[Pro] loading clock 4 video 2 play?

Hi,
I’d appreciate it if someone could let me know how to put a countdown clock or loading message in a box while the video is still loading.

Thanks,
Bob


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That depends on the format, and whether you can get the movie to tell you when it’s fully loaded. There are ways to do this in QuickTime, with JavaScript events and event listeners, but it is very very very very hard to get working consistently. If you have to use Flash video, your SWF controller may have this built in. What I often do is put a background image behind the video container with a “spinner” animated GIF. The problem with this is that it only appears while the movie is loading, once the pre-load part is done, the image is covered by the movie, and you’re stuck with whatever progress indicator (a big Q?) the plug-in provides you. SublimePlayer does a nice job of this, by the way, you should look at that Action and use HTML5 video.

Walter

On May 1, 2012, at 9:34 AM, bob wrote:

Hi,
I’d appreciate it if someone could let me know how to put a countdown clock or loading message in a box while the video is still loading.

Thanks,
Bob


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Hi Walter,
My videos are made using imove with a .mov
Which way would you suggest?

Bob


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Try this, and I emphasize TRY here.

Go to AjaxLoad and create an animated “loading” graphic to suit your site design. http://ajaxload.info/ Place this image as a pass-through on your page, to one side of the movie playback area. Make a note of the value in the Title field of the Inspector – you’ll use that name to identify your spinner graphic later. Note that the plug-in will nearly always obscure any other page content, no matter whether it was placed above or below the movie in the z-index (stacking order), so don’t rely on placing the loading image over the top of your movie if you expect it to ever appear on screen.

Click once on your movie in Freeway, and open the Extended dialog (Item / Extended). Click on the New button, and enter the following pair:

  • Name: EnableJavaScript
  • Value: true

Okay, then click New again and enter:

  • Name: postdomevents
  • Value: true

Okay, and okay again.

Apply the Protaculous Action to your page. Choose prototype-packed from the Library menu, and click on the top Function Body button. Paste in the following code, but change item42 in the code to be whatever name you found in the Inspector in the first step.

document.observe('qt_canplaythrough', function(evt){
	$('item42').hide();
});

When the movie has loaded enough for it to play all the way through at the current download speed without stalling, the spinner will disappear. Depending on the size of your movie and the options you chose when compressing it for the Web, this might not take very long at all. In my test document here, I could barely see the spinner before it disappeared. A slower connection or larger file might show it for a longer time.

As far as a real “x minutes and y seconds left to download”, you can do that, but it’s a whole lot more work. The issue is that the file size isn’t really available for you to access until the headers of the movie are there, and without the total file size, it’s impossible to calculate the percentage downloaded, percentage remaining, and average download speed. This leads you to do things like polling the movie (asking it the same question over and over in a loop) and then reacting when it finally answers. I wasted many days of my life trying to make this work properly, never was satisfied with the final result.

Walter

On May 1, 2012, at 11:21 AM, bob wrote:

Hi Walter,
My videos are made using imove with a .mov
Which way would you suggest?

Bob


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Wow, that’s a whole lot of stuff;)
More like a three course meal with extra gravy;)
But, I will succeed (I hope)
Thanks for all the info.

My movie file sizes are around 13mb.
Is that way to big and should I try compressing is some?

Thank you once again,
Bob


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That’s a very difficult question to answer, along the lines of “how long is a piece of rope?” Depending on the duration, pixel dimensions, frame rate, and complexity, that could be a very well-compressed movie or a really chunky one. No way to tell. When you exported from iMovie, did you use the Export for Web option? That gives you the tidiest files and the widest compatibility.

Walter

On May 1, 2012, at 12:06 PM, bob wrote:

My movie file sizes are around 13mb.
Is that way to big and should I try compressing is some?


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The choices in imovie under the SHARE menu are:

Media Browser
itunes
DVD

Mobie Me
Facebook
Vimo
Podcast

Export Movie
Export Movie using Quicktime

I’ve been using Export Movie and selecting Medium (640x360)
Is this the one to use for the web?


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Look at Export Using QuickTime, and choose MPEG4 (with H.264) as your output format. That will give you the smallest size and widest playback compatibility in my experience.

Walter

On May 1, 2012, at 12:22 PM, bob wrote:

The choices in imovie under the SHARE menu are:

Media Browser
itunes
DVD

Mobie Me
Facebook
Vimo
Podcast

Export Movie
Export Movie using Quicktime

I’ve been using Export Movie and selecting Medium (640x360)
Is this the one to use for the web?


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I tried MPEG4 (with H.264) and the file came out larger to
23mb at best setting. I reduced setting to High and file was 21mb, so I guess I’ll stay with the 13mb version.


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Hi Walter,

Would you mind looking at my site again and tell me how long it takes to load any of the 4 golf movies (the 4 boxes on the right hand side)?

Before you do that, would you clear your cache since you may have looked at the site before and that might make the movies load quicker?

designsongolf.com

thanks,
bob


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The top one took two seconds to load to the point that it showed its background, and 10 seconds before it started chase-playing. I have a relatively slow T1 line (1.5Mbps).

I think you’ve done an excellent job of compressing them.

Walter

On May 1, 2012, at 5:42 PM, bob wrote:

Hi Walter,

Would you mind looking at my site again and tell me how long it takes to load any of the 4 golf movies (the 4 boxes on the right hand side)?

Before you do that, would you clear your cache since you may have looked at the site before and that might make the movies load quicker?

designsongolf.com

thanks,
bob


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Thank so very much!

So you’re saying it was about only 2 seconds before you saw an image? Is that the same for the other 3 movies?

What I can’t figure out about imove is these videos I’ve uploaded were exported using the “Export Movie” and choosing medium which are 13mb. And using the Quicktime mpg4 export settings made the videos 21mb.

Do you think I should try to get some visual as a place holder using that AjaxLoader you mentioned, or do you think the time is short enough that a viewer won’t be put off?

thank yee,
bob


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I think you’re doing very well. You might want to try the Sublime Player Action, and see if the benefits of a poster frame and the easy universal player (HTML5 for the modern browsers, Flash for those still stuck in the late '90s) are useful for you. You will need to save at the very least as an mp4 file (at H.264/AAC encoding) so that it works with WebKit (mobile) browsers, and then you also have the option to encode in WebM and/or Ogg/Theora. You end up making (and uploading) three times as many files, but if you go through all that, your visitors will get a very nice result (and they only ever download one of the three files, don’t worry about that). Try out this sample page: Sublime Player

Walter

On May 1, 2012, at 6:12 PM, bob wrote:

Thank so very much!

So you’re saying it was about only 2 seconds before you saw an image? Is that the same for the other 3 movies?

What I can’t figure out about imove is these videos I’ve uploaded were exported using the “Export Movie” and choosing medium which are 13mb. And using the Quicktime mpg4 export settings made the videos 21mb.

Do you think I should try to get some visual as a place holder using that AjaxLoader you mentioned, or do you think the time is short enough that a viewer won’t be put off?

thank yee,
bob


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I am confused.
Is the video I made with imovie and uploaded it with Freeway not going to play on all platforms?
bob


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It’s going to play everywhere that there is a QuickTime plugin installed. But that’s nowhere near everywhere. Depending on the CODEC you choose during export, it might not even play everywhere that there is a QuickTime plugin installed in the browser, because the plugin has to load the correct CODEC, and if that’s not one of the common ones, you’re stuck. MPEG 4 with H.264 video and AAC audio encoding seems to be fairly universal.

Walter

On May 1, 2012, at 9:05 PM, bob wrote:

I am confused.
Is the video I made with imovie and uploaded it with Freeway not going to play on all platforms?
bob


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Ok, I’m game, but I need a little guidance (which you’ve already so generously supplied). And I appreciate you letting me know I’m doing well with this, because this is the first time I’m doing this, and to be honest I’m a bit nervous that I can pull this off, but so far, so good;)

I’ve got myself stuck in the middle of the
Protaculous Action. I can’t find the Library menu
you’re describing in the following line:
“Choose prototype-packed from the Library menu”

Also, where am I supposed to place this action box?
Is it over the video or next to it?

Can you tell me where the code begins and ends here:
document.observe(‘qt_canplaythrough’, function(evt){
$(‘item42’).hide();
});

Regarding having multiple versions of the videos, I clicked on your link to Sublime Video Player where is played the movie logo. What was I looking at in terms of this player?
And is this player what I need to play the multiple versions?

Apologies for so many questions, hope you don’t mind.

Thanks,
Bob


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Hi Walter,

I sent you an email to your studio address.

Bob


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