Wistia Video Playlists (Deprecated)

Share a collection of videos from a project with a single embed with a built-in menu

Alert
If you’re not seeing the Playlist tool in your account, not to worry. This feature is being gradually deprecated from the Wistia UI. As we’re introducing a new design of the account, we’re phasing out the Playlists feature - although any existing Playlists that are embedded in the wild will continue to work. In order to create similar functionality for playing a sequence of videos, we would recomment taking a look at the Embed Links functionality, which essentially lets you build your own playlist of videos that include any videos in your account - you’re not constrained by the videos having to be in one project together. The second option is our Channels feature, available on the Advanced plan. It’s the next evolution of Playlists, and it’s perfect for episodic content.

Video playlists are a convenient way to share a whole project of videos with a single embedded player. Playlists allow you to update content in your playlist without messing with embed codes (even after embedding!). They take up less real estate than separate video embeds, while being easier to navigate.

Alert
Playlists are great for easily sharing a group of videos, but they have some limitations. You can check out the full list at the end of this page. For a more flexible way to make playlists, we recommend using Embed Links.

Playlists and Projects

Wistia playlists include all of the videos in a Project within your Wistia account. The playlist order will reflect the order of videos within the project, with the top video being the first video in your playlist.

If videos are added to the project, those videos will be automatically added to the embedded playlist out the in wild with no need to re-embed. If you update the titles of the videos, add sections — yep, you guessed it, they’ll both automatically update.

Note
Playlists can be made from projects. They cannot be made from sections of projects or selected videos from within a project. Use Move & Copy in tandem with new projects if you want more control over the contents of a specific playlist.

Here’s an example playlist:

And here’s an example of what that code looks like:

<div class="video_embed">
<iframe src="//fast.wistia.net/embed/playlists/aodt9etokc?media_0_0%5BautoPlay%5D=false&media_0_0%5BcontrolsVisibleOnLoad%5D=false&theme=tab&version=v1&videoOptions%5BautoPlay%5D=true&videoOptions%5BplayerColor%5D=54bbff&videoOptions%5BvideoHeight%5D=371&videoOptions%5BvideoWidth%5D=660&videoOptions%5BvolumeControl%5D=true" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_playlist" name="wistia_playlist" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen width="660" height="371"></iframe>
</div>

Creating a Video Playlist

To get started, head to a project within your Wistia account you wish to create a playlist for. Next, choose Get Playlist from the ▸ Project Actions menu as shown below.

Once you’ve selected the Get Playlist option, you’ll be taken to a playlist builder page where you can customize your playlist and find the embed code.

Customizing Playlists

A playlist is a unique embed which includes a built-in menu for easy navigation between videos. You can select different themes for each playlist which affect the layout of the menu. Playlists also have their own set of customize options which will override any settings you have on individual videos in the Customize panel. An example of the playlist customize options can be seen below:

There are four playlist themes: Bare, Slide, Tab, and Bento. The example above is using the “Tab” theme. Choose the theme you’d like to use, the size for the embedded playlist, and other customization settings on the page.

Note
Playlist customizations are added to the embed code you copy from this page. If you decide to make any changes to your settings after embedding the playlist, you will need to copy a new embed code and replace the old playlist on your page. Playlist customizations will not update on an embedded playlist automatically.

Override Customizations

While playlists typically ignore the customize settings of individual videos, you can get around this by unchecking the Override customizations option within the Appearance section. This allows each individual video to retain most of its unique settings.

When this option is unchecked, you can also make use of some customizations that aren’t normally available for playlist embeds:

  • Annotation links
  • Captions
  • Share buttons
  • Chapters

If any of these features are added to videos within your playlist, they’ll become visible once you’ve unchecked Override customizations.

Responsive Playlists

Playlists can only be responsive when using the API Embed Type (iFrame and Popover playlist embeds cannot be made responsive at this time). Head over to the Embed Options section, then select Show Advanced Options. From here you can select the API playlist, which is similar in structure to a Standard embed code.

Next, select the Responsive option under Video Size. This will allow the player to fit to the size of the container it is placed within, and re-size fluidly within a responsive webpage.

Note
Playlist responsiveness is based on the dimensions of the first video in the playlist. We recommend making sure that all of the videos within your playlist have the same aspect ratio. Otherwise, this means that if you have a vertical video after a 16:9 video in a playlist, the playlist will be 16:9 and the vertical video will have black borders on its sides.

Playlist Limits

Playlists are based on an older version of the Wistia player, so some customizations might not work the same way they do with an individual video. Certain features require you to uncheck “Override Customizations” and customize individual videos, while others require using the API embed type. Some features, sadly, won’t work at all with playlists.

These features will only work by unchecking Override Customizations:

  • Annotation links
  • captions
  • Share buttons
  • chapters
  • Player color customizations on individual videos

These features will only work with the API Playlist embed type:

  • player responsiveness (when using an iframe or popover embed code type)
  • MAP integrations (Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot)
  • Google Analytics

These features are not compatible with playlists:

  • calls to action
  • share options
  • Password feature
  • autoplay on individual videos (this can be turned on for the entire playlist on the Get Playlist page)
  • Turnstile on an individual video (you can gate playlists with a new Turnstile on the Get Playlist page)
  • Turnstile can only collect emails, not names

With all of this in mind, we recommend using Embed Links to create playlists. Embed Links are a super simple way to create a playlist of Wistia videos while maintaining customizations. As we continue to build and iterate on our product, Embed Links will end up being the base code for playlists v2.

You can check out an example over on the Help Videos page. They’re super easy to work with — just copy and paste some hashed IDs and you’re good to go!

As always, give us a shout if you need some help. 💌