Miracle Tutorials

Private streaming video with JW Player 7 on WordPress

NOTE: this post is retained for historical purpose only. The plugin described herein is no longer on the market since end 2019 but some of the information is still useful. Private streaming video/audio with JW Player 7 on WordPress is now possible with S3Media Stream Enterprise 7.7.1, our WordPress plugin that works via private RTMP distributions and Web distributions on … Read more

What is an expiring link and how to use it

I get a lot of questions about what an expiring link on Amazon Web Services (AWS) actually does and how to use it properly, therefore I thought it useful to explain it in this article. What is an expiring link? An expiring link, also called signed URL, is a link to a file or object that is limited … Read more

Private Web Distribution on AWS – how to tutorial

Tutorial on how to setup a private web distribution on AWS. There are quite a few changes on the AWS console in a good sense. It is much easier now to set up. Since this has an impact on everyone using web distributions via CloudFront, you may want to have a look at this tutorial, … Read more

Elastic Transcoder tutorial to convert a video

Elastic transcoder converts videos on your Amazon Web Services account. In this video tutorial, we show you how it works. Some video editors and screen capture software do not produce the correct format for streaming video via AWS. There are many good video converters around, like HandBrake, Squeeze, etc., but the Elastic Transcoder is a … Read more

How to enhance security on your AWS account

Most site owners use their main access and secret keys from AWS (S3 Amazon/CloudFront) to publish videos and audios. Although this works very well, it is not that safe because if someone else gets hold of your keys, they have full access to your S3 Buckets/CloudFront distributions. To prevent this from happening, AWS introduced IAM … Read more

PowerDirector Ultra 12 – video editor review

PowerDirector Ultra is a low cost video editor which is quite easy to use. Notwithstanding the low pricing, it is a good alternative for those who are not acquainted with video editing yet, because the learning curve is much lower than the professional packages like Adobe Premiere or FinalCut Pro. In this article, I share … Read more

Cache-control enhances RTMP streaming playback

When you have frequent problems playing back RTMP streaming videos or audios via AWS CloudFront (stuttering or stalling), you can use a simple trick to boost the performance by adding a cache header to the HTTP headers of your media in the S3 bucket. It is possible to add or change the HTTP headers of … Read more

Shared hosting, dedicated server, virtual private server, cloud hosting, where do you fit in?

Updated: 08 August 2020. Since my long experience with various hosting providers (since 1997), I thought it would be useful to share my knowledge related to setting up a video or audio portal. This article is also useful to compare various options for regular websites. There are 5 main methods to host your website: Dedicated … Read more

Update on WordPress vs Joomla

Just a short notice that we revised our article on WordPress vs Joomla – Review (revised) Since this article got a lot of attention and things have moved on over the years, we revised it to reflect the current stable versions for WordPress 3.6 and Joomla 2.5. In some areas, both CMS have come closer together … Read more

Protected download links on WordPress, who needs it?

If you want to offer videos or audios for download, or actually any file type on your WordPress site, but you do not want the links to be leeched on other sites, you might be interested in this free WordPress plugin; S3Media LinkSafe Lite 1.0. It creates expiring links to files on your S3 bucket … Read more

Amazon Elastic Transcoder review

Elastic Transcoder is an online service of AWS Amazon. It converts videos online and you can chose from a range of presets to determine the format of the output. It is possible to set several formats in one go and have them transcoded/converted in the background. You can also create new presets based on existing … Read more

How to create captions/subtitles for video and audio in WebVTT, SRT, DFXP format

Updated: 15 March 2019. This tutorial shows how easy it is to create captions/subtitles files in WebVTT, SRT and DFXP format for subtitling in videos and audios. Depending on the media player you use, you can even provide subtitles in different languages for the same media. Subtitle files are basically text files you can write … Read more

Should I upgrade to JW Player Pro 6 or Premium?

Update 24 September 2014: A question that pops up regularly these days is: “Should I upgrade to JW Player 6?” This depends on which features of JW Player you are using currently. JW Player 6 has a new set of advanced features which are surely worthwhile to investigate, but keep in mind there are quite … Read more

Embedding an audio with poster image, watermark and subtitles, using JW Player 5.10

Embedded audios in a website generally display a simple control bar with navigation buttons to play, pause, rewind and so on. While this is great for audio libraries, it can be so much more. In this tutorial, I’ll show you step by step how to add a poster image, a watermark and subtitles, using JW … Read more

How to embed a video from Vimeo in WordPress without iFrame

As explained in the older article, Vimeo.com has 3 standard ways to display videos directly on your website or blog. In this article, I explain how to use the standard method, embedding to place videos in WordPress. Since WordPress does not accept the iFrame method, we need to use the old embedding method. Vimeo makes … Read more

Australia gets its own S3 Edge server

Finally, after a lot of nagging by various interested parties(me included), Australia gets its own Edge server on S3 Amazon, namely in Sydney. This will have quite some impact on delivery of streaming video and audio in the Land Down Under, because they have serious problems playing HD video. An edge server is especially useful … Read more

How to skip to a chapter in a video with JW Player?

A chapter is a place in the timeline of a streaming video. It can be anywhere in the video and there is no need to define chapters upfront. With JW Player 5.10, you can add chapter links to any part of a video or audio. This is very useful in lengthy videos/audios which cover several … Read more

Big improvements on S3Media Stream for Joomla!

S3Media Stream is a powerful tool to publish private streaming video and audio with S3 CloudFront on Joomla sites. We are happy to announce big improvements on this extension. So far, it worked with a module to display the rich media. Like its WordPress version, it also has protected download links for all sorts of … Read more

How to setup a Billing Alert for AWS Amazon/CloudFront

Billing Alert from S3 Amazon is a fantastic new feature. It gives you the opportunity to be warned by email when your bill reaches an amount you determine upfront. This will help you greatly to control your spending on AWS, since you can take immediate action when necessary. Sometimes, your audios or videos score a hit … Read more

Embedding a Playlist for Streaming Video – using JW Player

Embedding a video/audio playlist is not difficult at all, it only requires your full attention. In this tutorial (part 2), I’ll show you how to embed a dynamic playlist. A dynamic playlists differs with a regular playlist in a sense that you do not need to create a separate xml file. For this tutorial, you … Read more

How far are we with HTML5? A report by JW PLayer

Updated 4 November 2016: HTML5 for Video progresses all the time. Not as quick as we hope for since audio is often left out of the equation, but there is progress nevertheless. JW Player has brought out a report on the current state of HTML5, and the interesting thing is that the report will be upgraded every time … Read more

GreenGeeks shared hosting review

Normally, I do not like to write reviews about hosting providers but I make an exception this time. GreenGeeks.com has its marbles together in terms of performance and like DreamHost, it does its bit to reduce carbon emissions, which I think is important. When asked about their 300% Wind-powered claim, support told me this:

S3 Amazon public content in danger of being hacked

All S3 Amazon account holders should be aware that there are hacker scripts around that scan for public content in S3 buckets. Amazon has warned all account holders if they have public buckets. Reading public content is quite easy since public files are readable to everyone. But what does that actually imply and what can … Read more

NaturalReader: voice-over software that does the talking for you

Updated 12 July 2022. You don’t like your own voice on recordings, yet you cannot afford or have no time to hire a professional voice-over? Here is wonderful software that almost gets it right: NaturalReader. This software turns text into speech with voices that are way more sophisticated then any speech software of your Operating … Read more

How to Embed Streaming Video & Audio with HTML5 Fallback – using JW Player 5.6

Revised on June 2015 – JW Player 5.6 (up to version 5.10) is a Flash video/audio player created with Adobe Flex which has the capability to switch to HTML5 fallback mode if a non Flash browser is encountered. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to install JW Player and how to embed video … Read more

Bill on JW Player 7 vs JW Player 6I thought you made reference somewhere to a video player that you coded that could the need for a pl
MKDan on What is an expiring link and how to use itAnother easy way to create expiry links is by using the temporary expiring link generator like - Exp
Phil on How to embed a video from Vimeo in WordPress without iFrameCrazy, but 9 years on I'm still able to use this tutorial, thanks for sharing!
Logical Softtech on Using royalty free stock video and audioAs website designer and app developer Its very useful for me .
Hanna on How to embed a HTML5 video on your siteThis is very interested article!
Sara on Subtitles on Facebook don’t show in my videoDid work perfectly on the phone, but captions still don't show up on computer!
Alex on How to create captions/subtitles for video and audio in WebVTT, SRT, DFXP formatHello to all Any way to convert .srt to .dfxp fpr amazon
Patricia Buffham on JW Player: who is behind it? Who is Jeroen Wijering?Thank you for the courage to post this - we agree!