Posting on the Web

When posting your digital story to the web you have a few options:

1. Post to a site such as blip.tv or YouTube which does the coding – and sometimes conversion if needed – for you.
2. Post using a wysiwyg editor (perhaps part of a CMS, or something like Dreamweaver).
3. Post using "hand-coded" HTML (which you can write yourself or copy in many cases).

The method you choose depends on two factors:

1. Your file format
2. Your comfort level with html and web development

By far the easiest method is to post to blip.tv (www.blip.tv) or YouTube(www.youtube.com). If you are inclinded to use blip.tv or YouTube you will need to create an account on the site of your choice; Both are free. Once you have your account and can log in you simply upload your media and you're done! Both sites allow you to make files public or private depending on your needs, and provide you with a URL so you can send a link to whomever you wish. Here at Northeastern you may also choose to upload your files to a Blackboard course as blackboard accepts numerous types of media, but the file will then be accessible only via the Blackboard system.

If you're not keen on the idea of loading your content to a shared media site (because questions of ownership can arrise), you can choose one of the other two methods and post the resulting HTML page to your website.

If you choose to use a wysiwyg editor search in the help files for "insert media" or "embed media" and you should find info about adding many types of media with your particular tool. Dreamweaver makes adding Flash content very easy. Open your page and choose Insert > Media > Flash, locate your swf file and presto you're done! (Well once you FTP it to your live website or course.)

Depending on your wysiwyg tool, or CMS you may have to copy and paste HTML. Don't be scared if you do, it's really pretty simple too! Listed below is code you can use to embed quicktime or flash media into a web page. These two formats are both very popular. They play pretty much everywhere already, and if they don't it can be remedied with a simple, free, downloan and install of a plugin to any of the major web browsers. You can copy and paste the code, and only need to change information which is bold and highlighed in yellow.

Quicktime:

For reference: http://www.w3schools.com/media/media_quicktime.asp

Notes:

• there are actually two tags here, the object and embed tags. Both need to be use to ensure the media will function properly across different browser and platform variations – so as redundant and rediculous as it seems (and sadly is) be sure you change settings in both tags.
• You may also wish to change the "AUTOPLAY" and "CONTROLLER" settings if you do not wish for your story to start on it's own, or would like the controller to show. If you show the controller (CONTROLLER ="true") also be sure add 16 to the height otherwise the controller will not show.

<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"

codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"

height="yy"

width="xx">

 

<param name="src" value="MyMovie.mov" >

<param name="AutoPlay" value="true" >

<param name="Controller" value="false" >

 

<embed src="MyMovie.mov"

height="yy" width="xx"

type="video/quicktime"

pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"

autoplay="true"

controller="false"/>

 

</object>

Flash

• there are actually two tags here, the object and embed tags. Both need to be use to ensure the media will function properly across different browser and platform variations – so as redundant and rediculous as it seems (and sadly is) be sure you change settings in both tags.
• You may also wish to change the "AUTOPLAY" and "LOOP" settings if you do not wish for your story to start on it's own, or would like the play only once. 

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"

width="100"

height="100"

codebase="http://fpdownload.adobe.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0">

<param name="movie" value="moviename.swf">

<param name="play" value="true">

<param name="loop" value="true">

<param name="quality" value="high">

<embed src="moviename.swf"

width="100"

height="100"

play="true”

loop="true"

quality="high"

pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">
</embed>

</object>

Easy Code Writing Tool

cit.ucsf.edu/embedmedia/

The Center for Instructional Technology at UCSF has a great tool that you can use to write your code, if you need to! Documentation is included on their site.