The more complicated the task, the more fearful us noobs get when it comes to using something new but, I downloaded, installed and had my first youtube video up and runing all in less than 5 or ten minutes with out having to read anything. I love extensions like these that do what they say with ease. Thank you so much developer. I tried other software like this and it failed. Your worked like a charm. I am very happy and that is why I had to write my review. 2 THUMBS UP! Excellent!

This is the best video component for joomla. The support is great and they always work to improve the product. The personalized service is what made me stay with this and it works and looks great.

The com is really superb. Within a week a realized a complete video channel for my website. Low costs, no ads (with commercial JW player license), great to implement and a nice admin area. The com comes with all the basic features you need together with lot's of modules and plugins (language, 3rd party compatibility etc).

Integration into our template went smooth. Unfortunately the design is not tableless.

Support it fast and efficient via a ticket system. I also have the idea development is working hard on improvements and new versions.

Overall i certainly would advice this com to others. It's maybe the best there is for a Joomla! video channel...

This is a very excellent component. I downloaded it with the intention to place a video gallery on my website solely with youtube videos, but with the occasional hosted video. I like the ability to place youtube videos in a custom player and the option to choose said player. It was also very easy to edit the buttons to a different color using MS paint. It is thoroughly configurable and is very easy to configure parameters and access control on any scale. I was not able to test the uploading feature, as my server doesn't support conversions.

You can have a YouTube-like site up and running in a matter of minutes in a shared hosting environment.

I first tried the free version and used a webhosts recommended by the developer. I've been very happy with my webhost for many years and was reluctant to use one unknown to me, but my webhost does not have FFMPEG installed on shared hosting accounts. The one I ended up using not only has everything needed to run this component but also has a php upload limit of 500MB and excellent support as well.

Enough about the webhost, the component is awesome. It worked right out of the box and any questions or glitches I had were answered promptly via the forum. I was very pleasantly surprised.

I wanted to make some customizations to the layout and found modifying the code to be easy enough.

This is fantastic for a free component and the Pro version was only US$32. Quite a value! Thank you!

Kudos to the HWD team; A splendid job is what I call it!

I have been building this community site for my customer and had a new requirement to build a media sharing portal. I tried several open source options and failed to get what I wanted.

I was hesitatnt in using HWD, but once I installed it and started using it, I loved it. Trust me it had a lot more feature than I expected and it works like a charm.

I had a couple of trivial issues, but their support team is just instrumental in what they do. They logged into my acocunt, set things straight.

If you are looking for a good component for media sharing, try HWD you WILL be pleased.

I was searching for a component that did both. video and Photo. I installed it and it worked great. Had to ask some details, and honest, the support is great. Great!!

This component is great!! And so is the support. I had a problem, they jumped right on it and I was up and going in no time!!
A Most Have for Video Sharing!

Nice software. I would like to kiss the persons who developed this software but only thing is i am unable to integrate it with community builder software. Please release a document for integration.

After searching for a flexible, powerful video player and gallery manager, we came across hwdVideoShare. It is exactly what we need for our readers who are teachers of TV/Video and Film with lots of student work to showcase.

As we are a magazine publisher, NOT a JOOMLA "type" we did ask the support organization at Highwood Designs for help with installation and configuration. They proved to be one of the most responsive we have dealt with. Their answers came through in a very timely fashion and were easily implemented.

Millions of stars for this product!

I have tried and tried with this component and still no luck. If you wish to pull your hair out for the next few weeks install hwdmediashare. Looks great, but my god its annoying.Problem after problem. If you are using a shared server like most of us then you are going to have lots of issues. I hope the next version is better. I paid for this and still cant get it working. It plays .flv files ok. But if you wish to play other files then this component is useless. It cuts out uploading movies after like 5 minutes. Absolute waste of time. I have gone grey trying to figure this thing out. Now im not eithe going to bother.

I haven't fully tested all the features but the product is incredible efficient and simple to use. The questions I did have were answered within a day or two after making a form post.

A great video component for Joomla!!

The component is much more then I expected after trying out lots of others. It works great, and the Commercial-Version is cheap (15 Pounds). So you get much value for your money.

But, honestly, let´s face the truth. The component is not yet doing everything. There are some parts that are not yet perfect.

1. The Templates are not too nice. Well, believe me, the templates you can choose are much nicer then the default ... I think the default template is one of the most ugliest. But I would prefer to have some more templates to choose.

2. The navigation. There are some tabs on the top, that are not Ajax-driven. It drives me wild, when I click on a tab and the the whole site reloads.

3. The languages are not really good translated, some words are missing, special charakters are misspelled.

4. Integrating a commet-component is a good Idea, because it brings the best way to leave comments. But bad luck ... the component I use for comments is not integrated. The GPL-one they offer is not working on my site (problem with mootools) and the other one that can be integrated is charged (and not so nice as the others).

There are some other small things, that could be done. But the truth is also: It already has lots of components. You can integrate the Flow-Player also in articles with a plugin, you ca ... uh, you got a lot of things.

So come to the truth-trugh: I will ALWAYS find things, that I don´t love yet. If the little things would be done (most important: Templates / Second important: Control over playlists for the Admin), then I would instantly pay 100 or 200 Dollars for it, ´caus it´s worth that.

For having a 15-Pound-Software, you are getting a damned good piece of work, which is already worth much more money!

As far as I know the developement of playlists is already going on, so maybe in the next months this software is the software of my dreams.

And, guys, take me by the work: If you integrate the playlist-things and if you set up at least one really good template, I will pay you that for. You deserve it!

Best wihes, Julian!

I have tested so many video components or PHP scripts bridged with joomla, believe me none of them are even close to hwdvideoshare.

This component have so many options in the backend, integration of jomsocial, jomcomment, you can custom the look of your player with skins, logos ...
If you need to tweak it as i did, the developers are giving you a hand very quickly.
Now i have a awesome website, with HD videos only.
Thank you so much to the great component and work guys !!

PS : Sorry about my bad English

A perfect extension, easy to use.

I am so glad I went looking for a video gallery in the JED and finding hwdVideoShare!

I don't know where to start about how good this is even at it's current stage of development.

Like many I was using Seyret and it worked well for me but hwdVideoShare offers a lot more features and modules and as importantly it's 1.5 Native. I really hated having to run Seyret in Legacy mode.

I didn't bother to try the free version, I simply bought the pro version based on the reviews and what I saw in the demo. I really wanted/needed to have all of the modules and plugins.

I hated the green/gray color of the default template and having the pro version I was able to use the Dark template. Changing the template a little was very easy and I liked the way the entire configuration is set up in the admin cp.

I really feel like my site is at a point where things are flowing smoothly; now if only I can get others to register and upload videos LOL.

I know there are a lot of feature requrests and I'm really looking forward to what they add next.

This extension is certainly impressive. It's easy to install, eas to use and easy to customise.

It integrated with my existing site simply.

A nice extra would be an image gallery.

I have always struggled with the 'youtube' style website, i've used phpmotion, i've tried seyret and was looking at opting for clipshare not so long ago. I saw HWMediaShare some time ago but was put off by the price, i simply couldn't afford it at the time, but now the price has come down and the component itself is free to use.
I was overwhelmed by its flexibility, tools and features. Its integrations are great and growing continually.
The support is quick and good, and the documentation is the best available, especially for installing ffmpeg and mencoder.
The pro license is great value, plus you get the modules and plugins which are really useful.

IMHO this product has great potential - but is far from being ready. It took a lot of fiddling to get a basic look and feel, but there were problems with how this looked in the template. I only used swf files, and some would work, some not. I tried using mpeg, but was told by the converter that i had files missing. I tried to display the video description but couldn't, and video list caused greif when placed into the left slot of my site.

Absolutely great potential here, and I was warned it was in alpha - so i do look forward to this going RC, but for now - sorry, needs a lot more work if it's to be used on a professional site.

Oh Oh..... Bye bye Seyret......
Super Component.... i was scare to install it at first because of all the requirements so what I did was set up a joomla installation on my server just to try it out ......it installed right away with out any problems and it worked PERFECT!... I WILL Pay for the Commercial version of this Component.

Love it! grade A+++