Video files are generally large due to the amount of content they contain and their length. It’s beyond the scope of our article to describe them in detail, but in basic terms, they are a linear sequence of still images placed together to create a sequence of movement, usually accompanied by an audio track. Original video files are compressed using a codec to produce a compressed video file. The various codecs produce different results for file size, quality, and export.
Video files play in the browser by downloading the data through the Internet, progressively streaming it so the movie begins to play before the whole file has downloaded. Audio files work in a similar way, but are often not as large.
The final quality of a video also depends on the method used to capture it and how it’s stored. The better the quality of the camera, the better the result. If you want to learn more about video, Wikipedia has a page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_formats.
Just like anything else, there are pros and cons of adding videos to your website. YouTube alone has proven there is a strong market for a more visual medium. However, there are still many people who prefer text-based content as well. Consider whether adding a video to your site will enhance your user’s experience.
Video played through the Internet requires a media player, which acts as an interface between the video file and the browser. These days most Internet users have one embedded within their browser. Popular versions include:
The following are some of the video file types that can be played through your website using third-party media players:
Keep the following in mind when considering a video for your website:
Keeping the video between one to three minutes long and the file size under five megabytes
Video files are generally large due to the amount of content they contain. They stream (streaming is the way the Internet transfers multimedia information) through the data so the video will begin playing before it has fully downloaded itself into the browser, allowing it to be played back as quickly as possible. Audio files work in a similar way, but are not usually big files.
There are various video file formats available and most website users have a player to see them already contained within the browser. Many users have QuickTime, a player created by Apple (that also runs on PCs) and Real Player, developed by Real Networks.
Videos require a special plugin to play them through an article on your site, once you have uploaded it. Alternatively, you can embed a link from the popular YouTube site (http://www.youtube.com/). We’ll look at how to do both in relation to the Party People website.
We’ll upload a new video, much the same way we would upload an image, to a new subfolder called videos within the Party People website. The steps are as follows:
Now we have a video file ready to be inserted into an article. The Party People website has the popular AllVideos plugin installed to do this.
This is another neat plugin that works in much the same way as the Simple Image Gallery, a stablemate from this team of developers.
If you don’t have it installed and you would like to present videos on your site, ask your developer to install it for you or refer to the developers website http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/35/41/ for instructions.
Our Party People website has a .mov video on the Products and Services page, which we will update.
To update the video display:
{mov}promoVideo{/mov}
Note that you do not need to include the format extension at the end of the filename, as the tag surrounding the name addresses this.
The AllVideos plugin supports a number of video file formats and the developer’s website lists them all at http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/35/41/.
We’ll change the video we just linked to a different one which is in the .wmv format. The steps are as follows:
{wmv}updatedServicesVideo{/wmv}
You should take care to avoid rearranging any of the formatting within the code, as this will prevent the movie from playing. That is, don’t add any extra spaces, colons, commas, and so on.
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