Audio & Video recordings

Your Insight web site can be used to store audio and video files. Recordings can either be accessed directly from the web site, or can be downloaded to the user's computer for later use. Some file types can also be featured as part of a podcast service to enable a wider audience to access your material.

This guide provides an introduction to preparing your multimedia recordings for distribution over the internet, uploading those files to your web site, and linking them to other services and content.

Preparing your files

Before you upload your multimedia files to the Insight media servers you should first ensure that the material is in a format which is accessible to your audience. Both audio and video files are usually compressed – a process which involves dramatically reducing the amount of data making up the file in order to speed up the download time when it is accessed by a visitor to your web site.

Compression is always, to some degree, a compromise. In order to reduce the size of the file, data has to be thrown away – the compression tools you use aim to minimise the impact of this “slimming down” by throwing away the less noticeable aspects of the audio/video and retain the “essence” of how the recording should look or sound. Terms like mp3, wma, mp4, m4a and real audio for audio files and wmv, quicktime, flash video for video files all refer to the compression format – you can see a list of all the formats we support in the “create new recording” wizard referred to later, along with links to tools to produce these files.

Most compression tools offer a wide variety of settings - the more compression you use the smaller the file (and hence the quicker the download for your visitor) but the lower the quality. In practice we recommend:

Audio files

32kbps for speech.
64kbps for previews of music.
128kbps for CD-like sound quality music.

Many tools offer a “variable bit rate” setting which uses more bits only when necessary – further saving file size. If you are intending to provide a podcasting audio service you will need to use the mp3 format to ensure compatibility with the majority of podcast applications.

Video files

242kbps for small video window
384kbps for higher quality video (suitable for broadband visitors only).

In many cases you may wish to provide a number of different formats with different levels of compression to accommodate your visitor’s connection speed.

Creating a Recording

Once you have recorded and compressed your file you need to add it to a "recording" to publish it. A “recording” is a container which includes information about the media (such as speaker/artist, title, keywords etc.) and can include one or more media files. In some instances a “recording” may include a mixture of video and audio in a range of different formats. You can publish a recording as follows:

If you haven’t logged into the web site already, do so now. Click the Login link and enter the login name and password as supplied.
Once you have successfully logged in click the web office link. The Web Office will be displayed shortly afterwards.

Once you are logged into the Web Office you can upload your file and publish it as follows:

Step 1 - Select the area to publish the recording within
Audio and video recordings are stored in the Media area, which are available as part of individual groups within the site structure. They can also be published within media folders.
First select the group from the group tree on the left-hand side, work pane refresh.
Next select the Media tab, the work pane will refresh to list the media already uploaded to this area.
If you are wanting to add your recording to a media folder seelct it now or use the Create a media folder below groupname to create a new media folder.
Step 2 - Upload the files
Now you have selected the area you wish to publish your recording within you can upload it as follows:
Select the Add an audio/video recording to groupname task, a new "Audio/Video Management" window should open.
Select the list of support formats link to check that the file you are about to upload is supported, if it isn't you'll need to return to preparing your file.
If the file format you are uploading is supported select the Upload new files task.
Click the Upload button and then select the file from your computer that you wish to upload the file you have selected will begin to be uploaded and a graphic will display the progress of the upload.
Note: You can select and upload several files simultaneaously by selecting both files together using the windows Ctrl + click selection.
Note: We set no limit on the upload file size or total stage capacity but remember smaller files will be quicker to download. If you are uploading large files you can continue to work in the Web office whilst the files are uploading.
Step 3 - Add files to the Recording
Once the files have been uploaded click on a file from the uploaded file list, that you wish to add to your recording.
Once a file is selected it'll be highlighted by a blue bar and the Select file button will become enabled. Click on the Select File button to add the file to the recording.
A tab will be highlighted titled with the file format you have uploaded e.g..mp3 File. If you know the Bitrate that you compressed your file at enter it here.
If you wish to add another file to the recording select the Add more files button and repeat the process. When you've uploaded all the files select Continue
The Recording Properties tab should now be selected. Enter the details about the recording.
Note:Only the title and speaker/artist fileds are mandatory. The description filed is used in the media search however so this field will ideally contain a clear description containing the keywords users might search for on the item.
As with articles and images you can set the visibility of the recording according to whether people are visitors to the site, registered site members or group members. Additionally, you can explicitly set the recording to be published for users to see on the completion of the upload process, or you can choose to keep it hidden for later publication.
Click OK to commit these detaills.

The recording will now be visible on your web site within the Audo/Video area located beneath the Home menu option.

Displaying media on your web site

Once you have successfully published a recording on your web site it'll automatically become visible on your web site under the Audio/Video area, and will also be picked up in the site search. You may also wish to display your recording within a particular group of your web site e.g."Downloads", "Resources" etc, or link to it from a specific article e.g."presentation notes".

Linking to a recording from within an article

You can create a link from within an article to an audio/video recording. For instructions on how to create a link from within an article see the How do I create a link? article. When selecting the content you wish to link to you'll need to select the 'Audio or Video recording' option.

Media lists

To display a list of uploaded Audio/Video files within a specific area, or on your homepage, you can add the media list component to an article or layout. This component can automatically list all the audio/video recordings published within a particular group folder.

For instructions on how to add components to a layout or an article refer to the Themes and layouts guide.

Embedding Video

Video can be embedded within an article or layout using the Media Player component. For instructions on adding this component to a page see the embedding video article.