Uploading and Embedding Video
This is a users' guide for uploading video. As Drupal is a system which can be set up in many different ways, there are so many ways to upload video. We'll look a a couple of common ways that is it done using one website as an example. The ways we'll look at is uploading a video file from your computer, and another is to embed a video from another video sharing site.
Uploading from Computer
In order to start uploading a file from your computer, you'll need to have it in the right format. Actually because of the many different type of video files there are a few different formats that are likely to work. So maybe it's better to say that we need to know what kind of files to avoid. You should avoid video files that are huge, sometimes you may have saved a file out of a video encoding project as full quality. Don't upload this large file. You'll need to encode it first. There is help on this elsewhere. The programmes that use Free Software solutions to encoding video are Avidemux (Cross platform), Ffmpegx (Mac), Handbrake(Cross Platform) and SUPER encoder (Windows).
In order to add a video from your computer you'll need to be logged in and point your browser to the Add Content page. On this website the link you need to click on is the Video Upload link.
The description for the Video Upload content type is 'Upload a video from your computer and convert it into a flash web-video ( like on YouTube or Blip).' This gets across the idea that you'll have a click and play type video on your page.
Click on the Video Upload link and it will take to a form for you to fill out information about the Video file. This information is called 'Metadata', data about the video data.
A sample input form with space for you to add metadata is below.
There are some field that are very useful for people to find your video; ie Title, Body (which is a full description of the video), Producer of the Video, Date produced.
You'll also see some other options which you can click on to see more options. These are put their by default by the system. If you don't know what these options mean, don't worry you can safely ignore them.
The Video Upload box is there so we can click on Browse and find the video file that you want to upload. When you have chosen the video from your computer then click on Upload.
When the video has been uploaded you should see the name of it displayed, the size and what file type it is.
When you've completed all the fields that you think are relevant to the best of you ability remembering to include as much data as you can, then click on the submit button at the bottom of your form.
If all goes well your videos should be converted and displayed as a video on the relevant page of your site as a Video that you can click and play, as shown below.
Adding video from another site using Embedded Media Field
In a nutshell the Embedded Media Field is an input box in a form which lets you paste in the web address of a video that has been uploaded to another video sharing site, that you want to appear on the page. For example you may have a video up on YouTube that you want to feature without uploading it again.
To start the process you'll need to be logged in and point your browser to the Add Content page. On this website the link you need to click on is the Video link. There is a description which reads 'Use this to add videos from third party sites like YouTube or Blip'.
Click on Video and you'll be take to a form to fill out the relevant data on the video. Below is an extract from the form similar to one that you might fill in.
Below is a screen shot of the Video on YouTube that you would like to add.
We now need to copy and paste some of the information from the You Tube page into our form. The most vital bit of information to copy is the URL, the web address of the page.
To do this select the URL in the navigation bar of your browser when you are viewing the Video on your sharing site and copy it in to your computer's memory. Paste this into the Embed Video File box of your input form.
You can then either copy and paste or type in the rest of the needed information on the form.
When you have finished that click on the Submit button at the end of the form
You should then get a page which displays your video.
