Video in Weebly

In the  third part of the article about Pictures>Video we discuss how to add video your club website. Here is how it is done in Weebly.

A-V Groups should consider making low-resolution videos from their sequences to give a flavour of their work. (Individual AV stills might also be shown  on the site to indicate the normal high-resolution image quality.)

Where a video is placed on your page is controlled by the elements you drag onto the page first. We recommend that you usually use the Two Column Layout element first and insert other elements within the appropriate column.

For more on creating columns in Weebly - see here.

Adding Video

Presenting Video

YouTube

Making a "Cinema" in Weebly

First identify the video on YouTube, click YouTube's Share button and copy the URL (web address). Then in Weebly drag the YouTube element onto the page where you want it. Click on the element and in the toolbar paste the film's URL.

You can amend the displayed size of the video and its position within the element.

IAC members in the UK, who buy the annual copyright licences, benefit from an agreement between YouTube and the music industry which means a very wide choice of music can be used without upsetting copyright holders.

A more detailed description of this process is in Build a Club Website 7

This keeps the Cinema Page neat and attractive without the intrusive start arrows that video hosts add to images.

It also allows space on each film page for a larger image and proper credits including mention of any awards it has won.

Each Film Page is simply a new page created in Weebly's Pages tab with the "Show in navigation?" prompt answered "No".

On it drag a YouTube element or for other video hosts drag a Custom html element. Beneath that drag a regular Paragraph with Title element and type in the film title, credits and so on.

Other Video Hosts

Two Cinema Page options

On the video host website look for an option to share the movie and among the choices there should be one for embedding the movie. Some sites offer the chance to specify the size of picture and type of border. Copy the code they provide.

In Weebly:

• drag the Custom html element onto the page.
• Click in it.
• Click on the toolbar and paste in the code.

The professional (paid for) version of Weebly allows you to store videos on the Weebly site and present them in an unbranded player but only accepts meagre100Mb files. That means short videos and limited quality. We do not recommend it.

Weebly can do this in two ways:

• creating a table on the page and dropping Paragraph with Picture elements into each cell
• using a photo gallery designed to display an "album" of thumbnail size images, each of which appears at full size when clicked.

Making a Cinema Page
- with a table

Making a Cinema Page
with a Photo Gallery

You can also drop Twin Column Layout elements into one another. In this way you get four spaces in a row.

Into each space drag a Paragraph with Picture element and upload a still from one of the videos to be shown.

Click the link button and link to the corresponding Film Page on your site where that movie is stored.

Adjust the image size by clicking on the red dot at its bottom right corner and dragging that. If at first the image is so big that the red dot is outside the edge of the element, use the Picture Tool Bar to set the picture to the right of the space and the red dot will become visible.

Click in the Title option of the element and type in the film title.

The Photo Gallery's toolbar lets you choose how many columns of thumbnails to have in each line as well as specifying borders and spaces.

We can divert that to our purposes because each image can be made into a link taking visitors to the matching Film Page.

But there is a catch. In Photo Gallery the option to add a caption to each picture only works for a pop-up large picture - and when the picture is a link that never appears anyway.

The best work-around is to use a separate image editing program to add titles to the pictures before uploading them:

There are nine pages in this series of detailed Weebly tips:

They support general articles on web design for film-making and AV club websites which begin here.

[Weebly frequently update and improve their system. These pages are based on tests in November 2010.]