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ideas for a video portfolio
hello
I’m looking for a bit of inspiration.
I need to make a portfolio for a motion graphics studio, in which each project has an article (www.sitename/projects/project-name) which has two types of assets attached:- storyboard images
- video clips
There could be multiples (or none) of each type of asset attached to each article.
Crucially I need to use thumbnails to display these assets in the project article page.
I’ll most probably use Lightbox for the storyboard images, but I’m not sure the best way to handle the videos. Given that they need an associated thumbnail, just linking the file IDs in a custom field isn’t going to cut it. So I’m looking for a solution that will make for an elegant browsing experience, but which isn’t a total ball-ache to admin.
My ideas so far involve creating a new article per video clip, attaching a thumbnail & video file ID to the video clip’s article, then find the best way to create an association between this and the relevant project article. Options I can think of include:
[1] Make a section called video for the video clip article, use plugin (which works like the upm_file_popper but browses the articles tab & which name escapes me) to insert the video article’s ID into a custom field of the parent project article
This would give something like www.sitename/video/project-name for each video article
[2] Make a section called video for the video clip article, use tru_tags enabled keywords in both articles
Again, this would give something like www.sitename/video/project-name for each video article
[3] Use categories in both articles: cat1=project-name & cat2=video (where appropriate)
With a bit of URL magic this would enable something more spiffing like www.sitename/projects/project-name/video/video-article-name for each video article
Can anyone see any flaws with these or think of a better way? An unlikely alternative would be if there’s a hack to associate images directly with files…(?)
As I re-read this I realise the URLs in options 1 & 2 wouldn’t work, because they would only allow for one video article per project article (they would need the same article title). Bah.
Anyway, I realise it’s a bit windy, but any thoughts appreciated!
Stu
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Re: ideas for a video portfolio
It sounds complicated. I liked the sound of your last ‘unlikely’ option best. Just thinking aloud…
… perhaps you could establish a simple relationship between image and file by using an image/thumbnail as a placeholder for your video and naming the video using the image ID#. Then you can repurpose one of the many gallery plug-ins to link to the video instead of the full-size image.
To list the storyboard images and video images separately, you could either use image categories or a custom_field for “article videos” (in the same way as the “article images” field). There are various plug-ins which can retrieve individual fields from the image database which could perhaps serve as a basis (wet’s and mary’s upm collections for instance). One plug-in I found not too difficult to repurpose in the past was Patrick’s hak_article_image. You could duplicate it as hak_article_video, make it read the ID#s from a custom_field rather than the article_image field and make it output a link to the video rather than to the full-size image.
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Re: ideas for a video portfolio
pieman wrote:
An unlikely alternative would be if there’s a hack to associate images directly with files…(?)
Hi Stuart, this is not exactly much of an idea about your proposed solutions (jakob’s use of hak_article_image is good, or inserting the articles with wet_quicklink would work if you went with option [1]) but perhaps something you might consider. smd_remote_file might be of use to help you associate an image with a video file.
There’s a tag in that plugin called smd_file_download_image which might be of use if you wanted to use an article to call up a video file via the standard file_download tags and the ‘files’ form. If you upload your video thumbnail/image as normal to TXP and call it the same name as your video file (plut its jpg extension of course) the new tag will display it for you. Style to taste.
As a side advantage, the file does not have to be stored within the TXP database: upload it to (m)any file sharing site(s) and you can manage the file as if it was local to TXP from the Files tab. The new tag works with both ‘local’ (in TXP’s database) and remote files equally well.
It may still be too much hassle to manage or might not quite be what you’re after — depending on the volume of videos you’re thinking about and the manner in which you want them delivered to the user — but thought I’d mention it in case it’s of use or gives you any further inspiration.
Last edited by Bloke (2007-12-11 09:11:44)
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Re: ideas for a video portfolio
Jakob & Stef – thanks for those ideas…
for admin usability I suspect naming the file & image the same will probably shade it, but I’m going to give them both a whirl
all hail the Txp hive mind :)
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