Videos: Lightbox or No?

for me?
if the page is just a page, with no distractions? then why not just
leave the player embedded into the page.

if the vid is on a wordpress or a joomla site? then I like the lightbox
as it blocks out any distractions from the sidebars or modules.

KEY (eric)

the lightbox will draw focus, but I think it will be kinda weird for the visitor. However, the best answer is to split-test it and find out what they want.

If you have only one video on the page embedding in the page is just fine.

If you have limited space in the page to display a larger dimension video then light box is useful.

Where you absolutely MUST use light boxes or statically positioned dhtml layers instead of direct embedding in a page is a page where you have multiple videos.

The reason is so that you can control how many videos are loading when a person lands on the page (if your player did not allow you to set auto load to off in the first place) and so that you can force the video to stop loading when the visitor moves onto the next video.

This is one of the most significant problems with direct embedding youtube videos... even when you stop playing one and move to another if they are both directly embedded in the page the first will continue to load the entire file in the background...

This issue is amplified by a behavior I call "video tasting." This is where visitors who have been conditioned by crappy content "taste" or click on each video on the page quickly to decide which of them to watch or to watch first.

If your players continue to load the video file even when they are not playing then you can have the visitors internet connection clog up with large loading video files which can freeze up their browser and cause them to leave your site.

Additionally not all light boxes are created equal... some appear to close but do not really close they become invisible while the embedded video the hold continues to load...

For most these details may not sound important but we develop direct response technology and strategies that assist people in making their videos load as fast as humanly possible while eliminating the other issues I mention and boosting response rates.

A properly coded lightbox and player and optimized video file are essential to higher consumption and response rates.

If you are using lightboxes be sure to test them on different browsers. Popup video is a total no no. My order of choice would be Plain embedded video > Lightbox > Popup.

Use a lightbox only when your web page looks crowded or busy. Once we did a vote on whether users want a Lightbox feature to embed videos. Since we wanted to add this feature on our software itself. Of 4350 people, almost 3500 voted "Does not matter".

Personally I feel a lightbox is a good thing to have, looks professional and creates a focus on the video.