SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY
Statement of Problem
The use of VHS tapes to demonstrate or review video-based content in class often proves to be cumbersome and time consuming for instructors. For media studies courses, the use of videos from multiple sources compounds the problem even further due to the need to constantly switch tapes and/or DVDs. The Office of Instructional Technology at Sacred Heart University collaborated with a faculty member from the Department of Media Studies and Digital Culture to develop a Flash-based streaming video gallery which provided viewers with single-click access to multiple on-demand videos.
Description of Project
A Flash-based streaming video gallery was developed to provide both student and instructor access to a series of course related on-demand videos. The video gallery was designed to provide a single interface through which users could select a video to view by clicking on one of several video thumbnails presented in an intuitive, user-friendly grid. The selected video is then presented to the user directly through the same interface. The videos are provided in the popular Flash Video (FLV) format and delivered using a Flash Media Server.Â
How It Was Built
This was a multi step process:
- Download the project files from Adobe's Flash Developer Web site.
- Digitize the video the instructor was using, edit the video down into individual clips. Once the clips are separated then edit the individual clips down to a 5 second preview (you watch the preview by hovering your mouse over a thumbnail). Then format the videos into the FLV format and uploaded them onto our Flash Media Server or local folder.
- Edit the video gallery to hold 40 videos instead of the original 36 and then changed the links and add images.
- Edit the xml information page to add the path of the videos as well as information about the videos.
Relevance to Other Institutions
The Flash-based on-demand streaming video gallery is a scalable, reliable solution for migrating from the use of analog VHS-based content to digital streaming video based content.