Movie
A Movie is used to display video, audio or flash content within your site, and can be a page or a pagelet. As well as simply adding a multimedia file to a site, you can use a Movie for such things as:
- Podcasting or Videocasting
- Adding background music to your site or a particular page.
When you first create a Movie, no media file is yet associated with it, so it looks like this:
Movie pages and pagelets use Apple's Quicktime software to embed the multimedia within the page. Because of this, visitors must have Quicktime installed on their computer to play the Movie.
If you wish for visitors to be able to view multimedia content without Quicktime installed, you need to add the file to your site as a File Download and then link to it.
Downloads
Visitors can only directly download a movie file if they have Quicktime Pro installed. If you wish to make a movie easily downloadable by visitors, you must also add it to your site as a File Download and then link to it.
If a Movie page is part of an RSS feed it is automatically added as an enclosure and so is correctly downloaded by applications subscribing to the feed.
Movie Sizes
When you add a Movie to a site, Sandvox checks the video's width (in pixels) to ensure it will fit. If the movie is too wide, Sandvox will automatically display it scaled down to fit. Scaling the film like this can result in a poor quality while viewing online, and longer download times for visitors.
The maximum widths for movies are:
- 320 pixels for pages with the Sidebar visible
- 640 pixels for pages without the Sidebar visible
- 200 pixels for pagelets
Note that Sandvox only scales the video file down for viewing. The actual published file is exactly the same as the original, so if a visitor downloads the movie using Quicktime Pro, they can watch it at full resolution. This is in contrast to images which are resized by Sandvox resulting in a smaller file size.
By publishing a movie that is larger than it needs to be, it can take longer for visitors to download it. Consider resizing such videos with a tool like Apple's Quicktime Pro to speed load times.
If you want to display a movie on your site that is wider than 640 pixels, add it as a File Download and then link to it.
Referencing
Sandvox allows you to specify whether media files (such as movies) are copied into the Sandvox document of a site. Due to their large size, we generally recommend that you do not allow Sandvox to copy movie files into the document. Instead, set this behavior to "Automatic" and keep the movie files in your "Movies" folder. For more information, please see the "Media" article.
Settings
To edit a Movie page:
- Click the Movie in the Site Outline to select it.
- Open the Page Inspector. The top half contains general page attributes; the bottom holds settings specific to the Movie as listed below.
To edit a Movie pagelet:
- Select the Movie by clicking it.
- Open the Selection Inspector. The top half contains general pagelet attributes; the bottom holds settings specific to the Movie as listed below.
Please note that it is possible for site visitors' own computer settings to override some of the settings here.
Source
You can use any video or audio file that Quicktime can handle, or Flash movies. For more information on this, please see "Supported Movie Formats."
Video can either be from your computer, or from an existing location on the internet.
To set the movie:
- Click the "Choose…" button.
- Select a video, audio or Flash file from your computer.
or:
- Enter the URL of a existing movie on the internet. e.g.
http://www.example.com/mymovie.mp4
By using an external URL for the movie, you save having to upload the file (which may take some time!), and may use less of your bandwidth.
When using a movie page or pagelet, it is a good to bear in mind your visitors' connection speed (try to use relatively small video files) and their installed software (avoid unusual codecs that they may not have).
Automatically Play
If checked, the movie will start playing once the page has loaded.
Show Controller
Whether to display the small strip of controls at the bottom of the movie and only applies to actual video files. The controller is always visible for audio-only files; it is never visible for Flash movies.
Enable Popup Menu
Allows visitors to control-click or right-click the movie to bring up a menu of additional commands. When selected, more commands are available then when not selected. Also sets the visibility of the popup item at the far right of the control strip below the movie (Not for Flash).
Loop
If checked, the movie will play continuously, starting again once it has finished.
