Videos - Playing them on this website
The easy way for us to play videos is to use a simple code on a web page so the page will display and play a video from a video service like Youtube, Vimeo etc.
E.g. Vimeo code (a Youtube video would be the same except the name Youtube would replace Vimeo in the code):
{{#widget:Vimeo|id=14485635|width=600|height=500}}
The above code identifies the video as coming from Vimeo, its "id"(taken from the url for the video), and it's height and width.
This is a fast and simple way to place videos on pages.
The more difficult way to display a video is when we want to put the video on our own server and play it.
In this case we need to upload the video to our server in Two Different Formats so the video will play on all browsers as well as on mobile devices such as phones and tablets.
E.g. A typical video will be in ".wmv" format which needs to be converted to ".mp4" and ".webm" formats. (a 150MB video in .wmv format will typically take 1 1/2 hours each, to convert to the two needed formats.
Each separate formatted video needs to then be uploaded to our server - which can take approx 1/2 hour for a 150MB file.
A "poster" image then needs to be uploaded. This is the image seen on the video screen prior to playing.
A sample of the code we then put on the page:
<HTML5video width="600" height="500" autoplay="false" loop="false" poster="TheFactofClearing_image.PNG">580704 CC-01 THE FACT OF CLEARING</HTML5video>
The above includes the usual height, width parameters as well as the name of the video file and name of the poster to be used.
For a full description of the software used to display videos on our server see:https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:HTML5video
Summary It is far easier to display videos hosted on outside services like Youtube and Vimeo than it is to host them on our own servers.
In rare cases, where we want to preserve the material to ensure it will always be available, the extra effort is well worth the extra work.