YouTube, Vimeo and Media Library videos

The Pellio Video block plays YouTube and Vimeo links and Media Library files in the Pellio player. You don’t need a Pellio account for this. In the block’s sidebar, the Video panel sets the source and title, with Choose thumbnail, Replace thumbnail and Reset; the Playback and Branding panels set how it plays and looks.

Privacy until play

When you add a YouTube or Vimeo link, your site fetches its title and thumbnail once and stores the thumbnail in your uploads. Visitors’ browsers contact YouTube or Vimeo only when they press play (YouTube loads from youtube-nocookie.com). With a cookie consent plugin, the player asks for consent first.

Existing embeds

In Pellio → Settings → Player → Embeds:

• Use the Pellio player for YouTube and Vimeo embeds: existing YouTube and Vimeo embed blocks in your posts play in the Pellio player too, without editing them.
• Let viewers download Media Library videos from the player’s settings menu.

The player

Your colour and corner radius (Pellio → Settings → Player), keyboard controls, speed, full screen and, for YouTube, a captions button. Media Library files also get picture in picture. In Safari, which blocks YouTube and Vimeo from starting with sound, the first press may show “Press play to start”.

Analytics for YouTube and Vimeo videos

With a Pellio account connected, every YouTube or Vimeo video shown in the Pellio player is added to your Pellio library as a linked video, marked YouTube or Vimeo, when a page with it is first shown. It gets the same analytics as hosted videos: plays, retention and which seconds each viewer watched, including which logged-in WordPress users watched and how much. In the Pellio dashboard, linked videos have the Analytics and Viewers tabs, Open on YouTube (or Vimeo), and a Linked video card to move them to the trash. The video itself still plays from YouTube or Vimeo; to host it on Pellio, upload or import it. Media Library files aren’t tracked in Pellio.

A linked video can be embedded by its Pellio id too ([pellio id="…"]): it plays from YouTube or Vimeo in the Pellio player, without the autoplay, muted, loop and captions options.