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Author Archive for Aaron

Getting to grips with our new Settings Interface

20 Dec 2011
Aaron
article by:
Aaron

You may have noticed our new Settings Interface has been redesigned so let me explain how this works. We have introduced more categories within the interface to help you find the exact setting you require faster.

Global settings allows you to make changes to all videos within your vzaar account and all future uploads. Here you can brand your player, change your encoding settings, manage which domains your videos are playable on and much much more! Any changes you decide to make on a per video level will override the global settings for that specific video. Pictured below, is the global settings interface with the Security tab active.

Global Settings

Per Video Settings

Along with the new design and categorization to the global settings interface, you will also see that the Settings tab within your video interface now houses the same interface with selected settings which are available to you on a per video basis – giving you more freedom to customize individual videos.

One of our newest features is our Color Picker. Along with the preset color schemes which have been with vzaar for a long time, you can now create a player based on your own color scheme. The color picker lets your select from a variety of colors, the option to make that color lighter or darker, and, if you’re an advanced user, you can enter your own hexadecimal colour values into the input fields provided.

This is available on both your global settings and individual videos. We are really excited by this new addition and we hope your are too!

Per video settings


We hope you find using our new interface more intuitive, beneficial and easy to use. As we continue to add functionality to our player we will continue to provide you with an easy way to implement this.

We’d love to know your thoughts!

Aaron

Categories Feature, News
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vzaar introduces subtitles

10 Oct 2011
Aaron
article by:
Aaron

We are proud to announce a helpful new feature this afternoon: subtitles!

Subtitles are a must-have for businesses looking to reach audiences across the globe.  vzaar’s new subtitle feature supports multiple files in various languages, giving your viewers the ability to select their preferred language from the options you provide.

This blog post will guide you through the process of uploading subtitle files to your videos, provide a quick intro on formatting subtitle files, and finishes off with a demo. Without further ado…

Selecting your default language

You may now select a default language for all future uploads under the Settings tab in your account. If all your subtitles will be in Polish, for example, selecting “Polish” from this menu will ensure that language is automatically selected each time you upload a new file.

Uploading subtitle files to your video

As the copy for each video will differ, you won’t upload your subtitle file from your account’s global settings.  Instead, you will upload the file from the management area for the corresponding video.  When in the management view of any given video, you will see an icon labelled ‘Subtitles’. Click on the icon to browse and upload subtitle files directly from your computer.  Note that Polish has been automatically selected as my language, as we set it as my default language in the previous step.

 

Adding more files to your videos

If you’d like to offer a second language option, just follow the same process as before.   The only difference being that you will be required to select a different language, as you may not upload more than one file in the same language. In the screenshot below, note that I now have 2 files uploaded – my default of Polish, and a second, English file.

 

Viewing your subtitles

Once your subtitles have been uploaded, you will see a subtitles icon appear inside your player. If you’ve uploaded more than one file, you will also see a drop down list with language options the user can select. Note: By default, subtitles are turned off. If you intend to use this feature, make sure the label reads ‘Subtitles On’. This only needs to be turned on once, all future videos with subtitles will work straight away.

 

Subtitle file formats

At present, we only support files with the extension .srt (SubRip). You can read more about this here. Below is an example block of code which illustrates how to format your subtitle files.  If uploaded along with a video, the following file would display the words ‘Welcome to my video’ between the seconds of 1 and 4, and ‘on how to make money by using online video’ between the seconds of 5 and 9.

1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,000
Welcome to my video

2
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:09,000
on how to make money by using online video

Example of our Subtitles

Lastly, have a look at one of our screencast tutorials with English subtitles turned on:

There we have it! If you have any questions about using subtitles on vzaar, please get in touch!

 

Categories Feature
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Brief introduction to CSS3 @ Applicake HQ

11 Aug 2011
Aaron
article by:
Aaron

What’s more daunting than delivering a presentation about how to make things look pretty to a bunch of super talented Ruby developers? Yeah, I’m struggling to think of something too.

This morning I gave a talk about CSS techniques used on the vzaar website. I decided to start from the ground up as I had no idea how much they already knew. I covered some basic CSS3 properties such as border radius, some more complex properties like applying transitions using the transform property, showcased some examples used within our website and shared some useful sites and apps to get started.

I guess everyone who does any kind of programming gets some sort of buzz out of it, for me it’s making sites look nice, for example, the ability to have a text shadow without even opening photoshop is great. For these guys it’s all about well structured code in order to make applications run smoothly and efficiently, so a lot of the front-end design can easily get overlooked.

To some people, CSS might be regarded as an easy programming language, “oh look, I can change the background colour from red to blue. I’m super smart”, but, without the front end, we’d all be clicking underlined blue links in times new roman font. Whether you think CSS is simple or not, with some of the new properties that are available within the latest spec, such as the transition and transform effects, I think CSS should be regarded as one of the more important programming languages regardless of how simple some of it might be.

I think the talk went well, questions were asked at the end too! If you’d like to see the slides from the presentation, you can view them here. I wrote this yesterday afternoon and created an example website late last night using the rather poor internet connection in the hotel bar. Got there in the end though. I will be writing another blog about my time working here at Applicake tomorrow, so be sure to watch out for that.

I now expect the applicake website to have a border radius on EVERYTHING! ;D

Enjoy,

Aaron

Categories News
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New Video Screencasts

27 Jun 2011
Aaron
article by:
Aaron

Following on from the launch of our video tour screencast in January, we’ve produced some more for you guys. Three more in fact! These videos are part of our ever growing screencast series to help bring you up to speed with the vzaar video platform.

In this mini-series, you’ll get to grips with using Labels to help manage your videos as well as creating Video Playlists and Podcasts. You can also find these videos within our features pages.

We’d love to know what you think!

Thanks,

Aaron

Episode 1: Manage your videos using labels

Episode 2: Create video playlists using labels

Episode 3: Create video podcasts using labels

Categories Feature
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Advanced Player Branding Tips…

10 Jun 2011
Aaron
article by:
Aaron
Aaron Rodgers

We recently added a Brand Overlay tool that allows you to brand your player with any image or logo. We have always had a Video Watermarking tool that actually encodes an image into the video. Watermarking is however geared towards security and digitally stamping your content where as the Brand Overlay is more of a branding and creative tool.

Aaron, one of our funky designers, has been playing around with this new tool and has come up with some advanced techniques on how you can create eye catching effects. Allowing you to do things a little out of the ordinary!!

In addition to Brand Overlay some of the video player parameters have been edited to aid in the effects. Things like turning off the control bar and making the video loop and auto play. Here is a link where you can find a list of player parameters available.

Video In Computer Screen

I created this effect by overlaying an image of the same size as the video and used Photoshop to cut out the viewable area of the computer screen where the video is now playing.

Video Vignette

Another example is the vignette. I’m actually in the page.. woooo spoooky! If you have access to photoshop, an effect like this will only take a few minutes.

David, who heads our Customer Support team, tapped into his creative skills too. He loves this new feature came up with a couple of cool effects of his own.

Video in iPhone Screen

Using this style of overlay, you can make it look like your video is playing back inside the screen of an iPhone.

I found an image of the iPhone, removed the screen in the middle and saved it as a PNG. I then simply uploaded it, and used the overlay tool to place it over my video.

Video In Picture Frame

This is picture frame effect show you how you can give your player borders of any kind.

Feel free to create your own effect and post the url in the comment box below of where the video is published. We would love to see and share your creations.

Categories Feature
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