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Embedding your online video on a website

Once your video is online, look for options to allow "embedding".

YouTube

On YouTube, beneath the video click "Share". A new line appears below and on it click "Embed".

The YouTube share options.

Clicking that link will present some odd looking code.

Vimeo

On Vimeo, click on the Share link.

The Vimeo share link.Click that symbol and various options are presented to you.
This code is what webmasters need to let people watch your film on their website.
Some YouTube embed code.
The Vimeo video sharing options.
Beneath "Embed" is the default code. Click the "+ Show options" link ...
Click "SHOW MORE" to see a range of options:

YouTube display options.  The most important is the Video size option. Click the little arrow beside the default size and you are offered several choices, plus "Custom" where you can type in the width of video display you want on your web page. The height will adjust automatically to suit.

The code in the box will also change to match your choices. Select all the code and copy it, then paste it into your web page.

The Vimeo embedding options.

You can change the Size by simply deleting the offered figures and typing in the width you want.

We suggest leaving all the tick-boxes empty.

Generally we recommend placing videos in a table with two rows, so two videos will appear side-by-side. The default width would be too wide, so we suggest a Custom width of about 350 pixels.  Choose where on your web page you want the video to appear. Copy the embedding code from the video host website and paste it in the code for your web page at that point.

Most web authoring tools either have a special tool for inserting such codes, or they allow you to see all the code behind your web page and you can insert the Embed Code where you want the videos to appear. A common approach is to create a table two-columns wide. In each cell type "xxx". When you look at the code for the whole page you can spot these places easily, and replace "xxx" with the Embed code.

The resulting web page may look a bit strange in your web creation program but once online and seen in a browser the embedding code links up with the video host and pops the video onto the page. Best of all: it works as if you had cut out a rectangle in your web page and let people see the video running underneath it. The storage and web traffic overhead costs fall on the video hosts and not on your website.

If Embedding is Forbidden

Both YouTube and Vimeo allow a film maker to forbid embedding of their video. In both cases it is an either/or choice in the video management options. Vimeo Plus and Vimeo Pro offer a subtler option where the film maker can specify that only certain websites may embed their video. If you face that problem, you must ask the film maker to allow embedding on your website.

We asked David Gibson of Colchester Film Makers Club to explain what that entails:

Setting up the embedding rights on Vimeo is typically done in two stages:

Vimeo me and my settings buttons.Setting up the default.
It's generally best to do this when you first get your Vimeo account, but can be done at any time. Log into Vimeo and go to Me -> My Settings.
You see the page of general settings which starts like this:

Vimeo - start of account settings.



Select the Videos tab. Here you can choose the privacy settings, embed settings, settings for commenting etc. (See below for what it looks like.)

Here at CFMC we're happy for anyone to watch our films on the Vimeo site, but don't wish viewers to leave comments. Regarding embedding, we set our account to 'Only sites I choose' and have established just one domain - the CFMC domain. This means that we can embed films on our web site, but (by default) no-one else can.

Changing the settings for a particular film.

The default setting can be over-ridden by firstly going to Videos -> My Videos and finding the film whose settings you wish to change. This may take quite a while hunting through many pages if you are doing it visually, but note above the display of films is an option bar to sort your results in different methods and notice that there is a 'magnifying glass'  for searching for keywords  in the film's title.

When you've found the film, click on the 'settings' cogwheel in the film's top corner. This opens the 'Video Settings' for the film, defaulting to the Basic Settings. Now select the Privacy tab, and you'll be presented with a screen very similar to the 'Videos' tab in stage (1) above.

In section 2 'WheVimeo embedding settings.  re can this video be embedded?' you'll see the default domain established above. All you now need to do is to click on the '+ Add Domain' under the list to add the domain of the additional site allowed embed this particular film. The entry for IAC is 'theiac.org.uk' . Clicking 'Save Changes' at the bottom of the screen completes the task.

So that's all there is to it; like many things it's easy when you know how, but can involve a bit of searching around for answers when you don't!




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Page updated on 17 March 2015
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