A WordPress plugin that adds some functionality to improve Vimeo embeds.
Most importantly, it uses the Vimeo oEmbed API to load information about the video.
Based on that, we can build a preview that is just an image, rather than an iframe. When the user clicks on it, we create the iframe and play the video.
When used on pages that load a large amount of videos, that makes a big difference in terms of performance / speed!
Based on previous work on websites including Kunstraum Kreuzlingen, Information-Fiction. It is in use on kunstraum-kreuzlingen.ch, eracom.ch and kinogeneva.ch.
Currently, there are two helper functions. Both take as input the $url of a Vimeo movie.
vimeovortex($url)= will produce a player.vimeovortex_array($url)= will return the vimeo object as array.
With the second function, if you want to display the video thumbnail, you can do the following:
if ( !empty( $video_url ) ) {
if (function_exists('vimeovortex')) {
$video = vimeovortex_array($video_url);
$video_img = $video["video"]["thumbnail_url"];
echo '<img src="'. $video_img .'" alt="" width="'. $video["video"]["width"] .'" height="'. $video["video"]["height"] .'" />';
}
}This plugin uses some code examples kindly provided by the web:
- Curl function courtesy Vimeo oEmbed API Examples.
- Vimeo testing function courtesy Alix Axel, on Stack Overflow.
See also: