Smart Youtube is a WordPress Video plugin that allows you to easily insert videos/playlists into your post, comments and in your RSS feed. The plugin is designed to be small and fast and not use any external resources.
Smart Youtube is one of the most popular WordPress plugins, with more than 1,000,000 downloads.
From version 4.0 Smart Youtube changed the name to Smart Youtube PRO and now also supports playback of Youtube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Liveleak and Facebook high quality videos, works on iPhone&iPad, produces xHTML valid code (unlike YouTube embed code), allows you to view videos in fullscreen, has robust widget support and much more.
The videos will be embedded in your RSS feed as well, and if this is not support by the reader you can choose to have video link and/or video preview screenshot displayed instead.
Main Features
- Easily embeds YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Liveleak and Facebook videos (normal/HD mode)
- Works on iPhone, iPad and iPod
- Embed YouTube playlist (normal/HD)
- Supports latest high quality video protocols (360p and HD quality 720p)
- Allows full YouTube customization (colors, border, size, full screen...)
- Supports video deep linking (starting at desired point with &start=time parameter)
- Supports migrated blogs from WordPress.com
- Supports migration from other Youtube plugins such as wp-youtube
- Extract video thumbnails in your archive/category posts
- Provides a sidebar widget for videos as well
- Produces xHTML valid code
- Very fast and light, no extra scripts needed
Example
You can discuss all plugin related issues in the wordpress plugin forums.
Screenshot
Download
Installation & Usage
- Upload the whole plugin folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder.
- Go to the Plugins page and activate the plugin.
- Use the Options page to change RSS feed options
- When you want to display Youtube video in your post, paste the video link with httpv:// (notice the 'v')
Example: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00000000
0000000 part is your video REF#
The video will be automatically embedded to your post in the proper way.
If you want to post a high/HD (DVD quality, 720p) quality video you would use httpvh:// ('vh' for video high resolution)
To embed a playlist use extension 'vp' (eg. httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=528026B4F7B34094)
To use video deep linking just add &start=time parameter at the end of url. For example httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWfksMD4PAg&start=30 will start the video 30 seconds in.
Additionally, you can set how do you want the video to be displayed in your RSS feed. Smart Youtube can show the preview image of the video (automatically grabbed from Youtube), the link to the video, or both. I recommend enabling only the preview image.
Vimeo
httpv://vimeo.com/27287078
Metacafe
httpvh://vww.metacafe.com/watch/7815470/harry_potter_and_the_deathly_hallows_dvd_interview/
Liveleak
httpv://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cad_1322822486
Changelog
= 4.0 =
* Major release
* Added support for Vimeo, Metacafe, Liveleak and Facebook videos
* Now parses http:// and httpv:// videos jsut the same
* Option to autoplay only the first video on the page
* Exctract Video thumbnails
* Show video is Colorbox
* New much better, sidebar Widget support
= 3.9.1 =
Support for WiziApp.
= 3.8 =
* Support for new IFRAME embed code
* Support for HD playlists (httpvhp)
* Support for new play formats (1280x745 & 960x745)
v3.5
- Changes to Iphone video embed
Extra
- Visit my other interesting WordPress Plugins.
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991 Comments
Great addition to my sites, thanks a for this great tool!
Dear Vladimir,
First of all thanks a lot for that really helpful plugin.
I appreciate the possibility in the settings to enable XHTML validation. Unfortunately there is now automatically the meta tag property og:image that is not XHTML valide and there seems to be no option to deactivate this.
Please implement this option in a future version or remove this not valide meta tag.
Best regards
Dieter
Yes, have to agree with Dieter here in requesting a means to turn off adding "og:image" to the meta information in the header as it can conflict with other plugins being set multiple times.
A minor issue I have just noticed if you are not aware, if you enable it to parse http:// to httpv:// it will also do this for any tag that is linking to a youtube video, causing the rest of the code to appear in the post while embedding the link.
Noticed that the YouTube videos are not playing in the iPad. How do we get support for this?
Hi, I have a problem with Smart Youtube Pro 4.1.4 in my WordPress website, I don't know if is a bug or a compatibility problem with my theme, anyway I've solved it and I would like to inform/share:
The problem was the Youtube link was getting not only the thumbnail, but all the text until the end of my post (I mean, any text after the youtube image was transformed in link). I've found this line in the smart-youtube/smartyoutube.php, If Im not wrong it was at the line 1052:
and I've added a simple after the img tag, so the result is:
That's all. If it's really a plugin bug, of course it would be nice to be solved in the next release.
Thanks, very useful plugin.
Mark.
Hey, what the hell is going on since the pro version?
All my links are messed up! We're talking about over 4000 posts with youtube links in it!
All my links are embedds now and if i turn it of in the admin-panel, none of the embedded videos work.
The plugin is only looking for if the links are actual hyperlinks. The "v" is totally ignored.
Why?
Why would you do that?
I also just found a thread or wordpress.org about that which seems to be unresolved:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-smart-youtube-pro-smart-youtube-pro-pro-version-messed-up-old-posts?replies=13
Can you add a Caption and Description to the Template options (like {video} can you add {caption})
Or can you suggest a way to add a shortcode to my functions.php to support this (a short code that will be processed correctly by the plugin?
Thanks
Could you add support for a shortcode in the "standard" format of:
[youtube='video-id-goes-here']
??????
This would be a nice feature to include, if you come from another plugin and decides to use smart-youtube-pro here!! (especially if you come from a wordpress.com hosted blog to a selfhosted blog!)
If you want to control how your YouTube videos appear, check out my post on the WordPress forum here:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/smar ... st-2725854
Most of that deals with using the Smart YouTube PRO plug-in.
If you don't use that plug-in, scroll to the bottom of the post for information on embedding the player with iFrames.
Maybe this info is included somewhere with the plug-in, but I couldn't find it.
Hope this helps you...
Is it possible to provide a custom name and description for this video to display in the gallery.
I like the fact that you do not need additioal scripts to make this stuff work.
Hi,
I can't get the video to be placed as featured video, i mean instead of an image that you press on to go to the post I want prople to be able to watch the movie direktly from the front page... is that possible with this plug-in?
Just noticed a major problem. I set up Jetpack and allow e-mail subscriptions. If an e-mail is sent to a subscriber with a post, it shows the httpv:// link which obviously doesn't work. Any workarounds?
How do I centre align the video? Can I wrap text around the video? Can I have two videos, or a video and a picture, side by side?
Thanks!
I have images on a blog post and a youtube video on the same post. now i use your wordpress plugin. the problem is, the images and the youtube video using smart youtube is just the same!!dang it. how stupid really. is there a way for you to differentiate images from videos! why not put a play button in the center of the video:?or better yet, why not just make it last it was before where we can choose if we want just the thumbnails or the video like in youtube like your example above without clicking on the thumbnail before it shows the damn videos!!
Can you add support for http://YouTu.be/ video links?
Cheers!
I am using Version 4.1.4 and the vimeo code doesn't seem to work as I just tried to embed a vimeo video using httpv:// Are you aware of this?
do you support videos from Yahoo? I can't seem to get it to work
thanks,
I try to get this to work. Followed instructions, no success. Deactivated all plugins, except this one, and still it did not work. I have one video working, but it is not using this plugin.
The URL is only text.
Could it be the theme, I use woothemes and shaan theme, but both make no difference.
Could it be something is broke, I use WordPress 3.3.1 DE language
Thank you for very good tip, I need it.
Thanks for your support on this post
There seems to be a conflict with Wp-touch and this plugin. I noticed someone posted on this site's support forum of having the same problem. I cannot get videos to play on iphone or android. It just shows a messed up version of the playbar.
Hi, Thanks, in fact i was looking for one for you tube. I checked the comments and reviews I thnks it wold work with Genesis.
Thank you for such a nice tip.
Great plugin. Can you add support for vevo.com embeds?