Embedr is a relatively new free service that lets you build custom video playlists from a variety of online clip sources and gives you the opportunity to aggregate the entire playlist into a good-looking widget which you can easily share on your blog or website.
It’s an elegant solution for those times you want to embed multiple videos in a blog post or on any web page without cluttering your site and forcing visitors to scroll down in order to watch all the clips you’re sharing. Creating widgets is ridicously simple, but we should note Embedr doesn’t host videos and can only pull videos from third-party services like YouTube, MySpace Video, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, Veoh, Vimeo, Blip.tv and more. The maximum number of videos you can add to one playlist is 100.
YouTube, still the premier destination for online video, lets you build playlists as well, but doesn’t offer the possibility to embed the entire playlist into one widget you can spread around. (actually YouTube has such a feature, it’s called Custom Player and it looks like we even wrote it up at the time) Furthermore, since Embedr lets you create a playlist from multiple video sharing services, it is a far more convenient solution when the videos you want to aggregate are scattered around the web. You can see some example playlists here; I particularly enjoyed the “10 Reasons Why Arnold Schwarzenegger Rules” one.
Yubby and iDesktop.tv do much of the same, but the video playlists only exist on their respective websites and can’t be embedded elsewhere as easily as with Embedr, plus the latter also offers a one-click push to networks like Facebook, MySpace and other services thanks to AddThis integration.
Here’s an example widget which pulls together some randomly selected videos from our Elevator Pitches subsite:
Good stuff.
Not bad but checkout what you can do in iDesktop.tv – much more customisable and many different types of widgets
http://beta.ide...embed-examples/
YouTube videos only and also non-embeddable widgets, but added it to the post, thanks.
Of course they are embeddable
take a look Robin http://beta.idesktop.tv
Interesting service, won’t need to embed so much youtube videos.
TechFilipino
Have you seen veewow.com? It also allows you create video playlists from YouTube with embedding to Facebook, MySpace etc and posts Twitter updates.
One neat feature is the “Bookmark widget” that allows you to create playlists directly from other sites. All you do is drag the “bookmarklet” onto your links bar in Firefox or IE. Then while browsing YouTube you can click the button and it will pop up a window so you can add the video into one of your playlists (or create a new one).
Here’s your elevator pitch created in iDesktop.tv in about 5mins
http://beta.ide...show.php?eid=47
if you want the embed code i can give it to you
So people need to ask your for the embed code every time? How convenient
no no lol, people create those players themselves how they want. This then produces an Embed code that they can copy and paste into their websites/blogs.
Looks like they are going to have an issue with Carrefour http://www.toms...arrefour3_c.gif
Exactly what I wanted to say – although I don’t think Carrefour would go after them.
Embedr is all about speed. To test the service, we created the following player in about 30 seconds – and we were able to do so without even registering.
speed is great, but i’d rather spend the extra minute and use a website which has full control over how the player looks and feels
I completely agree.
Shame it doesn’t support Feedburner and RSS feeds
Does it support google adsense like you tube?
Seems like VodPod has been doing this for a long time, without the limits.
True, not very customisable though
Jason, actually you can customise Vodpod widgets any way you’d like. They have a huge array of widget types to choose from, they provide raw CSS so you can go further, or you can build your own widget using their API.
We have been doing this for nearly 2 years with Searchles TV:
http://www.sear...lp/searchles.tv
We also let you edit Youtube videos and create edited playlists with our Remash feature:
http://www.sear...com/misc/remash
Do we really need so many options out there.
looks like a great service but couldnt youtube or others just easily replicate this at sometime in the future.
The player combines videos from all different sites. I doubt YouTube would want to promote other video sites like MySpace, and Vimeo.
Hello all, I’m the designer for Embedr. The sites linked above are all really nice and give us a run for our money. I’d like to take a moment to comment on the stuff above and list a few things that set us apart:
- No registration required, start building a playlist right away. I wanted to test idesktoptv to see how it’s “more customisable,” but it appears you need an invitation for the beta site.
- Smart playlists. You can create a dynamic playlist based off of YouTube feeds. Display the latest videos from your YouTube channel or the latest videos by search term or category. This playlist will refresh the content automatically without the need for updating the embed code.
- Being from the US, I’ve never heard of Carrefour. Our logo is based off the from the tag.
- Vodpod is awesome, but my only gripe was that there wasn’t an all-enclosed Flash embed. You need to install an app in order to post a vodpod playlist to a myspace page. Additionally, there isn’t a way to detect if a video has stopped playing and advance automatically to the next.
-Searchles is cool. You can also edit in/out points on Embedr, or choose from alternate YouTube thumbnails. Just click the edit icon after adding a video to your playlist.
Looks like the code was stripped out of my post. I wanted to say that our logo is based off of the E from the Embed tag, with surrounding brackets.
that’s a coincidence as your explanation is quite clear but it’s really confusing and some people already commented about it around the web (just google it)
fyi. carrefour is the second retailer in the world after walmart and perhaps bigger than walmart outside of the US (at least in Europe and Asia especially in China).
I appreciate the info and I’m definitely bummed that our logo is a similar shape. I thought it was pretty unique because it holds a couple of different meanings specific to web design (the embed tag) and user-driven content (the stick figure guy performing an action). This kind of stuff happens all the time in logo design, and all I can really do is chalk it up to coincidence and discuss it with the other half of Embedr. Thanks for the information.
Hi Sean, if you sign up for the beta, you will get activated within 24 hours.
Jason Grimmitt
iDesktop.tv
Sean – thanks for the kind words about Vodpod. I like the Embedr player, it looks very cool. We did have a Flash-only widget for a while, but its very difficult to get that solution to work for videos beyond YouTube and maybe a couple of others. So good luck to you guys! But seriously, we have videos from over 6000 hosts shared on Vodpod, and we didn’t like the inherent limits of the Flash only player, so we eventually dropped it.
The guy’s voice on the Searchles demo video reminds me of the shamwow guy. http://www.yout...h?v=QwRISkyV_B8
Looks like it could be an effective PR tool…
This is one of those products you have to try to appreciate. How the player can be setup and modified makes a big difference. I double check new sites with this* digital security site.
Looks pretty cool!
@embedr you b& my IP when I was writing/debugging a cUrl script to automate playlist creation, I guess that’s bad?
When the side effect of your debugging means tons of duplicate playlists on our site from the same IP, yeah, that’s bad. If you want to email us with more details about what you’re doing, we can work something out.
cool, Thanks, I’ll send you an email
“YouTube, still the premier destination for online video, lets you build playlists as well, but doesn’t offer the possibility to embed the entire playlist into one widget you can spread around.”
YouTube does allow you to embed playlists. Two options for that, actually.
1) Go to the playlist page and find the embed code there (it’s hidden at the top of the page, you have to expand the extra info)
2) Create a custom player:
http://www.yout...m/custom_player
Thanks, updated the post
looks great, thanks {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/VOGBDJTVFr_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”looks great, thanks ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/5iyuDiOtgW”}}}
“Yubby and iDesktop.tv do much of the same, but the video playlists only exist on their respective websites and can’t be embedded elsewhere”
I just wanted to correct you on that part. Yubby does offer to embed playlists through widgets and even personalize them. For example if you want to embed the Techcrunch channel it’s as easy as using the code on this page: http://www.yubb...nnel/widget/915
Is there any chance you can update the article?
If you read the full sentence, it makes more sense.
And Mobile video mashup: http://mvideo.linkstore.ru lets you create mobile video sites
I’ve been trying to use their site all day and when ever I try to paste in embed code I’m told the service is busy. So now I’m going to give iDesktop.tv a shot.
You shouldn’t get yourself mentioned on TechCrunch if your server can’t handle the traffic. lol
The server is completely fine. It sounds like there is something odd in the particular embed code you are entering that causes the script to time out. Could you link the video you are trying to add so we can look into it?
- “You shouldn’t get yourself mentioned on TechCrunch if your server can’t handle the traffic. lol”
Hear that Embedr? Don’t make things that people like!
Embedr.com is a nice site, runs along the same lines as http://www.veewow.com, which I prefer to use. It’s a UK video playlist site launched May 2008. Looks like there is now a demand for video playlist sites, great stuff.
Heh, cool! I remember being able to do this with Omnisio.
I’m looking for a tool like this…but one that will allow me to use my playlist(s) with another player.
I’ve looked at all the ones mentioned, but none seem to produce an XML feed that, for example, JW Player can read.
The only one I can find is feedbeat.com But the interface is clunky and I’m not sure how long that one will be around.
Is there anything else that will allow you to build a playlist from multiple sources and then feed it to another player?
I dont like Embedr at all, the website is clunky, slow, lacks in its search functionality, and places a limitation on your playlist. The only good thing about Embedr is the embeded player. Vodpod is far superior in its search capabilities and simplifies the addition of content to your playlist but there site is not intuitive either and the lack of an embeded player makes vodpod useless.
I was a happy Imeem user who had to abandon that account because Imeem decided to strip down the content that included all the movie trailers along with a majority of the music videos. I have spent the past few days researching video aggregators who could provide an embedable flash player that displayed the playlist, who also had a search feature (although this realy wasnt necessary because a video search through google pulls from a great number of sites where one can obtain the url to a video) but who also had support for multiple video providers.
The companies I researched included cozmotv, embedr, magnify, vodpod, idesktop, smartplaylist, and searchles Tv by reading reviews, setting up accounts, and makeing playlists, but for one reason or another none of them have thier act together, they felt like mom and pop shops. All except for a not very well known company called veewow which I found out about through a comment on this tech article regarding embedr.
I have just begun creating my playlist and plan to have around six hundred or more music videos within that playlist. I will also create other lists with a limited number of videos so I will be looking to see if there is a feature where the audience can choose right from the player which of my playlist they would wish to review, they may provide this feature already and Im just not aware of it yet. Veewow is the solution for myspace users who are just plan ordinary folk looking to consolidate existing video content to their friends.
The site is still being worked on, but you may try vidlist.hostile-d.com
As of now, you can create embedable playlists from the hosts Youtube, Vimeo, Myspace Video, Veoh, Atom, LiveLeak, College Humor, Bragster, Funny Or Die, Break, blip.tv, Google Video, and Metacafe.
The player itself is customizable aswell.
The site is constantly updated.
Feedback is appreciated.