Family Historian User Group

This feature is up and running on a FH 6.2 website. The website is private. Before I post a demo link or a setup guide, I would like to see if there is any interest.

Video / Audio player:
1. User clicks on thumbnail marked as a video or audio recording.
2. The enlarged image pops up, as expected.
3. *** New functionality starts *** The image fades
4. The background darkens to black and a video / audio player fades in.
5. The User can click play and has the controls for moving through the media, volume and full page.
6. The user can click a cancel X button in the upper right.
7. The player fades out and the background fades in. The user is back where they started on the page.

Features:
• Video .mp4 or audio .mp3 can be local hosted on the site used for the FH tree and play back free of ads.
• Videos can also come from Youtube or Vimeo.
• If the tree site is behind a password access, the local hosted video or audio cannot be played, even if a direct link is found.
• Direct links are not visible from the page and are obfuscated,inside a separate file.
• The videos need only to be set one time and they will continue to work with each web update.
• Player playback dynamically adjusts for browser width, iPad, phone. If you shrink the browser size, the playback auto refits to the new size immediately.
• Local media files can have their own poster image for the player.
• All instances of the video / audio thumbnails are updated to work with every new report or website update. If the user ads a new report for a family branch and includes 20 different video thumbs of any image size, all of these thumbnails will click through and start the appropriate video.
• Only one instance of the video / audio is required on the server.
• Media files, thumbnail and poster images for the media are kept their own folders, outside the Family Tree hosted folder. These files are not affected, or removed by a web update.

What’s the catch? It is not a plugin at the moment and it takes about 20 steps to add new videos. Videos already setup continue to work, without extra effort. In the setup, you don't have to edit page links. That is all done automatically. But, you probably need to be a web designer to be comfortable, setting this up.

Please comment below if you are interested to know more about this feature. Is General the right place to keep this post?

This guy Emailed me directly with his ideas, which offer a novel media popup feature, so I suggested he post them here.
If users like the feature, then the scripts and instructions can be added to the Knowledge Base and possibly incorporated into my Improve Website or CD DVD HTML Plugin.
He also suggested this feature would support displaying PDF files as well as video and audio files.

This looks like an extremely useful addition. I'd be very interested to know more.

This looks very interesting indeed - would love to know more!

There are a couple of responses, thanks. Here is a link to a audio / video player demo page that uses the same code.
http;//www.producerelease.com/player

The player works on phones, iPads, notebooks, desktops with any browser width. The video automatically adjusts to changes even while it's playing. Try changing your browser width to see how this works.

This will work the same way inside a Family Historian web site. To get it to work still takes some setup steps and then fewer steps are needed to update your site with new audio or video. Any previously setup audio or video does not need to be setup again. They will just continue to work, even after an entire site update.

This code can pretty easily be adjusted to accept pdf links. You could just click on an image and a pdf would open.

Anyone who knows some html and js script can go in and see how the demo page works. If you feel you want to try to use this on your Family Historian page, let me know, either here or directly with a message and I will be happy to give you the code and steps and answer questions.