Indicate play button for a web object video

Apr 15, 2012

Hi All,

A course I designed has a video inserted as a web object and I received the following feedback:

" Normal 0 false false false oNotPromoteQF /> EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Navigation was easy but on the video slide it doesn’t direct people to press the play button in the bottom left corner"

The play button comes up as part of the video and as the web object placeholder covers the whole slide in powerpoint, I'm not sure how to indicate the position of the play button that needs to be pressed for the video to start.

There is no audio on this presentation and I tried (unsuccessfully!) to use an annotation.

Any suggestions very gratefully considered!

Cheers

Ingrid

9 Replies
Ingrid Johnston

Hi Justin,

 

Justin Wilcox said:

Hi Ingrid. Could you share a screenshot of what you are seeing? I'm wondering if it is even necessary to direct someone as most play buttons are pretty universal in terms of what they look like so people typically don't need anymore direction than seeing the play button to know what to do.

 

 I agree completely and was surprised anyone had experienced sufficient difficulty to warrant this feedback comment but I think perhaps the confusion occured either because the video didn't start "automatically" or because there was a play button both on the video and the articulate player.

 

Screenshot below (apologies for quality):

Thoughts?

 

Cheers

Ingrid

Ingrid Johnston

Justin Wilcox said:

If you can download the video and insert it directly into Presenter perhaps that would resolve your issue as there would be no play button. What type of video is this? You can insert SWF, FLV or MP4 movies directly into Presenter.

Thanks Justin - I believe it is a swf file (plays using a flash player) and while I have permission to provide a link to the video, I do not have permission to have a copy of the video file.

Minh-Triet Nguyen said:

Hi Ingrid,  

That playbar looks like the one used for vimeo.com movies.  If you're embedding their videos, they do have a way to auto-play movies.

Documentation for their embed parameters can be found here: http://vimeo.com/api/docs/player


Thanks Minh-Triet - you are absolutely right about vimeo.

I checked out the embed parameters at the link you provided and I can see that an autoplay option is available but unfortunately understanding how to incorporate this into the embed code was completely incomprehensible to me!

The embed code for the web object I inserted with Articulate is:

"http://player.vimeo.com/video/28438994?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen>

Using Your Inhaler - Standard Metered Dose Inhaler (Puffer) from National Asthma Council on Vimeo.

"

So, I have 2 questions:

1.  Do I have the ability to modify the embed code or will the parameter preferences set by the owner of the video override any changes I make?

2.  What, where and how do I insert the appropriate code for autoplay?

Many thanks for any guidance that can be provided.

Cheers

Ingrid

Minh-Triet Nguyen

Hi Ingrid,

In the documentation, they do mention that some parameters will be over-ridden by the video owner's settings.  But I tested your movie and it does allow for autoplay.   The autoplay parameter can be added to the end of that HTTP string. So after the end of it looks like this

&portrait=0&autoplay=1 

I attached the embod code so you can see it in action. 

Ingrid Johnston

Hi Minh-Triet,

I can insert the autoplay information into the embed code and I can see that your attachment demonstrates autoplay in action but despite multiple attempts I just cannot seem to get this working.

Could you possibly send me the entire embed code that you used?

Is there any other reasons it might not be working?

I found that when I click on "embed" in the original website video, a link comes up stating "You can customise this player on Vimeo" and if you follow this, it has options you can select including autoplay. Also tried to use this approach with no success.

After failing for over an hour, I'm tearing my hair out - any help greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Ingrid

Minh-Triet Nguyen

Sorry to hear about your troubles! I modified the previous page with dimensions that will more or less fill the Presenter window* and renamed the file index.html.  Then save it to the folder where your old, non-autoplaying video html file was.  Then when you add web object, point it to that folder.

* I sized the video  710 x 533px, slightly smaller then what will fit in a Presenter window, but you can play with those dimensions till it fits better for your project.  One of the other drawbacks to embedding video is that the video won't re-size if your Presenter window is re-sized by the user. caveat emptor.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.