Video design variable considerations

We encourage users to post events happening in the community to the community events group on https://www.drupal.org.
rmjackson's picture

I've recently finished a big video project, hoping to be the next big YouTube. I'm hoping they are too. In the process I encountered a host of different challenges as you do with any new project. I thought I'd share some of the critical success variables back with the community. Hopefully, I'll help you avoid some of the growing pains I suffered through.

Making decisions about how to present Drupal Video content is complex. There are so many things to consider. Technology is changing quickly in this space too, making video an even tougher topic to tackle. Big complex tasks are made easy broken down into their component parts. This old engineering principle is as true today where web video design is concerned as it was when the Pharaohs built the pyrimads. This blog will highlight the key decision making variables you need to consider and ultimately answer as a designer.

Making decisions about how to present Drupal Video content is complex.  There are so many things to consider.  Technology is changing quickly in this space too, making video an even tougher topic to tackle.  Big complex tasks are made easy broken down into their component parts.  This old engineering principle is as true today where web video design is concerned as it was when the Pharaohs built the pyrimads.  This blog will highlight the key decision making variables you need to consider and ultimately answer as a designer. 

  1. Who is your audience?  You want your video content to cater to your market.  Identify that audience and many of your design decisions are already made for you. Are they non-technical elderly people looking for simple advice on HealthCare?  If so, you'll need to choose the solution that requires nearly no user effort.  Browse to the page that contains video and watch it.  If your viewers are technical students from a University, then some user setup might possible.  Your viewing audience is one of your most important considerations in architecting your video solution. 
  2. Who will be contributing your video content?  Who adds your video is almost as critical as your audience.  Quality, and content, entertainment value aside, do your contributors know anything about uploading video to the web?  Do they know anything about the many video formats?  Do they know anything about file sizes and how long they'll take to transfer?  There are many many questions that you need to answer here before you dive into the more technical details.
  3. Will your User Interface be intuitive?  Facebook is a great site to look to in this regard.  The reason it is the biggest social network in the world is because it's very easy to use.  You can choose a video from your PC and it'll play in facebook.  Drupal by default is not as easy.  Your site needs to be this easy.
  4. Do you want your video to be available on mobile devices?  If so, then you'll need to avoid flash video.  The iPhone doesn't display flash videos.  Flash videos have, up until now, been a web favourite way of showing video content.  Will you consider HTML5 support in your site?  There are a host of decisions you'll need to make in this regard, in order to include the growing mobile browser audience.
  5. Are you going to encode your video?  There are many many different video types.  Flash has .flv files.  Apple Quicktime videos are .mov.  Windows format is .wmv.  There are many more.  You need to support the widest possible number of file formats, if you are to be a success in this space.  This usually means video encoding.  A user uploads any type of video, you convert it to the optimal solution for you, then you present it.  There are a great number of technical decisons to be made here that can make or break your decision.
  6. What web-based video player will you choose?  Will you support one or multiple video players?  Will users need to download players or will it be embedded available through your server?  What licensing is associated with the player?
  7. Will you consider a video service?  There are many third party video services available to encode and store your video for you.  Most of these are commercial services.  There are many questions to consider in retaing a third party video service.  One of these questions is will they guarantee you 24 by 7 uptime?  If they're down when your peak time hits, the only recourse you'll have is to call their support que with the other people waiting for them to fix it.  Will it be worth considering one of these? 
  8. What Drupal Video modules will be the best choice?  There are many Drupal modules that deliver video content: swftools, video, Kaltura...and on and on and on.  Each has it's own unique advantages, depending upon your needs. Which of them will continue to be supported and developed?  Which will get morphed into new solutions?
  9. What are the external limits?  Bandwidth and the cost of it is a major concern when delivering large quantities of video.  Many Content Delivery Networks have gone under by overlooking this part of the equation.  Co-location, backup, hardware selection, operating systems hosting these solutions are all a part of the puzzel.  If your audience is small with no plans of getting big, ignore this.  If you have great aspirations with your video, suffice it to say that these elements need to be considered. 
  10. How much power and control do you have?  A wise man once told me not to worry about things I can't control.  I'd been over-reacting about some foolishness that was getting in the way of doing my job in the professional way I wanted to be known.  A good part of these questions require that you have a great deal of power and control to shape your solution.  More often than not, you don't have complete decision making authority.  As such, you'll need to take the lead in educating your partners, superiors and employees.  This is the hardest part by far.  Patience, persevearance, and diplomacy will be the most important skills you'll need in getting this complex planning stage done right.

These are a few of the video-delivery questions that demand answers, if you're hoping for any kind of successful solution.  You'll see that there is a video at the top of this page Drupal Video Design Considerations that represents my solution.  It's near and dear to my heart: my two sons sining a song they made up while they were supposed to be finishing their supper, The Hummus in my Lunch song.  I recorded it and used it as motivation to carry through my research to it's conclusion.   

Please comment as I go along to help shape the best Drupal video solution discussion.

Comments

Great article, behind the

heshanlk's picture

Great article, behind the seen technical aspects will boost you up if you know what your doing when work with videos. Having great knowledge of videos, video formats, how they funneled through third party plug-in and many more aspects. I think HTML5 videos gonna be great solution and evolving for play videos on web and mobile devices.

I did the video module and I tried my best to make it more user friendly and easy to use, the actual hard technical stuff hided from the users but I encourage every one of you to dig more in to videos when you need videos on your site. Its vital aspect.

Senior Drupal Developer at DrupalConnect

*_*

beautifulmind's picture

This is really informative.
Any one who is developing a site with videos should consider all these points.

Thanks for sharing with community.

Regards.

My pleasure

rmjackson's picture

_

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. I try to add positive feedback on other peoples posts too. In my mind, the more the merrier.

I've had a remarkable number of comments on the external blog too. Some people are putting me to work for them, getting formal documentation together. You gotta love it.

Have a nice day,

Good start

nasi's picture

That's a comprehensive list of questions. Now we just need the answers! Looking forward to reading those.

Incidentally, I would watch the representative video on your blog, but I don't have Flash installed so that's a non-starter. I guess your solution doesn't include HTML support…

Working on it

rmjackson's picture

Nasi,

Appreciate this feedback. This is exactly what I'm hoping for. I was expecting a non-flash comment. I would have been a little disappointed if there wasn't one. :)

This excellently demonstrates one of the key choices.

Do I use flash and cover the mass majority? Do I not use flash? Do I use HTML5? On and on and on.

Glad to hear you're looking forward to the follow-up. Working on it. Shooting for Monday the 31st of Jan for the first installment.

Stay tuned,

Use both!

nasi's picture

I'd say the most inclusive/progressive solution is to use HTML <video> with a fallback to flash, based on browser capabilities. That way you're not leaving out either camp.

HTML5 is more straight

heshanlk's picture

HTML5 is more straight forward, but has some serious cons like, doesn't support RTMP

Senior Drupal Developer at DrupalConnect

Great guide!

jrdixey's picture

Robbie, this couldn't be more well-timed for my purposes. I just joined the group to mine exactly this kind of thinking. Thank you for posting it. The Drupal community rocks.

Re: Flash vs HTML5 <video>, I think the most compelling argument for the HTML5-with-fallback-to-Flash camp is that using Flash - while it accommodates the vast majority of desktops - unfortunately still leaves out a significant (iOS) portion of the possible total viewership. Moving to a solution that doesn't leave out a big part of the mobile market is probably inevitable, until Apple changes their collective mind about Flash (or iOS starts losing a lot of market share to Android, which doesn't look likely unless Apple or Verizon seriously stumble in the near future).

Jennifer