One frequent query by people who are new to publishing audio or video is, “What’s a good Flash player to put on my website?” Adobe’s Flash is a universally recognized standard for embedding media within web pages so the question makes a lot of sense.

Direct media links to mp3 or Quicktime files for example make sense for downloading but yield mixed results when trying to play them directly in the browser. The results depend on the browser type, browser version and software installed on the user’s computer. Meanwhile Flash is supported by something like 98% of all web users.

If you’re hosting your media on a site like Flickr or YouTube then you probably won’t need your own player. But those intrepid souls who host their own media or just want to have more control over the experience will want to know about their options to put a Flash player on their blog or website.

JW FLV Media Player

The JW FLV Media Player has become the gold standard for white label media player. JW FLV supports mp3 audio and flv video files. It also will load media stored in RSS feeds which means it can work well for audio podcasters. Setup and usage is very simple with the online Setup Wizard.

JW FLV Player with Audio Playlist

JW Image Rotator

The JW Image Rotator is available from the same developer as the FLV Media Player. This tool allows you to embed image slideshows on your website. The player includes support for dynamic transitions between images and supports RSS feeds that include images. The RSS support allows you to load photos from your Flickr account or any other service that provides you an RSS feed for your images. As an added bonus you can utilize the same setup wizard as the FLV Media Player to configure the display.

JW Image Rotator with Transition

Flow Player

The Flow Player is an open source media player that supports flv video, mp3 audio and jpg or png images. The Flow Player can be configured to work with media playlists and can also be skinned to include a watermark.

Flow Player with Watermark

EasyListener by Yahoo

The EasyListener from Yahoo supports audio files only. This player is very easy to setup with the provided online embed code creator. The EasyListener crawls a webpage for MP3 links and loads them into the player. You can also activate this player by pointing it directly to an RSS feed that includes audio enclosures for podcasting. This player suppors display of your RSS Feed image as well as several different colors and form factors.

EasyListener with Configuration

Making A Choice 

I’m sure there are more choices out there. Please feel free to recommend what you’re using in the comments of this post. My best advice about deciding on which player to use is to experiment with different players in a test environment to see which player comes closest to meeting your needs.