How Viewers Can Share & Email Video Links

Viewers can easily share with friends a link to a video, or an email containing this link, from a Brightcove Player . This email sharing feature is automatically enabled when you create a Brightcove Player.

Don't want to include the email sharing feature in your player? Certain account types allow publishers to enable/disable email sharing using the Brightcove Console. If you are interested in controlling email sharing and other premium features, please contact Brightcove.


To copy a link to a selected video for the purpose of sharing

With the selected video loaded in the Brightcove Player viewing area, viewers:

  1. Click the link icon from the Player control area.


  2. Click  Get Link.


  3. Click Copy to Clipboard.
    Viewers can then paste this link in an email for the purpose of sharing this video with a friend, colleague, or family member.


To send an email that contains a link to the selected video

With the selected video loaded in the Brightcove Player viewing area, viewers:

  1. Click the envelope icon from the Player control area.


  2. Click  Email This.

  3. Enter the email address of the person(s) to share the video with, the viewer’s email address, and, optionally, a message.


  4. Click Send to send an email that includes a link to view the video.


Creating your own share links from scratch

First have your playerId, lineupId (if applicable), and titleId ready. Next, piece them together into a valid URL:

  1. Start with: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/
  2. Add bcpid and the value of your playerId. It might look like bcpid151755423. Then add a / to the end of that.
  3. If you have a lineup ID, add bclid, the value of your lineupId, and another / at the end.
  4. Lastly, add bctid, the value of your titleId, and a final / to the end.

Your link should look something like this:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid151755423/lineupId954395530/bctid154739539/

How you can customize the link URL

By default, the sharing link for a Player points to the Brightcove-hosted Player. You might want, instead, to give viewers links that point to the parent page on your site that contains the Player (or to some other page altogether). There are a few ways you can override the default link URL to use a dynamic sharing link, depending on how you publish your Player:

  • Edit the publishing code for your Player. If you are using JavaScript or ActionScript, add this line: config["linkBaseURL"] = "http://someurl";
  • If you are using an HTML embed snippet to publish your Player, add this query parameter to the FlashVars in your embed snippet:: &linkBaseURL=http://someurl. For example:
    <embed src="MyPlayer.swf" FlashVars="autoStart=true&width=540&linkBaseURL=http://someurl" 
    ...additional attributes...     />
  • If you are using the Brightcove Player ActionScript API to call a Player from a SWF wrapper, use a command like: bcPlayer.setLink("http://someurl");
  • If you are using the Brightcove Player JavaScript API to call a Player from JavaScript, use a command like: callFlash("setLink", "http://someurl");

In each case, replace http://someurl with the URL you want to use in your sharing links. You can dynamically get the URL of the current page like this:

config["linkBaseURL"] = window.document.URL;

Using a dynamic sharing link means that web links spread virally can point to the page of the article that contains the video. This URL configuration moves around with viral players, helping to drive traffic and audience back to your web property. When viewers click "Get Link", they will fetch the article URL. If viewers send an email to share the video, the email will contain the link to the article. If viewers grab an embed code and publish the viral player on another blog, that player will direct users back to the source article page, and not to the URL of the player.