merge upload with ad trailer

[gerbil]

OK here's a very dirty nasty working hack that will give you pre or post roll. Be warned it is not for the faint hearted!!

It also has a nasty side effect - more on that later - but the point is it can be done!

You'll need to manually create your play list.
You'll need to manually alter your database.
You'll need to alter /includes/player.inc

If you're not already having kittens and the lure of filthy ad revenue has filled your eyes ... I'll begin.

Let's do the easy stuff first;

1. BACK EVERYTHING UP!!!! - you've been warned - I was glad I did!

2. Open /include/player.inc and add

so.addVariable("repeat", "list");

just after

so.addVariable("autostart", "false");

3. upload your pre or post roll advert in flv format into your /flvideo folder and make a note of what it's called.

4. Open your database in phpmyadmin or whatever

5. Look for the video you want to add your pre or post roll add to and note down the 'vid' and the 'flvdoname'

6. Open up notepad and copy this code into it

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
	<trackList>
		<track>
			<title>[Pre Roll Title]</title>
			<creator>Details</creator>
			<location>http://[FULL-URL-TO]/flvideo/[ADVERT-TITLE].flv</location>
			<image>http://[FULL-URL-TO-MAIN-VIDEO-IMAGE].jpg</image>
		</track>
		<track>
			<title>[Main Video Title]</title>
			<creator>[Details]</creator>
			<location>http://http://[FULL-URL-TO]/flvideo/[flvdoname].flv</location>
			<image>http://[FULL-URL-TO-MAIN-VIDEO-IMAGE].jpg</image>
		</track>
	</trackList>
</playlist>

You'll obviously need to change the bits in between [ & ] and there can be no gap on the first line :)

7. Save this file as 'vid'.xml (where vid is the id of your main video which you are adding your pre or post roll to).

8. Upload 'vid'.xml into your /flvideo folder

9. Back to you database and change/edit your video flvdoname to 'vid'.xml

10 Go to your site and play your video :)

NOTES:
Security - you can call your 'vid'.xml file anything you want - I've just outlined it this way for simplicity.
Proof of concept at

http://1.ef7.co.uk/view/18/carly-cunningham-promo-sample/

(I make no appologies for the dodgy preroll - I was in a hurry)

The nasty side effect: If you stop the video during the pre-roll then the next person gets a post roll.

So there we have it. It can be done. Now if we can get it built in so we can upload post and pre roll ads from the db ....

What do you think?

Kev

[SportsGamingTV.com]

<location>http://http://[FULL-URL-TO]/flvideo/[flvdoname].flv</location>

I'm not following you on that portion.

To me, it looks like you are saying to manually type the full path to the flv file in the playlist. While this would work, it would be a static approach that would have to be repeated for each video, which could get to be very time consuming. I'm not seeing how it would dynamically call any particular video a person may try to view on the site.

Am I overlooking something?

I've also gotta say I'm really impressed with the sportgaming site. That looks nice. Great work.

Thanks. I've still got a lot to do though. At this point I am just trying to move away from the standard look and feel of the basic install. I have to go slow with this though, because I'm not exactly a pro with photoshop, plus some of the tutorials I follow to work for me since I'm using old version 7, so I have to experiment a lot.

Hey SportsGamingTV, my bad... I knew it was one of you "Big Guys" who was working on this :oops:

haha. I hope to be a big guy some day. For now, I just tack a couple of extra zeros onto my site stats so that I can feel big. ;) lol

[Whistler]

Wow Kev!! You dirty, nasty hacker you! :lol: That looks great.

I'm sure that anyone getting into this thread probably has enough experience to get their hands a little dirty, digging in the database etc. I'm going to give this a try.
By the way, I noticed that the glitch you referred to with the pre-roll & post roll getting swapped, doesn't seem to have anything to do with starting/stopping the video during pre-roll. It looks like it is automatically rotating the ad to pre-roll and post roll each time you play it. When I got to the page initially, the ad was in post roll position, when I refreshed the page, it was still in post roll. When I played the clip again, it switched to pre-roll and every time I restarted the clip, it switched. But it seems to default to post roll on initial play.

This is really great Kev, thanks a bunch! :D

Now I'm sure that admin should be able to add a section to the "Edit Video" page in the admin panel where we can: [*]upload the flv ads into the flvideo folder (or alternatively select a clip that has already been uploaded and converted to flv - I think this would probably be a more sensible/practical option, since the video will already have received a title and description on upload)[*]Assign the flv ad/commercial to the video clip either as pre/post roll - Hit Submit and Presto! The script should then add the relevant info to the database and generate an updated XML playlist on completion.

This way each and every video can be assigned a separate ad/commercial. I guess some folks might want to be able to assign a single ad to all videos which would require another setting option, and others might want to "bulk assign" an ad/commercial to a bunch of other videos by checkbox (probably a bit more intensive to code, but would take things to a whole new level).

What do you say admin? Surely this can't be that hard to integrate into the next upgrade.

[SportsGamingTV.com]

Now I'm sure that admin should be able to add a section to the "Edit Video" page in the admin panel where we can: [*]upload the flv ads into the flvideo folder (or alternatively select a clip that has already been uploaded and converted to flv - I think this would probably be a more sensible/practical option, since the video will already have received a title and description on upload)[*]Assign the flv ad/commercial to the video clip either as pre/post roll - Hit Submit and Presto! The script should then add the relevant info to the database and generate an updated XML playlist on completion.

Very good.

My thoughts on it have been to have an enable disable option for preroll under Misc settings, and then somewhere (maybe a new 'video ads section) have a place to upload the preroll, similar to how we upload logos and watermarks now - or at least type the path/name of an flv that is already on the server.

I am also thinking of enable/disable option for post roll ads. But what I would think would be really neat here is if we could upload/point to 3 different ads, and have the system cycle through them. So if you watch a video, you get Ad-1 at the end, the next video gets Ad-2 at the end, etc. Of course, I'd be happy to even just have a single ad on all sites.

[gerbil]

<location>http://http://[FULL-URL-TO]/flvideo/[flvdoname].flv</location>

I'm not following you on that portion.

To me, it looks like you are saying to manually type the full path to the flv file in the playlist. While this would work, it would be a static approach that would have to be repeated for each video, which could get to be very time consuming. I'm not seeing how it would dynamically call any particular video a person may try to view on the site.

Am I overlooking something?

Your not overlooking anything :( At the moment it is a manual process for every video you want to add pre or post to.
The only thing I noticed was the double http:// - At the moment we need to manually type every thing in.

[*]upload the flv ads into the flvideo folder (or alternatively select a clip that has already been uploaded and converted to flv - I think this would probably be a more sensible/practical option, since the video will already have received a title and description on upload)

With this selecting your main video would be smart but I think having a separate upload and convert function for the ads would be better as we don't want ads displayed in their own right as SportsGaming suggests.

The fact that I needed to rename the video to to .xml should make it easier. If every upload created it's own xml file on the fly as part of the convert process, Admin could then give us an 'edit xml' option which may be easier to implement. Again with access in Misc settings.

All we need to start with is a basic function which we can improve in later releases. I say this because some advertisers will want pre roll and some post. And while I understand that some people will go for the one ad suits all philosophy I think we need to have all options available on a per video basis. Let's face it from a marketing point of view it would be easier to sell insurance space over an accident video than a porn vid - Advertisers can be funny people when it comes to image and branding if you get what I mean.

We're on the road now and in manual first gear. The main point is we're heading in the right direction.

What do you think Admin?

kev

[Whistler]

SportsGamingTV.com, sounds like you're talking about a setup where all videos at your site get either the same ad (if you only have one to show) playing pre/post roll (as the case may be). Alternatively you want to have the system cycle through ads you've uploaded at random on all videos?

The reason I would want to have it set up so that each video can be edited (or bulk editing with checkboxes for multiple videos) is because some advertisers may have a problem with their ads appearing pre/post certain videos (I'm sure the adult sites probably won't have this problem, but a lot of niche sites might). There may be an issue of poor taste, unrelated market etc... and if people start watching a video about eg. "The Pope's Annual Address" preceded (Sponsored by) Trojan Condoms.... :lol: - You get the picture... People start writing letters, lawsuits get filed and "bye-bye baby", the end of a good thing.

Allowing for control over which ads are assigned to which videos is definitely the way to go. Having a bulk edit option would probably be the easiest way to satisfy everyone - that way you could go into the "Edit Video" page, select an ad/commercial (either from a drop-down menu, or by typing in the path to..) and then assign it to the video being edited (or alternatively to all videos in a certain Channel if there is a separate menu page for ad settings where you can select the ad and then check off the relevant videos you want it assigned to; or simply hit the "Select All" checkbox to assign it to all videos). Taking it a step further would of course be the option of having different playlists as you mentioned (instead of just a single ad) and being able to assign a playlist to a bunch of videos/Channels in the same way - then the ads can show on the selected videos/channels in rotation.

I can definitely see the benefit of having a playlist/rotation of ads available for assignment to videos, but having it set up by default to show the same ad on all videos is probably not the best way to go, besides it would effectively devalue the inventory. The way I see it, as a site starts getting serious traffic and people start rating videos, some videos will naturally get more eye-balls than others - that's where your money is :) You charge more to advertise alongside the busy videos and less for the not-so-busy ones. You'll be surprised at how much people will be willing to pay to be in front of a busy channel as apposed to having "site-wide" coverage on untargeted videos. Nowadays it's all about targeted traffic and tracking click-throughs/or views in this case.

[SportsGamingTV.com]

I could see that to a degree. Looking at my own site as an example, it would be nice to only have poker commercials in the poker section, football commercials in football, etc, as well as maybe having general-play commercials. So in a sense, I could see flagging them by channel. I think that managing them by individual video would be too much micromanaging though, especially if your site grows to be very large.

My general thoughts are that I prefer a long-tail approach. I'd much rather have generalized commercials that are based on 'per view' price basis and have them carried across site wide. In this sense, those more popular videos would still generate more money due to having more views. In television you see a combination of the two approaches. Niche programming like home renovations will have more ads taylored to a specific audience, but most commercials take a long tail approach. They do not care about individual viewer interests, but just the number of views their ad receives.

Of course, right now, I'd be happy to have anything at all.

--

On the topic of implementation, has anyone looked at alstrasoft's flash ads as an example of how this can be done? Theirs is a separate plug in that has to be purchased. I know that their clone script has the same origins as vshare, but vshare has been extensively modified and improved (alstrasoft's is junk) to the point where it's basically a different product. But if they could get flashads to work on the more primitive version, then surely something similar can be done with vshare. I thought about buying it just to see if flashads would bolt onto vshare as well, but they charge $150 and everything I've ever gotten from them has been full of bugs, so I decided against it.

But maybe that is ultimately the best approach. A separate script that interacts with vshare. I'd pay for it as long as it works, which would give admin further financial incentive to get it going.

[gerbil]

Is there any mileage in clubbing together to get some bolt on code / module written?

I was hoping that Admin would have made a comment or two by now so I can only assume they are busy in a different area.

Having played around some more, I've got some ideas on how to go about things but my php/mysql coding skills are no where near quick enough to justify the time input to automate the process.

Basically all we need initially is a new editing page and a new db table. The page calls the existing db tables, collects some info and rename one of the parameters.

Using the data collected as a location references it then needs to create an xml file using data from the new table. As long as we can write and edit the xml file for each video we are laughing (he says hoping).

I've got it in my head ..... but being a code hacker don't help here :) We need a writer.

[Whistler]

I think we need to get Galnet on board here, he's already very familiar with working on the player. This is essentially an extension to it's functionality, plus he seems to be an experienced PHP programmer. I'll PM him and see if we can get him to chime in on this thread.

By the way Gerbil, having played with your hack, I noticed that with the current player, the embedded video (when playing at a different site) has a problem playing the pre-roll and the video in one flowing motion. It plays the pre-roll, then stops (so anyone watching it might wonder what's going on, as it is not the video they are expecting). In order to get the actual video to play after the pre-roll, you have to hit the "next" button, which appears next to the "play" button (to the right) when the pre-roll has finished playing.

Maybe I did something wrong, I don't know. I embedded the video in iframe mode and not "object" mode, maybe that has something to do with it, I just got tied up and didn't have time to test with embedding in "object" mode. Have you noticed the same?

We need to get this thing done one way or another, but obviously there doesn't seem to be enough momentum behind it yet.

[SportsGamingTV.com]

The only thing there is that he is using a different player, so there may be some differences. I've never used Agriya, so I'm not sure. I've got another player that Wiigle was kind enough to bump my way, so I've been thinking of playing with that to see if I can get something going.

I've still been considering buying a copy of flashads to see if it will hook into vshare, but I hate to throw out $150 on it without knowing whether or not it will work. Now if someone could decompile it and get it to work with vshare and then sell copies for 35 each, that might be worthwhile.

We need to get this thing done one way or another, but obviously there doesn't seem to be enough momentum behind it yet.

That is what is amazing to me. Judging from pageviews on the different threads it is discussed, it is surely one of the topics that generates more interest. I'm not sure why more people dont come to say 'yes admin, we would love it if you could find a way to do this'.