Wistia Video Playlists

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 💌