Brightcove Player Sample: Display Random Bumpers

In this topic, you will learn how to use a Brightcove Player that displays randomly selected bumpers before each video in a playlist.

Player example

In this sample, randomly selected bumpers are played before each video from a playlist. In this case the bumpers are ads, but not drawn from an ad server, instead they are videos defined in the Video Cloud library. To see the random bumpers, click the Rerun button in the bottom-right of the CodePen.

See the Pen Display Random Bumpers by Brightcove Learning Services (@rcrooks1969) on CodePen.

Source code

View the complete solution on GitHub.

Using the CodePen

Here are some tips to effectively use the above CodePen:

  • Toggle the actual display of the player by clicking the Result button.
  • Click the HTML/CSS/JS buttons to display ONE of the code types.
  • Later in this document the logic, flow and styling used in the application will be discussed in the Player/HTML configuration, Application flow and Application styling sections. The best way to follow along with the information in those sections is to:
    1. Click the EDIT ON CODEPEN button in the CodePen and have the code available in one browser/browser tab.
    2. In CodePen, adjust what code you want displayed. You can change the width of different code sections within CodePen.
    3. View the Player/HTML configuration, Application flow and/or Application styling sections in another browser/browser tab. You will now be able to follow the code explanations and at the same time view the code.

Development sequence

Here is the recommended development sequence:

  1. Use the In-Page embed player implementation to test the functionality of your player, plugin and CSS (if CSS is needed)
  2. Put the plugin's JavaScript and CSS into separate files for local testing
  3. Deploy the plugin code and CSS to your server once you have worked out any errors
  4. Use Studio to add the plugin and CSS to your player
  5. Replace the In-Page embed player implementation if you determine that the iframe implementation is a better fit (detailed in next section)

For details about these steps, review the Step-by-Step: Plugin Development guide.

iframe or In-Page embed

When developing enhancements for the Brightcove Player you will need to decide if the code is a best fit for the iframe or In-Page embed implementation. The best practice recommendation is to build a plugin for use with an iframe implementation. The advantages of using the iframe player are:

  • No collisions with existing JavaScript and/or CSS
  • Automatically responsive
  • The iframe eases use in social media apps (or whenever the video will need to "travel" into other apps)

Although integrating the In-Page embed player can be more complex, there are times when you will plan your code around that implementation. To generalize, this approach is best when the containing page needs to communicate to the player. Specifically, here are some examples:

  • Code in the containing page needs to listen for and act on player events
  • The player uses styles from the containing page
  • The iframe will cause app logic to fail, like a redirect from the containing page

Even if your final implementation does not use the iframe code, you can still use the In-Page embed code with a plugin for your JavaScript and a separate file for your CSS. This encapsulates your logic so that you can easily use it in multiple players.

API/Plugin resources used

API Methods

API Events
play() ended
on()  
myPlayer.catalog.getVideo()  
myPlayer.catalog.load()  
myPlayer.playlist.currentItem()  
myPlayer.catalog.getPlaylist()  
myPlayer.playlist.playlist()  

Player/HTML configuration

This section details any special configuration needed during player creation. In addition, other HTML elements that must be added to the page, beyond the in-page embed player implementation code, are described.

Player configuration

No special configuration is required for the Brightcove Player you create for this sample.

Other HTML

No other HTML elements are added to the page.

Application flow

The basic logic behind this application is:

  • A number of Video Cloud videos is set up as bumpers by defining them in an array. In this sample, the bumpers are ads.
  • A bumper is randomly played, followed by a video from a playlist. The playlist UI is NOT displayed. Since the bumpers are used randomly, it is possible one bumper could be used multiple times.
  • This process then alternates between bumpers selected randomly from the array and the next video from the playlist.

Listen for ended events for both bumpers and videos

Find the code which is labeled:

// ### Listen for the ended event and play the next video or bumper ###

This event handler tracks what video just finished playing, either a bumper or video from the playlist, then calls the appropriate function to start another bumper/video.

Play random bumper video

Find the code which is labeled:

// ### Play random bumper video ###

This function generates a random number in the range of available bumpers, gets that video, loads it in the player and plays it. This function is called on player ready.

Play next video from playlist after a bumper has finished

Find the code which is labeled:

// ### Play next video from playlist ###

This function tracks the videos in the playlist, and plays the next video in the playlist.

Get playlist on initial player load

Find the code which is labeled:

// ### Get playlist ###

This function uses the Video Cloud catalog to retrieve a playlist. It is only called once.

Application styling

No CSS is needed for this sample.

Plugin code

Normally when converting the JavaScript into a Brightcove Player plugin nominal changes are needed. One required change is to replace the standard use of the ready() method with the code that defines a plugin.

Here is the very commonly used start to JavaScript code that will work with the player:

videojs.getPlayer('myPlayerID').ready(function() {
  var myPlayer = this;
  ...
});

You will change the first line to use the standard syntax to start a Brightcove Player plugin:

videojs.registerPlugin('pluginName', function(options) {
  var myPlayer = this;
  ...
});

As mentioned earlier, you can see the plugin's JavaScript code in this document's corresponding GitHub repo: display-bumpers.js.

Using the plugin with a player

Once you have the plugin's CSS and JavaScript files stored in an Internet accessible location, you can use the plugin with a player. In Studio's PLAYERS module you can choose a player, then in the PLUGINS section add the URLs to the CSS and JavaScript files, and also add the Name and Options, if options are needed.