Adding Audio and video

It is possible to embed either audio mp3 files or video mp4 files into LifeGuide pages.

Files should be no longer than 20 minutes in duration, as LifeGuide pages timeout after 25 minutes.

Adding Video Files

Previously LifeGuide only supported Flash videos (FLV). Many web browsers no longer support Flash videos, so we now recommend that you only use MP4 videos on Lifeguide.

Videos should be in MP4 format and not contain any special characters in their filename (e.g. a space, comma or hyphen) to be compatible with LifeGuide. Video is streamed directly from the server so will play better if the media file size is kept low. As a reference, each video file should be less than 10 MB, but we recommend keeping each video to less than 1 MB.

Video should be encoded at a constant bit-rate. If you experience problems displaying video in your intervention but can view it properly in a normal media player, it is possible that your video has been encoded using a variable bit-rate (which is incompatible with our LifeGuide Player). You will need to either re-encode your video from the original source (preferable for higher quality), or convert them using software or a website (see section below on Converting Videos into MP4).

Videos can use a lot of memory when uploaded to a server and we ask that you use low resolution videos in your intervention if you are using the LifeGuide Community Server when testing your intervention, especially if you are uploading several copies of your intervention. The low resolution videos can easily be replaced with your high resolution videos when going live. Just make sure the high resolution videos have the same short name as the low resolution videos you are replacing.

There are 3 steps to inserting a video into LifeGuide:

(i) Check that the video is a MP4 video. If it is not, convert it to MP4; (ii) Add the video to your workspace; (iii) Add the video to the page.

(i) Check that the video is a MP4 video

• Check that your video is a MP4 video file by looking at the file extension (the last 3 letters of the file name).
• The file extension needs to say .mp4 to be a MP4 file. If does not you will need to convert it (see below).

Converting Videos into MP4

There are plenty of options for converting video, but we recommend http://video.online-convert.com/convert-to-mp4 as it produces consistant results. Please note that this website is external to LifeGuide and is not affiliated with, or supported by the LifeGuide Team.

(ii) Adding the video to your Workspace

You will need to save the video that you want to use into the workspace folder in LifeGuide:

• Go to the location where you have saved your video
• Copy and paste it into the Workspace of the authoring tool (by right-clicking on it and selecting Copy then choosing Paste, this can also be done by dragging it from one folder to the other). The Workspace is found in the LifeGuide folder in the C drive of your computer. Videos must be placed in the Workspace individually, i.e. they should not be placed in a folder within the Workspace.
• You will then need to click on your project folder in the Project Explorer area of the authoring tool and press the F5 button on your keyboard (or close the authoring tool and open it again) to refresh the authoring tool so that you are able to see the video in the Project Explorer.

If you have lots of videos to copy over, you may find that LifeGuide runs faster if you copy over a few videos then refresh your Workspace, instead of copying them all over at once and refreshing the Workspace at the end.

Alternatively, you can drag the video file from its original location to the project folder in the Project Explorer of the authoring tool. A copy of the video will then be saved in your project and still be saved in its original folder.

(iii) Adding a video to the page

Videos can be added by clicking on the Multimedia button and selecting Video.

• Click on the Multimedia button and select Video.
• a black video screen will be displayed on the top left hand side of the editing area of the page author.
• Move this to wherever you want the image to be positioned on the page.
• Enter the name of the file (e.g. welcome_video.mp4) into Video Location in the Video Properties area.
• To view your video, you will need to Preview or Export your intervention.

Note! The Authoring tool uses flash player to view videos, but the community server and live server use a modern web player. This means that your video can be viewed on most browsers and mobile platforms when exported to the server.

Image or video type

If you want an image or video to be presented as a feedback object (only to some users but not others) or as an error object (when the end-user clicks the next button but hasn’t filled in required information in the interactions) you will need to choose the corresponding option in the Other Properties section of the properties menu. More details of these different types can be found in on the textbox page.

Adding Audio Files

• Save them as MP3 files in the Workspace (in the same way as videos are saved - please see the section (ii) Adding the video to your Workspace above).
• In the authoring tool, click on Multimedia, then Video.
• In the Video Location box, please make sure you enter the file name exactly as it appears in your workspace, e.g. intro.mp3