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Presentation Tools‎ > ‎Piclens‎ > ‎

How to Embed Videos in Cooliris

This was covered on the main Cooliris page but in case you missed it, go to this webpage and follow the instructions therein:

http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/08/07/slide-into-piclens-for-your-next-presentation/

Step 2: Take a look at the files and folders that Cooliris makes

This step is just a bit of orienteering, if you converted a presentation into a Cooliris wall it should have been saved into a folder which has the same name as your original powerpoint file.

Inside the folder you should see the following files and folders:

Step 3: Convert your video file into FLV format

Cooliris will only play videos that are in the FLV format so before you can use them in your presentation you must convert them.

The easiest way of doing this is to download Format Factory (it's free) and then use this to convert your file.

Click here to visit Format Factory's home page: http://www.formatoz.com/


Step 4: Copy your FLV video file into the slides directory


You first saw the Slides directory in Step 2, now you want to copy/move your FLV file into it:


In this example I have called my video file "slide15.flv":



Step 5: Copy a "PlaceHolder" image into the Thumbs directory


Videos in Cooliris walls are not played until you click on them; in the meantime Cooliris shows a 'placeholder' image in the videos place.

In order for your video to display correctly you now need to find a place holder image for the video and copy it into the "thumbs" directory - the image can be anything you like but it must be saved as a JPG file.

e.g.






Step 6: Edit the photos.rss file


In this step you will edit the rss file that Cooliris uses to "build" the wall.  You can use any text/html editor to edit the rss file, in this example I've used Notepad.



When you open the file up in Notepad it looks like this:


You now need to paste in the following block of text for each video slide that you want to add:

<item>
<title>Slide XX</title>
<link>slides/Yourvideo.FLV</link>
<guid>46c61ae1-a57a-4075-9302-1d95afd8c915</guid>
<media:thumbnail url="thumbs/Your_placeholder.JPG" />
<media:content type="video/x-flv" url="slides/Yourvideo.FLV"/>
</item>


Slide XX should be replaced with the title you'd like your video slide to have: e.g. "My Video" or "Slide 15" etc.

Yourvideo.FLV should be replaced with the file name of your FLV video that you saved into the slides directory in step 4.

Your_placeholder.JPG should be replaced with the file name of the JPG placeholder you saved into the "thumbs" directory in step 5.

In the example below I am going to add my video slide as the 15th slide that is shown so that the green text shown below is replaced with the red text shown after.

Before Video added

    <item>
        <title>Slide 14</title>
        <link>slides/slide14.JPG</link>
        <media:thumbnail url="thumbs/slide14.JPG" />
        <media:content url="slides/slide14.JPG" type="image/jpeg" />
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>Slide 15</title>
        <link>slides/slide15.JPG</link>
        <media:thumbnail url="thumbs/slide15.JPG" />
        <media:content url="slides/slide15.JPG" type="image/jpeg" />
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>Slide 16</title>
        <link>slides/slide16.JPG</link>
        <media:thumbnail url="thumbs/slide16.JPG" />
        <media:content url="slides/slide16.JPG" type="image/jpeg" />
    </item>

After video added

    <item>
        <title>Slide 14</title>
        <link>slides/slide14.JPG</link>
        <media:thumbnail url="thumbs/slide14.JPG" />
        <media:content url="slides/slide14.JPG" type="image/jpeg" />
    </item>

     <item>
        <title>Slide 15</title>
        <link>slides/slide15.FLV</link>
        <guid>46c61ae1-a57a-4075-9302-1d95afd8c915</guid>
        <media:thumbnail url="thumbs/slide15.JPG" />
        <media:content type="video/x-flv" url="slides/slide15.FLV"/>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>Slide 16</title>
        <link>slides/slide16.JPG</link>
        <media:thumbnail url="thumbs/slide16.JPG" />
        <media:content url="slides/slide16.JPG" type="image/jpeg" />
    </item>

Step 7: Test it out!


Once you have saved your RSS file you should be able to take your new presentation for a spin.

Here's a video of one I made earlier...


The video used in this example is taken from a trailer for Counselling Training DVDs made by the School of Health & Social Sciences in the Universtiy of Wales, Newport.

You can watch the full trailer here & purchase the DVDs here.