Easily add movies.
ABOUT PREVIEWING PUBLICATIONS/ARTICLES WITH VIDEOS ON IOS DEVICES
Sometimes large movies (in terms of file size) can be missing when executing a Preview on an iOS device (with the Twixl Viewer Classic). For a workaround, see this article.
1. InDesign Media palette
Movies can be embedded in the publication via the Window -> Interactive -> Media palette.
You can add a video clip encoded in H.264 format.
Due to a limitation in InDesign, video files need to have the extension .mp4 and not .m4v. If you have H.264 encoded files with the .m4v extension, you can just change the extension from .m4v to .mp4.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Make sure your files are encoded at a quality optimized for mobile devices, so that they are not unnecessarily too big, preferably not larger than 1080 pixels wide. Also make sure that the bitrate of your video is not too high. The (sad) reality is that some lower end devices only support SD quality with a bitrate of 2 Mbps. Movies with a higher bitrate can be problematic on a lot of older (mainly Android) devices…
Either a frame from within the movie, or an image can be set as a poster frame. Basically, you can also place any text block or image object(s) on top of the movie, e.g. "Click to play movie" or a movie player icon as an indicator for the user. Likewise, if you insert an MP3 audio file, you can place any type of button or text object on top of it. Clicking that object on the iPad will play/stop the sound sample.
If you select "Place a video or audio file" from the media palette, that clip will be embedded in your app.
You can also add a video clip that will be streamed using the 'Place a video from a URL' option. Obviously, if you select this option, the user needs to be online when trying to access the movie.
When a video or audio clip is selected in InDesign, the Twixl Publisher palette also allows you to control the settings relevant for the tablet app.
2. Movie options
- Show Movie Controller: Provides the user with the standard movie controller options to play/pause etc.
- Play In A Loop: Provides a continuous playback of your movie clip.
- Play on page load: Will automatically start a movie clip when a user navigates to that page, and you can set an optional delay for the movie to start.
- Play Full Screen: Will automatically play the movie in full-screen mode when started (movies that don't automatically play full screen can always be zoomed using the movie controller options).
- Return to poster frame after playback: Does exactly that.
- Stream Movie: If you are adding a movie to a publication that will be added to a kiosk app on the Twixl Distribution Platform, checking "Stream Movie" will transparently make it available for streaming, so that the movie does not take up valuable space in the app.
3. YouTube or Vimeo video
ABOUT PUBLIC vs. PRIVATE
When you link Vimeo or YouTube inside a Twixl app, that video needs to be available for everyone. Videos that have privacy settings enabled, will not work.
When drawing a rectangle frame, you can select the element to be a YouTube or a Vimeo movie.
3.1. Options
Just enter the ID of the Youtube or Vimeo video in the Video ID field. You can select exactly the same options that are available for an embedded movie.