What a great start to 2012! The Brightcove Community Team is really excited about the momentum and activity we saw in January! Here's a snapshot!

WHAT'S NEW?!

The new Smart Player API allows you to listen for (or even set) cue points in your video, so that you can respond with mid-stream behaviors. In this example, I will show you how to display overlay images at cue points.

HTML5 players do not support multiple playlists, but you can overcome that using the Media AP

The new Smart Player API that works for both HTML5 and Flash players brings many benefits, including the ability to display captions or subtitles for you videos.

The Brightcove Community & Knowledge Team has partnered with the great folks at Smarterer.com to launch online skill tests for Brightcove Video Cloud users!  Initially, we have launched two tests: a test for the Media Module and another for the Publishing Module.  But expect to see tests for the Advertising Module, Analytics Module, BEML, and our API sets launching in the future!

So what is Smarterer?

I've been asked many times if it is possible to make a bumper play in the middle or at the end of the main video, instead of the beginning. The short answer is "no" ... but using the Player API, you can produce a convincing imitation.

You know that your videos can be shared via email or Twitter using the distribution tools that are built into Brightcove players. Here I'll show you how to modify the link to the video so that it always points back to the page that the video was shared from.

Logo overlays can be added to individual videos, or you can add one for all your videos in your account settings, and then override the default one for individual videos. You can also create your own in BEML or using the Player API, however. The advantage of this is that you can then get programmatic control of the logo.

Want to make a video loop indefinitely?

Even if you don't include ads with your videos, you may wish to run promotions or feature sponsor messaging. There are variety of ways to do this using Brightcove Video Cloud. The techniques described here can be implemented with any type of account, from Express to Enterprise.

We've updated our Product Updates page. That's the page where you can see all the latest new and enhanced features in Brightcove Video Cloud, as well as an historical list of all our features, with links to help topics that explain how to use them. With the new improved Product Updates page, you can subscribe to an RSS feed, so you can learn right away about new features.

Did you know that if you forget your password to your Video Cloud Studio account, you can request that the password be automatically reset by clicking "Forgot Password?" on the login screen of the Studio.

Simply enter your registered email address, enter the CAPTCHA text and hit submit.

The community and knowledge team has scoured through search trends on our support site, numerous inquiries to our customer support team, and the forums to find out what kind of topics you are searching for and asking about. One of the trends we found, which I am going to write about today, is questions about encoding best practices and tips for high quality video playback. Encoding is a very broad topic, but I have put together a list of the top 10 things to keep in mind when encoding your videos for upload into Brightcove Video Cloud.

We held our User Group meeting just outside Chicago this past Tuesday evening in Oakbrook Terrace at Redbox's Headquarters. We had a great turn out despite the distance from the city and a great evening of learning, sharing and networking.

Here's another use case for resizing a player: you want as large a screen as possible for the video while it's playing, but you don't want to give up all that real estate on the page when a video isn't playing.

In this example, I'm trying to solve two problems at once:

• when viewers start a video, you want them to watch it, without being distracted by the other items in a playlist or the surrounding decor
• you want to take advantage of all the real estate you have to show the video in as large a size as possible

The solution below is pure BEML, no programming required. Click play or select a video from the playlist to see how it works -- and pause the video to see the full dynamics.

Generating an Instant "Playlist" from Related Videos Using BEML

If you use BEML, you know that you typically give your List or TileList components the id "videoList". This id is used by Brightcove Studio and by the BEML processor built into players to allow you to assign playlists to the player. But you're not limited to using the list components in this way. Here I'm going to show you how to include a list in single-video player that will automatically pickup and display the related videos for the current video through the magic of BEML data binding.

Congratulations to our first ever Brightcove Community Award Recipients, David Czarnecki (Top Online Community Contributor) & Jesse Buckley (Top Community Event Contributor)!

If you weren’t able to join us at Brightcove PLAY this year, and ask a question in-person to the Customer Support and Community teams at the brightIDEAS booth, there are still many other ways for you to find the answers you are looking for and get the help you need! 

We know that you are soaking up a ton of information at the Brightcove PLAY! While you may write down some questions to follow-up on after each presentation in your notebook, we thought that having a place for you to post your questions as soon as you think of them would be the easiest and most efficient way to get the answers you are looking for!

Would you like to provide custom error messages?

Sometimes errors happen: someone accidentally deletes or deactivates the wrong video, or someone tries to watch a video that is domain- or geo-restricted, and can't be watched from the viewer's location. In these cases, Brightcove players will display standard error messages (the player in this page is domain-restricted so that it will not work here):

We are so excited for Brightcove PLAY next week, and we can’t wait to see and speak with all of our customers and partners at the conference! 

Not only is joining the Brightcove forums incredibly easy, but it is also one of the best decisions you can make as a Brightcove user! As a registered forums user, you will be able to participate in and start conversations on the forums, engage with other Brightcove users, developers, and partners, as well as actual Brightcove engineers, support specialists, product managers, account managers, and many more! 

Here's a tip for using the Player API to get information about the current video.

Easy MRSS Feeds

Most Recent Videos [Link href: http://link.brightcove.com/services/mrss/player835199013001/835233035001/new]

Thank you very much to all of our Toronto users and partners who were able to attend the user group last week! We had a great time and enjoyed being able to talk to you all about some great Brightcove features and enhancements including YouTube sync, Live with DVR, and HTML5. There was a lot of great knowledge sharing going on and we hope to continue that at future events in the Toronto area!

Want to allow your viewers to download a copy of the current video?

Here are two trancoding tricks.

First, while the G2M3 codec is not a supported codec for uploading into Brightcove accounts, we understand that customers would still like to be able to upload these videos for playback through Brightcove players.

We had another great user group last Thursday evening in NYC! Thank you to all of the NY users, developers and partners who could attend. There was a lot of great discussion around the YouTube sync feature and HTML5 enhancements that we presented on during the event.