I wanted to add an mp4 video into Moodle. (mp4 videos play on apple devices as well as other computers).

Easy enough, upload the file and then link to it. Problem is the file was 50 megabytes in size which means that in some cases, the way you link to the video will cause the browser to only allow you to download the video before playing rather than streaming it to you via a progressive download.

When you do embed videos to playback like a YouTube video, the video 'window" or "canvas" is much smaller than the original in most cases. There is a simple way to both embed the video and resize it to the dimensions you want.

Here's how...

So, there are three ways you can link to the file you have uploaded. The first two will allow you to embed the video. The third (Link to a file or web site) will ask you to download and save the file before playing which in today's "I want it now" world won't do.

So select either Insert a label or Compose a web page and create a hyperlink to your video. In Moodle, the hyperlink will appear as well as the embedded video. If you click on the hyperlink - again you will be asked to download. If you play the embedded video it will probably be too small. The answer? add the following query string to the end of your file... "?d=640x480" where the first number is the width in pixels, and the second is the height.

So if your video link is <a href="http://ourcourses.ntschools.net/file.php/374/test.mp4">test</a>  just add the string to the end of the filename, for example  <a href="http://ourcourses.ntschools.net/file.php/374/test.mp4?d=640x480">.</a>

<a class="test" href="http://ourcourses.ntschools.net/file.php/374/test.mp4?d=640x480"><font color="#ffffff">.</font></a>

In my example above, I don't want the hyperlink to show (in this case it is a full stop) so I make it the same colour as the background (white) and although there is a slim chance someone could click on it, the resized video will have pride of place and people will be more likely to click on that.

 

This entry was posted on November 8, 2010 at 4:06 PM and has received 702 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.