Oops I’ve Done It Again - PRWeb Feature Video
June 11, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
trackback
Categories: Castle, Insider, PRWeb, Puter Stuff, Web Design & Dev, gnash-teeth
This week you’ll see a lot of buzz going on about the latest deployment of one of my creations - PRWeb Feature Video.
Awhile back before PRWeb sold to Vocus, one of PRWebs power users Lee Odden asked PRWeb Founder and then CEO, David McInnis if we could support embedded video and I took the lead to develop it. After much thought and prodding from David, I defined some simple requirements for myself.
- Provide for the embedding of multimedia within the release in the easiest way possible.
- I did this by creating a widget within the Advanced Features of the PRWeb News Management console which allows a customer to paste in just about anything from the HTML code most sites offer for embedding into a blog to the URL for the video itself. Customers need only know how to copy and paste, I do the rest.
- Allow for customers to use all of the embedded features - Quotables and the News Image without over crowding the textual element of the release.
- I accomplish this by standardizing the height and width of the Feature Video in addition and merge it with the Quotables I developed if the customer has enabled this option. The placement is predefined allowing for ideal readability at 1024×760 resolution if all options are enabled.
- Allow for the usage of existing media already shared online.
- I started with supporting three of the most popular video sharing sites online - Youtube, Google Video, and Yahoo Video.
- Not increase the bandwidth, server space, and most importantly sidestep the legal ramifications of a video sharing site.
- By making use of existing content on other video sharing sites a customer must only upload the video once, in this way I do not need to provide for storage of video and its conversion to flash. PRWeb incurs no additional bandwidth load. Additionally we rely on these third party video sharing sites and their terms of service to perform the bulk of the policing of copyright infringement and other legal issues.
Why did you call it “Feature Video” you may ask? I named it that because of the end result I envisioned. I did not want the video to be included as a file attachment to the release, it should be fairly prominent on the order of the News Image, and therefore must occur within the body of the release. In this way the naming was descriptive, intuitive and simple.
Several customers have participated with a beta test of the initial incarnation of Feature Video, including one of my favorite networks - the Discovery press release for TLC. They seem to be pretty happy with the service and tools my team has created and David originally built by the looks of their Feature Video.
Updated: At the request of a co-worker I have removed some commentary which could effect stock prices, birth rates, and crop yields. The commentary is merely on a hiatus and will be released in a future follow-up post.
Comments»
Nice job, Al. I’m glad you guys saw this one through. Video communication is only becoming the standard in a variety of media.
I still think Quotables are the devil. Not only are they misnamed, they don’t contribute to the layout and overbear the headline! It’s like an intentional finger smudge on an otherwise fine photograph.
We’ve recently increased the font size and weight of the headlines as well as centering them. Quotables are cousins of the pull-quote and bear the same shame.