types to .FLV. We use the Allok Video to FLV Converter. Click here to download the free trial version (P.C. Only)

2) Upload the videos to Seyret

Many videos may be over 2MB in size and unfortunately many shared hosting companies set limitations on the size of files that you can upload. Either ask them to raise this limit or create your own custom php.ini file. The line you need to change is: upload_max_filesize = 2M

3) Use the Embed Feature to Place Videos On Your Site

This is where the power of Seyret really comes in. You have complete flexibility to take the embed code for each video and place it anywhere in your site, in modules, in content and in other components. Unlike other solutions, you can also have a unique height and width for each video.

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