Interactive video on external streaming server

Submitted by Olle on Sun, 02/12/2017 - 12:29
Forums: 
Content creation

Can anyone recommend a (cheap) streaming service (other than YouTube) that works fine with a H5P project?

We have a 20 minutes long interactive video project. We tried to host the video on YouTube, and everything worked great except for the YouTube pause/play function (pause/play by clicking in the video frame). We are using invisible hot-spots and the video will start and stop if the user clicks anywhere outside of the hot-spots in the video frame. We then tried to host the video on our web server, but the result was a very unresponsive project - nearly 10 seconds to wait for the video to find the place to start after clicking. 

icc's picture

icc

Mon, 02/13/2017 - 09:59

If you want a safe and stable service and where you don't have to worry about transcoding and optimizing the video for web, I would have a look into something like the paid Vimeo services where you can a direct URL to the .mp4/.webm files. If you know how to optimize the video your self, you could try using something like Google Drive or Dropbox. You simply upload the video file and then enable public sharing of it – where you get a cryptic URL.

If the URL isn't recognized or accepted by the editor but works in the browser for you, you should be able to solve that by appending a #.mp4 or #.webm to the URL (depending on your video format).

Let me know how it goes :-)

Olle

Tue, 02/14/2017 - 18:37

Vimeo Pro worked great. Thanks a lot for your help! :-)

Rigwald

Sun, 03/26/2017 - 00:25

I am a teacher and I have videos stored on our Google Drive, which I embed into Moodle for my students.  We use Drive instead of YouTube to prevent the video recommendation at the end of the videos.  (Sometimes they are not junior high appropriate.)  I have followed your suggestion for adding the #.mp4 at the end of the link in the Moodle H5P plugin editor, but it is still telling me that the format is not recognized.  Here is an example video from our Google Drive.  I tried with and without the /preview /edit endings, as well as the direct sharable link and the link from within the Google Drive provided embed code.  Here is the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwEOaJzZEjWHU1VPbGNtNXd3VjA/view

Any suggestions would be great.  Thanks!

 

otacke's picture

otacke

Mon, 03/27/2017 - 00:02

Hi Rigwald!

H5P doesn't show YouTube's recommendations at the end of a video.

Rigwald

Mon, 03/27/2017 - 00:16

That's just one of our concerns.  We would rather be able to control the videos and have them stored with our other course content.  Sending it to YouTube creates yet another step in the process.  (The videos are currently embedded in Moodle lessons from our Google Drive.)  Also, some videos we can share with our students, but not other people.  YouTube could then flag some of them as infractions.  Having direct control of everything is much preferred.  Yes, we could upload the video to Moodle, but why, when streaming from Google Drive works for all other situations we have used so far?

otacke's picture

otacke

Mon, 03/27/2017 - 08:03

Hi Rigwald!

Sure, if actually YouTube's video recommendations were not your primary concern, then H5P doesn't do the job right now.

icc's picture

icc

Mon, 03/27/2017 - 10:07

Hi Rigwald,

The link you've entered leads to a .html file, the link needs to lead directly to the video file(.mp4) – opening the browser's default video player or download when you visit the URL.

I did some Googling and it turns out that Google now has added a confirmation page to the download URL, making it impossible to link directly to the file, since you need to press a button(which sets a cookie) before you can download the file. I see that others are complaining about this as well and moving over to Dropbox – where you should be able to do the same trick.
I'm not sure that there is a way to turn off this confirmation page on Google Drive, but there might be.

Another option, of course, is to host the videos yourself using a $5 VPS or something running nothing more than a simple web server like nginx or lighttpd.

Rigwald

Sat, 04/01/2017 - 15:43

I was able to use Chrome's element inspecter to capture the video's link and add #.mp4 to the end of it:

https://r4---sn-vgqsrn7l.c.drive.google.com/videoplayback?id=c750fe3f4d8...

 

That allowed me to bring in the video to the editor.  However, when I save the interactive video and open it in another browser, it says that the video format is unsupported.   :(

https://h5p.org/node/64697

 

 

 

icc's picture

icc

Mon, 04/03/2017 - 09:39

Yes, because a cookie gets set when you press the button, which means that if you haven't pressed the button you won't be allowed to stream the video. I'm not sure but I think it's safe to assume that Google didn't like people streaming their Drive files :-( 

icc's picture

icc

Mon, 04/03/2017 - 09:47

Hm strange, I appear to have gotten it to work for some reason using the following URL format:
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=REPLACE-WITH-DRIVE-ID#.mp4

Rigwald

Mon, 04/10/2017 - 20:14

This workaround works (so far).  It is truly a workaround at this point, but since it is predictable, there should be a way for coders to add the functionality to the plugin.  It should be possible for the plugin to pull the id # and place it within the context of https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=REPLACE-WITH-DRIVE-ID#.mp4 .  I have enough knowledge to be able to use the workaround, but not everyone has the knowledge/skill to be able to find the id and put it in like this.

falcon's picture

falcon

Mon, 04/10/2017 - 23:35

Glad it worked!

Rigwald

Wed, 04/19/2017 - 20:53

Here's the funny thing.  It appears that our Moodle plugin has been updated.  Now, none of the workarounds work in the editor.  The already existing interactive videos, however, DO work.  When I take the exact same ID of a working interactive video (with video stored on Google Drive) and try to make a new one with it, it errors out saying "Video Format Not Supported", not allowing me to add interactive content to it.  

Since the exact video still works with a previously made interactive H5P video, that tells me that it isn't a Google Drive issue, rather the new Moodle plugin.  I can even go in to the previously made interactive video and edit the items in it.  I just can't create a new one using the exact same process. 

vdalmeyda

Thu, 03/28/2019 - 15:32

Hello What are the server specifications that can host the external videos? Except on youtube, no other server seems to work.

TIA

BV52's picture

BV52

Fri, 03/29/2019 - 09:39

Hi vdalmeyda,

Other video hosting websites can be used as long as the URL for the video is available. Most hosting websites provides their own "player" that taps into the videos URL. An example would be Vimeo Pro which provides the video URL.

-BV52

Olle

Fri, 03/29/2019 - 12:19

Vimeo Pro works great - especially when you want fast navigation in very long video files.

N1ckfm

Tue, 07/30/2019 - 05:01

Hi, I could find a trick for use a googledrive videos in H5P, you should convert your google drive in a hosting (is easy), then you can use the link of your video in H5P.

Steps:

1.- Go to https://drv.tw

2.-  Choice google drive (you can choice one drive too), then you with those simple steps you will have turned your google drive into a web hosting

3.- DriveToWeb enables you to host websites on your favorite cloud drive. To access a file on your cloud drive, make it viewable by everyone, then visithttps://drv.tw/~[username]/[drive]/[path] where

[username]is the account email address to access cloud drive,[drive]is "gd" for Google Drive and "od" for Microsoft OneDrive, and[path]

is the full, case-sensitive path that locates the file.

https://drv.tw/[email protected]/gd/WEB/myvideo.mp4 (with all-caps "WEB") will not work. It must exactly match the folder name, which is "Web".

Only public files can be viewed. 

4. So this link use for H5P and get fun! :D

 

 

Carl Craven

Thu, 04/02/2020 - 02:43

It really works.

Carl Craven

Thu, 04/02/2020 - 02:42

I got this working well. Thanks, this 'hack' was a lifesaver. Let's see how long it lasts before google change things.

christina.linwood

Wed, 01/15/2020 - 00:18

Stream provides the URL but we can't use it in H5P content. I've posted here if anyone has some advice. Include Stream video content in H5P Interactive content forum post https://h5p.org/node/180112#comment-31756

Akimus

Wed, 01/22/2020 - 21:04

Hi

i try to convert h5p file to mp4 and its not possible. how can i convert it.

Thanks

BV52's picture

BV52

Thu, 01/23/2020 - 17:52

Hi Akimus,

I'm afraid this is not possible, .h5p is not a video file. It is similar to zip file with multiple fiels inside it.

-BV

alisoncunningham

Sun, 04/19/2020 - 03:35

I need to be able to embed my interactive video into a Wix website but I don't know what I need to do. I thought I was supposed to convert it to mp4 file but I can't do this and it would appear from comments above it can't be done. Can someone help me out please? This is for an important assessment and I am pretty technology basic.

 

BV52's picture

BV52

Mon, 04/20/2020 - 21:16

Hi Alison,

Actually you can. First you need to get the embed code, this can be retireved from the embed button at the bottom of the content. In Wix you need to paste this code in add -> more -> HTML iFrame. I have a sample page here https://ncoquebiviladelrey.wixsite.com/h5p-playground3.

-BV