Press play on 12 new video component features in Alpha Five Version 11

It's never been easy to integrate videos into a database application. That's one of the reasons we decided to develop our video component for Alpha Five Version 11. But before we even talk about what we've done to make adding videos to your database application easier, let's first ask the question, "Why would you even want to include videos in a database application?"

We examined this question when we first introduced video capabilities in Alpha Five. Some obvious uses include a real estate database of home tours, an insurance company's database of claims videos, or a database of featured speaker videos for an upcoming event. And it doesn't end there. These ideas just scratch the surface.

Our own Bob Moore produced a video that shows off 12 of the newest features we've baked into Alpha Five Version 11's video component. These features will help you meet all manner of video database requirements, and make doing so easy.

1. Using the video offset to define the starting point in a video
2. Playing your video after the first click with the autoplay feature
3. Choosing to play related videos at the end of the clip
4. Simplifying the viewing experience by removing the video controls entirely
5. Customizing your app by choosing to show or hide the full-screen button
6. Immersing your users by enabling the video controls to auto hide
7. Setting the default resolution to high definition
8. Choosing to display video information at the start of the clip
9. Removing the YouTube logo from the video player
10. Embedding custom playlists and loop options
11. Equipping a lighter theme for the player controls
12. Defining related video playlists that accept user defined key

The feature I'm most excited about has to be the argument-driven related video playlists. It makes it really easy to direct users to the most relevant information related to what they're watching.

For example, imagine you're the developer of a real estate database of home tours, and someone looked up a property listing. Wouldn't it be great to have related properties that matched the user's specification show up in a list, without you having to write lines and lines of code? That's the kind of power we're bringing to you with the video component.

Let us know what you think and how you would use it in the comments section.