Thumbnails for Custom Video Field

If you give a demonstration of what you're doing, or maybe some code of how you're doing it, I might be able to help.

First of all, awesome video. Second of all, it doesn't really look like the settings from Flowplayer around being passed. Although the HTML is there, the Javascript isn't there. What code are you using to display this?

Thanks,
Rob

If you use Embedded Media Field with the custom URL and have Flowplayer enabled, it will use Flowplayer to display the FLV ;-) .

I'm not entirely sure you can get a thumbnail for the custom video field. Maybe use autoplay instead? Moving this over to Embedded Media Field for a feature request for the thumbnails.

The only way to get thumbnails from a custom video is using FFMPEG. (I'd suggest Media Mover if you want to go that route).

However, using Embedded Media Field, you can at least install and configure Embedded Media Thumbnail (packaged with the module), which allows you to upload a thumbnail to be associated with a video. Although we may need to send that as a parameter to Flow Player (this is already done w/ JW FLV Player in the case of YouTube).

Ah, I haven't had a look at Embedded Media Thumbnail yet. Passing the thumbnail off to Flowplayer shouldn't be hard as we just have to give it a style of "background-image:url(THUMBNAIL/IMAGE/HERE.png)".

+1 for thumbnails from custom URLs. I've seen sites that do this... They use direct file links and yet still they can generate thumbnails. I thought JW player had this ability because that's what they were using.

Will this ever be possible with embedded media field?

jw flv player does this now. i'll see if i can add it to the flowplayer support...

i do not see how to specify a splash image for flowplayer. note that you can already set the display for image -> player, which in effect replicates http://flowplayer.org/demos/installation/splash-image.html so that should work for folks until we have a more stable solution.

"jw flv player does this now. i'll see if i can add it to the flowplayer support..."

Do you mean it can generate thumbnails from a direct video file URL with EM Video field, or that it supports uploading a prefabricated image as a thumbnail through Embedded Media Thumbnail?

both -- Embedded Media Thumbnail will automatically make local copies of remote thumbnails, for use w/ JW Flv Media Player, Imagecache, etc.

Sorry about not responding to this. Regarding Flowplayer, there's #551242: Splash support. I haven't gotten around to adding in the $contents argument to the API yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Thanks!

I must be completely misunderstanding this thread, because under "Custom URL configuration" is says...

This is a list of the current state of support for the following features by Custom URL:

Thumbnails: No
Autoplay: Yes
RSS attachment: No

I'm using the latest version as of Oct 28th. Where am I going wrong here?

@mitylite: it will not automatically create derivative thumbnails: you would need to use media mover or other solution using ffmpeg to do that. however, if you use Embedded Media Thumbnail in conjunction with any provider (including custom url videos), you can associate your own uploaded image with a movie.

@aaron

I think embedded media field is a great module - but the option to work custom URL for video and a custom thumbnail doesn't work for me.

The video is provided by Amazo S3 where the flv resides and I uploaded a custom thumbnail that I made by myself. But in het JW MediaPlayer the thumbnail image isn't showing.

My configuration: Drupal 6.14 / Embedded Media Field: 6.x-1.18 / JW Mediaplayer version 5.0.753

What should I do more? Is there something that needs to be done in Views module?

I took this thread to mean that a workaround was that you could enable emfield thumbnail and it would be a workaround, but it seems that it does not work for custom URL still?

Is there good documentation on how it is implemented for the others and I could simply port it over for my project or?

This should work now for custom video + flowplayer. Thanks everyone!

@Aaron

Well there are still some problems with the "Custom thumbnail" feature.

1)
My local configuration: Drupal 6.16. / Emfield 1.20 on localhost-server (MAMP, PHP 5.2.6).

With the JW Player all is OK: the custom image is showing and the video is playing. That's great.

BUT: with the Flowplayer (even version 3.1.5 or 3.2.1 - I tested both): the image isn't showing and the ***video isn't playing***!
The Flowplayer swf is in sites/all/plugins/flowplayer - the default testfile is working...

With the Flowplayer-module (version flowplayer-6.x-1.0-beta1) enabled, the video ***is playing*** but the custom thumbnail isn't showing.

2)
On my production server, an OpenAtrium installation (Drupal 6.15 / Emfield 1.20) the JW Player is playing the video correctly BUT the custom image isn't showing.

The Flowplayer does'nt work at all - like on the localhost: no video playing, no custom image.

So I can concentrate on the JW Player. But here is the most important thing:

What I saw in the HTML sourcecode is that the flashvars path to the custom image is NOT CORRECT!
It reads: "image=%2Fvideogroup%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fvideothumbnails%2Fgroen_play_knop_1.png&file=https%3A%2F%2Fkonrad-files.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fvideo%2FFrancis_De_Beir_in_senaat.flv&autostart=false"

The first part of %2videogroup%2 is NOT a proper directory!!!! The custom image EXISTS on the server in "sites/default/files/videothumbnails/groen_play_knop_1.png" (and is showing properly when you edit the node with the video in it!).

So the "videogroup" part of the URL is added automaticaly because OpenATrium works with Organic Groups and it "rewrites" the URL in some sense.

I ascertain a similar behavior with my local configuration: when I turn "multilanguage" on: the system adds a language in the URL like "en/node/15" (for English version) and so the Flashvars follows the same path and then the custom thumbnails who was previously showing, does'nt appear in the new multilanguage situation.

Where should I look in the code where those Flashvars are constituted?

Thanks in advance,

konrad