Grouper Added to Pop Feed

So now for our popular feed we are pulling in videos from Google Video, YouTube, iFilm and now Grouper!

To Embed or not to Embed

During the design and development of thevideoawards.com we made a pretty large decision not to allow users to directly enter the embed tag into our system to display their video. The reason was based on security concerns around allowing this type of scripts to get embedded directly.  This means whatever you would enter in would get displayed, and since embed has some security ramifications we decided this wasn’t a good way to go.  Instead we have a unique way to post every video.

The process we use will not take the embed script and display directly, instead we will take the key to the video and generate the embed automagically.  Most of the video providers have a very simple pattern by which the embed string is constant except for the key.  The con is this is more difficult on the user, the pro is that we can have complete control on how the video is shown and this is important.  For example, in some cases, the embed script provided is with autoplay turned on, this is not an option for us, we can’t have some videos turn on automatically and other not.  In other cases, the embed script will specify an unoptimal size or include header information images.  All of these things are avoided since we can now control the way the videos appear.

In most cases, retrieving the video key is fairly straightforward, for example YouTube puts it right in their URL to grab it.  When you submit a video, based on the provider you choose we display the step-by-step instructions to post your video.  We’ve also create a “preview video” function which will ensure you followed the steps right before you post.   So if there is any confusion you can test it.

That’s it for now, I hope this answers some of the questions we’ve been getting on this.

TVA Team

New Feature: Popular Videos

Here’s a great new feature of the system.  We’ve taken popular feeds from YouTube, Google Video and iFilm and have created a page which just shows those videos.  So with that addition, the site has two major sections. 

• User Submitted Videos – this is the same as it’s always been.  Users are able to submit videos which they find from across the net to vote and comment on them.
• Popular Videos – again, this is not generated by TVA users directly submitting videos to the site, rather we are just showing the popular videos which people have voted for on their sites.

The great thing about this is not only are you able to see videos from across multiple providers but now you can see what the users of their site feel is popular as well.  So in one page you’re viewing, popular videos from iFilm, YouTube and Google!

Now, why are we only supporting 3 sites, when users can submit from many others?  Well those are the only 3 which provide a popular video feed (isn’t that amazing???).  If you know of one we missed let us know!