Sharing Ooyala Video to Facebook

Backlot allows you to include several social sharing options as part of the player. When the Facebook sharing option is available in your player the default use of this button will include a link back to the video in your Facebook comment. To embed the player in Facebook, they require you to include Facebook specific meta tags in the header of your page. These tags will ensure Facebook has the necessary information to identify and embed the video from your page. Once the tags are added, the video can be embedded to Facebook by clicking on the Facebook button in the player or by copying and pasting the URL to Facebook. Each of these options is described below.

Settings

Backlot

To enable your player for the Facebook share option and Share URL option in the Player you will need to access it in the Player Branding section of Backlot. Next to the Share options click 'edit' and make sure Facebook and URL are selected.

Just including this option will be enough to allow users to link to your page when the Facebook button is clicked. However, if you would like the video to be embedded in the Facebook news feed and comments, follow the directions for adding meta tags to the header.

Adding meta tags to the header

In order to directly embed Ooyala video content into the Facebook News feed you will need to include the following metadata within the header replacing the content value and hyperlink references with your own content's title, description, image, embed code, etc. The insertion of these metatags can be automated by using the Ooyala Facebook Sharing SDK.

<meta name="medium" content="video" /> <meta name="title" content="Title of Video" /> <meta name="description" content="Description of Video" /> <link rel="image_src" href="http://ak.c.ooyala.com/BqYWpjMTqo2JxLQBntWVV38XyQyVO3c4/R9h3a3wTes9kt5iH5hMDoxOjA0O88asB" /> <link rel="video_src" href="http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=BqYWpjMTqo2JxLQBntWVV38XyQyVO3c4&keepEmbedCode=true"/> <meta name="video_height" content="236" /> <meta name="video_width" content="420" /> <meta name="video_type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash" />

Note that the maximum thumbnail size is 130x110 pixels. Images will be resized proportionally. Videos can be embedded at any size on the page, but in the tags they have a maximum height of 280 pixels and a maximum width of 420 pixels. The standard Ooyala Flash embed or HTML embed can be used.

For more information and guidelines for these video meta tags, please review this section on configuring meta tags for Facebook Share.

Sharing

Option 1: Click on the Facebook button in the player

Click the Share button in the player and select the Facebook option to add the video to your profile and news feed.

Option 2: Copy and paste the URL to Facebook

Enter the page URL directly in Facebook as a comment. You can grab the URL directly from the Player under the Share button. Facebook will recognize the video meta tags and embed the player as part of your comment.

You can find answers to common questions in Ooyala Support for Facebook embedding.