Using videos

Most of my saved videos are MP1, and it seems that I can't add any to a page unless they're MP4. Is there any way around this besides having to convert them all?

You can batch convert to .FLV (better for streaming) or .MP4 using FormatFactory. It's quickly done.
Alternatively you may be able to use Longtailvideo's free JWplayer, Details on their home page.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

The conversion worked fine and the video was readable with Realplayer. But when I either move it or import it to a page, the video box is either transparent or white. When it plays only the audio comes out. What am I missing?

More information please?
Like ;
* Which container did you convert to
* Which codec did you select (if MP4 container, I suggest h264)

It was converted from mp1 to mp4. It plays fine in other players.

Use h264 codec

I finally found out how to set to that codec in Format Factory. But it didn't change the results. One thing about Format Factory I wasn't thrilled about was that after converting to MP4 it didn't change the date. And the file still plays the same in Real Player.

Not sure what's going on for you then. I use this routinely and it always works 100%
Don't expect the file to play in the Web Designer window, it won't - you will only see the player placeholder bitmap. But it should play fine in browser preview.
IE will ask for activex permission.

Not understanding what you mean about the date??

You could upload a sample .mp1 to min.us and paste the link here for me to try?

Tried converting to flv and it works! It plays in both the WD window and in browsers. Resizes OK. The main problem now is that the screen image in all browser views is a blank screen with just the arrow.

The date, after a "new" mp4 or flv file is created, stays the same as the original. This is the first time I ever saw a "new" file created without the date it was created.

Yes, as I mentioned earlier in post#2, .flv is better for streaming via the swfplayer.
File creation date changes to the date the file is converted to the new container format for me (I use Windows7 64bit and FF 2.20)

I've been considering moving my videos from Wordpress to my own web site. But still need some clarification: Will WD accept MP4 or not, despite .flv being better? And how can I get an image from the video to appear (ie as Youtube does) instead of a plain box? The video feature is obviously very important for many web sites.

Yes it does support MP4 (h264) and FLV, of course - it's why Xara included this feature. But some oddball codecs are not supported by the player
No, it does not show a picture like youtube player does.
But you can use a screen shot:

[1] Drag your .flv to the page in Xara
[2] Play the video in web preview and stop it at a frame you want to use as the picture
[3] Press PrtScrn to take a screen shot.
[4] Paste into your page and crop to the player (click image twice to start the crop tool)
[5] Align the cropped screenshot and .flv placeholder together and set the screenshot image to the back
[6] Preview to make sure the alignment is neat.

Here's a DEMO of just that

OK, that system works for showing the photo. The main advantage is that, unlike Youtube, I can pick my own image. The main problem is the extra steps needed.

So I next tried the Youtube widgets, and can't get either one to work. After clicking "Insert" at the bottom, it only pops up with a message:


Unable to find the HTML code for the widget on the widget site or on the clipboard.

- Browse youtube for your required video.
- Customise the Embed link if required
- Click the Insert button below to add the video to your page.

Sorry about that, I think you'll find that using Xara Web Designer will always require some 'extra' steps' when creating your own customised pages.
As you know, XWD isn't a WP replacement and neither does it make decisions for the designer - you have pretty much full control over the look, feel, design and functions of your site.

With the YouTube embedding, you have to choose the video, select to Share then Embed, select the code then copy to the clipboard. Only then can Xara access the code for you - this is when you press 'insert'.
Xara's embed widgets are just the lazy-mans way of opening a browser window and surfing to the site to copy some code. You don't really need them once you understand what they are doing.

It's just as easy to embed by doing this from the youtube page and paste as HTML placeholder in Xara really.

It works great embedded. Thanks.