How to link to a youtube or vimeo video in Adobe Presenter

[RubyBlue9]

I am new to using Presenter, and am having trouble inserting videos in Adobe Presenter (the videos are often over 1 hour in duration) and am wondering if it's possible to instead insert/embed the link to the video, which is hosted on either YouTube or Vimeo. Is there a simple way to do this?

Thank you for your help!

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Inserting the link is easy, just put a hyperlink on the slide to the YouTube video, then set the Advance By User setting to yes (in Slide Manager), so the presentation will wait for the user to view the video and then come back to the presentation when they are done. Then the user will need to select play to continue on with the presentation.

Alternatively, you could look to build (or search for) a SWF that would call to the video on YouTube and play it within the SWF. You would still need to put that Advance By User setting to yes, as the Presenter application will have no knowledge of the durration of the object on the slide.

Also keep in mind that the default time out setting for users not interacting with the presentation is 30 min. This means of you send a user off, or have them sitting and watching, but not interacting with the presentation for more than that time, their session will be timed out and any further interactions (wich will happen since Presenter pre-loads the content locally on their computer) will not be reported. You may need to chance the Time Out durration (Administration section of Connect) to accomodate your longer presentations.

It may also be worth having the video separate from the presentation, since it is so long. You could use a Curriculum in Connect (if you have the training module) to place the FLV video as an object before or after the Presenter content, or you could use the external training object to link directly to the video.

As a parting thought, you are likely to struggle with effectiveness of training with eLearning objects that are longer than 15-20 min in durration. This is due to the fact that the users attention span and screen saver will cause them to lose focus on the training. Most students need a break every few min to collect themselves.

[RubyBlue9]

Hi Jorma,

Thank you so much for responding so quickly and for all your helpful tips. I'll work with your suggestions!

Lisa

[akuswara3]

in relevance to this thread, can we embed YouTube video inside the presentation?

Office 2010 can take a YouTube video streamed inside the presentation, but when that PPTX is exported through Adobe Presenter is there a way to keep the embeded video working?

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

If it doesn't work when published with Presenter, then I don't know that there is a workaround. The easiest solution is probably still to either hyperlink to the video, or to snag the video off YouTube and place it in the body of the presentation as an FLV.

[n_maxwell]

It is possible to play a YouTube video directly inside Adobe presenter, using Google's YouTube ActionScript 3 API.  The code is below. 

You neeed to update the code with the desired VIDEOID (x2) and the video size (my_player.SetSize).  You also need to change the document size of your Flash project to match the YouTube video dimensions.  Finally, you need to remove or update the "startSeconds" and "endSeconds" depending on whether or not you want to play a specific segement of a given YouTube video.

Fix up the code, paste it into a Flash project and publish to SWF.  Then add the SWF to your PowerPoint via the Adobe Presenter plugin, publish the PowerPoint and you're in business.

--------

Security.allowDomain("www.youtube.com");

var my_player:Object;

var my_loader:Loader = new Loader();

my_loader.load(new URLRequest("http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID?version=3"));

my_loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.INIT, onLoaderInit);

function onLoaderInit(e:Event):void{

          addChild(my_loader);

          my_player = my_loader.content;

          my_player.addEventListener("onReady", onPlayerReady);

}

function onPlayerReady(e:Event):void{

          my_player.setSize(000,000);

          my_player.cueVideoById({'videoId': 'VIDEOID', 'startSeconds': 0, 'endSeconds': 0, 'suggestedQuality': 'large', 'rel': 0});

}

[akuswara3]

Thanks n.maxwell,

I'm so glad to know there is a wayaround.

but i'm not a flash developer, although we actually have a flash CS6 bundle installed on this machine, but what is it needed to be done in Flash? can this thread be turned into a step by step instruction? since video is catching winds in becoming a significant learning content media, having the ability to take it on board is important and crucial IMHO.

or better yet, any plan to incorporate this wayaround into a formal feature of Presenter?

[n_maxwell]

Hi akuswara3, thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately, it appears that that the method I originally posted (above) is now broken in Presenter 8 and 9.  The YouTube video still plays fine, but otherwise the entire Presenter interface breaks as soon as the video is played (all clickable items stop responding).

That being said, you don't really need to be a Flash developer to create an SWF handler for a YouTube video.  If you have access to the Flash development application, then all you need to do is

1. Open Flash (from your CS6 bundle)
2. Paste the above ActionScript into the "Actions Frame"
3. Modify the script according to the instructions above to make the script call the desired YouTube video
4. Click File->Publish to output a SWF file.

That's it.  Google's YouTube API (and its AS3 interface) simplifies the matter, doing all the heavy lifting for us.  The end result will be a SWF file that uses the YouTube API to call, load, and play a YouTube video.  Anywhere you can embed that SWF file, you can play a YouTube video.

Unless, of course, Adobe does something to break it. 

Oh BTW - as for your last question.  I do believe that the newest release of Adobe Captivate allows for HTML embedding, including <iframes>.  This would effectively eliminate the problem altogether, as you could simply embed YouTube videos using the <iframe> embed code that YouTube generates for you. 

But for now, the best way to get a YouTube into Adobe Presenter is via hyperlink (very disappointing).  Instead of a plain text hyperlink, I'd suggest a screenshot of the video and hyperlinking the image instead - or at least creating a "video button" in the PPT (better interface communication).

Message was edited by: n.maxwell

[akuswara3]

Thanks. n.maxwell for the update, so now i don't have to wander around why things not working

ok, i think to keep things simple, will less likely things break apart.