File Size

Spence

Good Evening Grinners
I have a question on uploading a large file. My Bride is deep into a battle with cancer and I put together a slide show for her that involved a lot of her friends. It came out far better then we could have imagined and its quite an inspiration. However the file size is 834 megs ...is there a way to upload a file that big to the forum as we would like more people to see it? If not its on my Smugmug site - www.SpencerRice.Smugmug. com and click on the left small panel titled "Sheila's WorldWide Helping Hands". You have to also click on the play bar and you have to have sound..Thanks Spence

David_S85

Smugmug videos are limited to 3 gigs. There would be no problem with those here, as they would not cause a forum hiccup since they would play from an outside source (Smugmug). But...

...Unfortunately, we have not yet discovered how to directly embed a Smugmug video into this forum (running on our current Vanilla forum software). You can, however, link a file or video that is hosted on your Smugmug galleries. That part is simple, but it would just be a clickable text link, which I don't think you want.

Since it is not currently possible to directly embed the Smugmug video, the way I would go about doing that is to use a still image from the video and embed that instead. Then edit the link to directly play the video at your Smugmug site. This involves some magic on your part.

Here's how to do that:
Make a still image file you want to represent a splash frame of your video, upload that to your SM site. While in owner view, load that file and look at that in the lightbox view, click the Share icon on the bottom. Choose the image size and resolution and then click the HTML box. Copy/Paste that in your thread. Post that new thread. At the very least what you now have is a photo embed in your new thread that will direct to that photo (for now) on your site when the viewer clicks it in the forum. But that won't load the video for the viewer, just the photo still file. Stay with me. Now comes the creative part...

What you need to do next is to manually edit that long HTML link you just posted. This involves bringing up the video on your site in a different browser tab. Look at the link at the top of the browser that starts with the "https...." up there. Copy that.

Go back to the thread you just posted and edit the link replacing the first sequence of the "https...." that is in that embedded long HTML with what you just copied. But only the part between the quotation marks. Hit the green Save Comment there on the bottom.

What you should now have is a thread that when the embedded photo is clicked, goes directly to your video instead of the photo. Yes, you replaced the photo link with a video link. The photo in the thread will still be showing, but the viewer should see a video if they click the embedded photo (that embedded photo in the thread is the second sequence of the "https...")

You can even get more creative and upload a photo with what looks like a play [ > ] icon in the middle of the photo, which would look like a video which would play immediately upon clicking the [ > ], which will actually happen.

Hope this helps.

David_S85

Here is an example:

Click the image to go to a video. NOTE: This will directly open a Smugmug site).

If I wanted to re-edit the photo, it would be super easy to also include a "play" icon in the middle of it.

Spence

Thank you Dave - I will give it a try..Spence

David_S85

OK, looks like you're attaching rather than embedding.

This is the code I used above. This might display weird in the forum, but it is one continuous string.

<a href="https://www.davidwattsphotography.com/Other/Forum-Pics-and-Videos/n-KPC2mz/i-qBDwndB/A"><img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-p6gXRnw/1/9f8f8632/L/i-p6gXRnw-L.jpg" alt=""></a>

The first part of this, immediately following the <a href=" and just before the "> is the video component. If you have your video open at your site, it is what is displayed at the top of your browser. Copy/paste that between the first " and the second ".

The second part, and starting right after the <img src=" is the photo of the eclipse I used in the above example. This is what is displayed also at the top of your browser when you look at the photo on your SM site in the Lightbox viewer (the full one-picture display mode when you click your own photo at your site and make it full size).

The eclipse photo and the video above happen to be in the same gallery, but they don't need to be. You could use a photo anywhere on your site to display the splash image.

Again, I could upload another photo somewhere on my site with a huge ">" play graphic in the middle of it if I decided to edit another version and put one up there.

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We're hoping that Vanilla allows us to directly embed our own SM videos some day, but this is the only way for now to do this using your Smugmug account.

For those with Vimeo or YouTube accounts, you can link to those services directly and have them play right within a post more easily.

David_S85

Oh, I should have mentioned that I first generated the code using the individual photo or video Lightbox view > Share Icon > Photo > Choose Size > HTML, then do a cut and paste. I replaced the first section of that code (between the "'s) to include the video Lightbox page and not the photo. That's why clicking the photo goes right to the video instead.

Best to have the gallery(s) set up for Access = "Anyone."

Spence

1

JonaBeth Russell

Another option is to load the video to Vimeo, paste the link directly into your post.

Spence

1