Open Video Player > FAQ

Q: What is OpenVideoPlayer.com?

Openvideoplayer.com is a community site intended to facilitate the development and sharing of open standards and best practices for video player applications that support a wide range of advertising technologies. This site is serving as a resource for the industry, encouraging the use of standards and best practices and offering open source library.

Q: What is the site intending to do for the industry?

The online advertising space is at a crossroads and facing a number of technological barriers to success. Years ago, at the inception of the online banner advertising wave, no industry standards existed and buyers weren’t able to easily buy across multiple sites. As a result the rapid growth of the industry was hindered.

We're seeing the same thing happening today with online video advertising. Companies can't aggregate video content easily and can't share revenue because of technological barriers. Many struggle to quickly distribute content because of their reliance on manual processes related to content preparation (trans-coding and metadata creation), content ingestion, approval (editorial), policy, and publishing. Adding distribution partners further complicates the process.

To solve the problem years ago around banner ads, Macromedia, Inc., (now Adobe) the IAB, and key advertising serving companies helped the industry standardize on a single way to build Flash ad banners so that they could be tracked across different sites. They simply encouraged the best practice of inserting a dynamic ‘ClickTag’ into a Flash banner that the ad server could populate with the correct URL when the ad was delivered. This provided ad agencies with a standard way to build ads that could be leveraged across multiple Web sites, and enabled publishers to accurately track metrics for their online media campaigns. This and other industry standardization efforts such as the IAB’s ‘universal ad package’, while seemingly simple measures, were key drivers for the proliferation of advertising online.

The intent of this community site is to encourage the same development and usage of standards that helped online advertising succeed in the past, in order to continue to advance the quality and effectiveness of online advertising.

The goals of this site are as follows:

  • Facilitate the development and sharing of best practices for video player development through community interaction
  • Provide reference implementations and code to speed development and reduce the total cost of ownership
  • Encourage adoption of open standards to help facilitate the aggregation of video audiences and streamline the media buying process for rich media and in-stream advertising
  • Support the Internet advertising ecosystem, including agencies, interactive developers and advertising technologies for a comprehensive publishing solution

Q: Who is involved?

Leading advertising technology companies, ad servers, video solution providers and platform companies have joined to provide industry best practices for online video player development. Companies involved to date include: Akamai, Adobe, Microsoft, Black Arrow, 24/7 Real Media, Eyewonder, KickApps, Clickability, Panache, SmartClip and Scan Scout. These companies in the online video ecosystem have created a resource to help media content owners and publishers address the new requirements around publishing workflows and video player applications. Without standards, video advertising won't succeed.

Q: What is Akamai's role in Open Video Player Initiative?

Akamai is spearheading the initiative and we've donated our player code base - the media framework - to encourage best practices around player development.

Q: Why should I get involved?

As online video syndication and distribution matures, there are a few fundamental technology barriers to growth. One of the most important development considerations is the video player application, an increasingly strategic element as it impacts the way consumers experience video content and the media brand, and enables a business model for the video content by controlling how and when ads are delivered. Specifically, the lack of a standards-based approach to the video player application slows time to market and increases complexities around content syndication and revenue sharing between sites.

Q: What are the benefits?

  • By utilizing an open source licensing model based on the industry standard video formats, branded players can be more easily incorporate into commercial applications
  • With this approach, content owners are not locked into propriety players or result in complex licensing requirements.

Q: How do I get my product included in the Media Framework?

In order to continually incorporate technology improvements and feedback from the community, the Open Video Player development team follows the ‘Agile’ development methodology. The goal of this methodology is to deliver a new beta release candidate every 9-12 weeks. Third party contributions are evaluated and can be added in two ways: as core enhancements to the player framework base code or as plug-ins that can be optionally compiled. Send us an email if you are interested in being part of the Media Framework. Lastly, several software as a service companies providing professional services based on Open Video Player libraries are featured on the site. These companies are ideal for people wanting turnkey services that require no development.

Q: Are there restrictions around the use of the source code?

The Media Framework for Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight was developed by Akamai and is available under an open source license with optional contribution parameters - meaning you are not required to contribute your enhancements. View the License Agreement. Some third party contributors may choose to provide integration code for items like web services that are not open source. These utilities are not included in base code and will be referenced as third party plug-ins with additional licensing requirements.

Q: How does the Akamai Media Framework fit into the Open Player initiative? If it's really open, then why does Akamai own this framework?

The media framework evolved out of a strong need from Akamai's customer base. We heard consistent feedback regarding the complexities around video player development from our publisher customers and the industry overall so about a year ago, we started offering up some of the best practices we had gleaned in the form of developer tools. At this point -

  • The Media Framework is Akamai’s contribution to the OVP initiative
  • It has evolved from consistent feedback from Akamai customers around the complexities in video player development
  • Today, Akamai maintains the Media Framework code base and offers support to our customers
  • But we are providing this code base under an open source license that allows for reuse, extension and improvement by the community (these improvements are not supported by Akamai but the community at large)
  • Our goal is to launch this initiative and encourage the adoption of these best practices and standards. We will continue to maintain the Media Framework code base to support our customers, but are excited to offer it to the community for extension, innovation and improvement.

Q: Who do I go to with questions?

http://www.openvideoplayer.com/Community.aspx

Q: I’m having trouble downloading the code. Where do I go for help?

http://www.openvideoplayer.com/OpenTicket.aspx