Adding Mp4 videos to play in Help topics

[Cardinal Richelieu]

Hi,

In Flare 12, I'm trying to add a wee "play video" image appear in a topic. When the user clicks it, it expands to play an mp4 video.

I've tried a couple of different ways of doing this and neither works exactly how I want to do it.

1. If I add it as a multimedia file, I can't resize the video once it starts, i.e. it's either massive and takes up half the screen even if you don't want to watch it, or it's tiny and impossible to see what's going on if you do want to watch it. In the http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... Movies.htm topic, it talks about various advanced options, but none seem to be available for mp4 videos, only WMA, MOV etc. There's also an option for HTML% videos in Flare which aren't mentioned in that help topic but there are no options that help me there.
2. I add my wee image of a video, and then hyperlink it to play a video. This works better, but depending on which option you choose, the video either appears in a new tab (which you have to close to return to the topic), or in a new page (so the user needs to click back). Neither is ideal. I'd like the video to appear over the topic, so that it's easy to dismiss it again.

The infuriating thing is I'm sure I had this working before, but now I can't see any way of doing it. Can anyone help?

Thanks.

[devjoe]

Can you put the video inside drop-down text or a topic linked as a popup?

[Cardinal Richelieu]

Can you put the video inside drop-down text or a topic linked as a popup?

Ah. Never thought about that! I tried the pop up option but it didn't look that great, but as you suggested, I put the video into a "Show Me" drop-down and added a bookmark, then assigned the book mark to the video preview image. So now when you click the image, it automatically expands the pop-up and plays the video and it looks pretty neat (even if I do say so myself!).

I'm still not sure how I managed to get it working originally though. I DEFINITELY had the video set up in such a way that you clicked the image, it played the video on top of the topic, then you had to click anywhere outside the video to dismiss it.

Thanks very much for your help Devjoe!

[victoriasmith]

Ah. Never thought about that! I tried the pop up option but it didn't look that great, but as you suggested, I put the video into a "Show Me" drop-down and added a bookmark, then assigned the book mark to the video preview image. So now when you click the image, it automatically expands the pop-up and plays the video and it looks pretty neat (even if I do say so myself!).

Sorry about reopening this post from April.
I am about to start adding videos into my Flare topics, and I'm thinking of how best to place them. I really like the way you seem to have done it, but I can't figure out what I would need to do to make the "Show me" drop-down. Could you provide me with some examples or XML code snippets so I can see what's happening?

Thanks for the help!

[hoffie4]

For victoriasmith, it sounds to me like Cardinal Richelieu added a small image that is a preview of the video and made that a link to the video that opens it in a popup. Then they placed the hyperlinked image inside of a standard drop-down hotspot so it is hidden until the hotspot is expanded. Maybe they can verify that this is correct?

What I am mainly curious about is how they managed to have the preview image function as a thumbnail for the video and expand it--as I understand--not as a popup window but as an actual thumbnail that expands.

I DEFINITELY had the video set up in such a way that you clicked the image, it played the video on top of the topic, then you had to click anywhere outside the video to dismiss it.

I am looking to make something similar happen, so that the video initially shows on the page as a small thumbnail and clicking on it expands and plays the video at a reasonable size. I want to avoid using a thumbnail image that is a hyperlink to a popup of the video if it is possible.