For weeks now we’ve been working at full capacity to bring you the latest version of 5min’s Smart Player – the third major release of our flagship distributable player – now sleeker, noticeably lighter, faster and above all – more customizable than ever before, making it the ideal white-label player solution for your site.

During this time and since the release of the player’s previous version, we’ve been making every effort to listen to you, our Content Partners, Distribution Partners and the 5min community itself in order to bring you the best possible player to suit your needs across every online outlet – the result is a new and improved Smart Player, armed with new customization, content delivery and monetization options for an enhanced viewing experience alongside more control over the player’s overall look and functionality.

The same all-in-one player, now with more customization options than ever before, to ensure seamless integration on your site, on your blog or any of your web pages. With such a smart, simple way to add 5min’s quality how-to video content to your site, you can now define your player, tweak and skin it, and create a custom-made video section for your site or blog – all in minutes and with a lightweight snipper of code. One of our goals was and remains to make relevant distribution of quality how-to’s a cinch – whether via the embeddable default Smart Player, through our VideoSeed product range, or our dynamic video widgets Now, with a new player in tow, we’ve also made it easier for you – publishers, bloggers, site owners and content creators – to gain maximum control over the latest Smart Player and make it totally your own.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be rolling out with the new player across our Partner websites, so keep your eyes open and let us know what you think of the changes we’ve made.

So, what’s new? Below are some of the highlights of the new 5min Smart Player:

More Display Options to Choose From:
The latest version of 5min’s flagship player is now more customizable than ever before, allowing full customization on a per-publisher level — you get total control over the display of your player, from color scheme to branding to sizing, so that you can create a player which suits your website’s needs to a tee. Publishers can also choose which Related Videos are featured within the player and how.

Lighter, Faster Player Behavior:
Now more than 3 times faster in behavior and response, 5min’s latest Smart Player is built with ActionScript 3, designed for high-level functionality and lighter, faster performance — with an initial weight of under 100K, the Smart Player has never been so impressively lightweight and sleek. 5min’s new Smart Player is event-driven, providing a higher performance rate and fine-tuned capabilities alongside a wider variety of customization options, skins, and display preferences. From shorter to loading times to record-time response, the Smart Player has never been faster to use.

Different Ratio Options:
Designed for ideal viewing in either 4:3 or 16:9 format — choose your ratio display settings according to your needs.

Better Branding & Personalization:
More possibilities than ever for content creators and publishers – now you can add a watermark logo to accompany your content in the video area itself, benefit from better branding and even opt for a permanent branded banner addition to appear right below the player.

Streamlined Ad Unit Placement:
The new Smart Player is available for use in all sizes provided via 5min’s VideoSeed range, and supplies an optimal placement of 300 x 250 ad units on your site.

Smart Ad Management:
The new Smart Player incorporates a 3rd party integrated platform for management of video ad inventory — all ads can be easily and accurately managed through this new component, providing up-to-date in-house reporting for your content and monetization of such. All player options may display all ad types and are compatible with a companion banner, for a maximum number of ad views.

Distribution Made Simple:
With the latest Smart Player, it is now more simple than ever to share videos – one click within the video player to embed, send to a friend or share through any one of social networks and web services supported.

In addition to the new and improved Smart Player, you’ll probably notice some exciting changes on our watchpage:

- We’ve made the move to a 16:9/widescreen display as default.
- Easier, more intuitive navigation — now you can easily browse your favorite categories directly from the new watchpage.
- Discovery, made simple – now more than ever it’s simple to find more of the great content you’re after, with the new watchpage tabs.

Stay tuned for the many more great and exciting changes we plan on unveiling in the coming months – we’d love to hear your comments!

The new and improved Smart Player offers you a complete video learning experience – for the first time, video, text, images and more join forces to provide you with a comprehensive one-stop shop for instructional content. Needless to say, we are beyond excited to let you all check it out and play around with all of the amazing features the new Smart Player brings to the table.

Now you can go beyond video, and enrich your how-to videos with Add-Ons - text guides and photos meant to enhance the video learning experience. This is an ideal place to incorporate recipes, tabs, lyrics, sketches and diagrams – almost anything you can think of that may help your viewers benefit to the max from your videos.

You can also create Scenes, or storyboards, to accompany your video and provide your audience with a detailed step-by-step visual process to follow.

Looking for the ideal place to plug your blog or website? Place it as a link in any of your videos, and help your viewers find you – that’s what the Links feature is for.

The best part about the new Smart Player is that all of its innovative features are available to you in the traditional watchpage display as well as in full-screen mode, and better yet, even when embedded – meaning you can take this entire neat package with you and use it on your blog or website.

In addition, you control your video viewing experience: click on the Zoom icon in order to zoom in or out of a specific area of the video you’re viewing, advance frame by frame, or opt for slow-motion play and set your own pace.

By clicking on the Related tab, you can easily access more great videos suited to your taste…The possibilities are endless. What are you waiting for? Go Smart!

Check it out here:

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new Smart Player! Meanwhile, you are invited to play around, explore, and discover all the awesome things that await you at 5min. Can’t wait to upload a video of your own? Simply check out our easy, breezy Smart Upload .

On a personal sidenote, this has been one of the most fun projects I have had the privilege of working on – and no reward comes close to seeing it all go live, of course. Just imagine how great it’s been to finally be able to dream beyond video and add a personal Smart touch to it all. In fact, why not try it out for yourselves?

Cheers,

Ealeal & the 5min Team