Embedding video in a rich document

Background

Video is a powerful medium, and is relatively easy and cheap to create and edit.  Not as easy and cheap as text or photos, but easier and cheaper than in the past.

Showing your video on the Global Collaborative is a two-stage process.

1. Load your video onto a video hosting site.
2. Embed the code for your video into your Global Collaborative page.
   

Loading video onto a hosting site

You cannot load your video directly onto the Global Collaborative.  We don't have the resources to cope with that. Moreover, there are several sites on the World Wide Web that will host your video for free, and they will do it better than the Global Collaborative can.

So the first step is to load your video onto a video hosting site.  I recommend DotSUB, a video hosting site that allows people to caption your video in different languages.

Once you have set up your video on that site, you need to find the code that will allow you to embed video into another Web page. It is often listed in a box headed "Embed this film" or just "Embed". The code will look something like this:

<iframe src="http://dotsub.com/api/player.php?filmid=3186&filminstance=3188&language=none" frameborder="0" width="480" height="392"></iframe>

Don't worry about what the code means.  All you need to do is cut and paste this code into your rich document at the appropriate time.

For this demonstration, I will use "Peace Through Languages", which was posted to DotSUB by the DotSUB staff. I have embedded it into this page. Lets see what happens...

Peace Through Languages by the dotSUB staff, 2008.  Click the up and down arrows to see captions in different languages. Licence: CC Attribution Share Alike

Scary things

OK, a couple of scary things happen.

1. It doesn't show up until you save your edits.  That's pretty scary, because you don't know if it has worked.
2. If you edit around the embedded video, it can disappear.  That's pretty scary because it looks like you have deleted it.  You haven't.  It has just disappeared until you save your page again.
3. When you play the video, the flickering pixel line appears at the top of the video.  At some stage, we are going to have to work out how to fix that.
4. When you are editing your page, random bits of text might appear and disappear under your cursor.  I'm not sure why that is happening, but it is a bit scary, although it seems harmless.
   

How to load your video onto the Global Collaborative

1. Copy the 'Embed your video' code from your video hosting site.
   
2. Log onto the Global Collaborative.
3. Navigate to where you want your video to appear.
4. Either create a new rich document or edit an existing one.
5. Put your cursor on the page where you want your video to appear.
6. Click on the [Insert external link] button (the one that looks a bit like a world globe). A window called "External Link" will appear.
   
7. Choose the [Embed External Object] tab. A box headed "Paste <object> or <embed> tag here" will appear.
8. Delete what is already in the box ("insert arbitrary HTML code here") and paste your 'Embed this video' code into the box.
9. Choose the [OK] button and the box will disappear.
10. Save your rich document as normal. 
    
11. Your video should now appear on your Global Collaborative page. Click on it to make it play.

Things to keep in mind

Only post videos that you have permission to post. The "Peace Through Languages" video has a Creative Commons licence, which allows me to reuse it as long as I attribute it and share it in the same way. Sound good to me.

Give your video some context. There is no point in having a blank page with just a video on it.  Add a heading and some explanatory text. If you are really smart, provide a transcript of the video on the page.  That way, when people are searching for your particular topic, they can find the transcript and watch the video.

Provide a title and credit for your video, on the page, too.  People will want to know what it is called, who made it and when it was made.  They will often want to know what the copyright licence is, too, if they can show it in other forums.

You can center your video in the same way that you would center text.  To center this video, I selected the text above it and below it (to make sure that I had selected it) and centered it all.  Then I went back and fixed the justification of the text above it and below it.