Videos are a great tool for sharing a tutorial, showing off a great tip or trick, or documenting an issue you're seeing with PTC Products. There are a number of ways to add videos to a Place or embed them into the content you've created, all illustrated below.
Uploading a New Video
From within a community or group
To upload a new video within a space simply navigate to the product community or group you'd like to contribute to and select "Create a video" under "Actions".
On the resulting "Create New Video" page you'll see the following options: Upload a Video, Record via Webcam, or Embed a Video
Once you've added your video to the site you can craft your video title and video description, as well as add relevant tags and a category. When finished all you'll need to do is select the "Publish" button.
From the Activity page
You can also create a new discussion by visiting the Activity page, hover over "More" and select "Video" from the Create menu at the top of the page.
From here you'll be brought to the "Crete New Video" page. Follow the same steps provided above to upload and label your video. Once you've created your video content you'll need to select a Place (product community or group) to add your discussion to by typing in a place name and selecting from the dropdown menu, or choose a location by selecting "Browse places"
When finished adding all the details to your video and selecting a Place all you'll need to do is select the "Publish" button.
Insert video in another piece of content
You can insert videos into documents, discussions, or blog posts, as well as comments and replies.When you're creating or editing a document, discussion, blog post, or commenting or replying to something, click the Insert Video button from the formatting toolbar.
A dialog opens enabling you to insert videos from the web, from your computer or videos that you previously uploaded to the community.
Here's how to upload a video from different locations:
- From the Web: you can add embed code or enter the video URL from a long list of established video sites (i.e. dailymotion.com, veoh.com, vimeo.com, youtube.com). Just make sure you select the video site, then insert the link or code, and then click Insert Video.
- From your Computer: browse to the video location on your local machine and click Insert Video. You also have the option to click Record from webcam to record and upload your video right away. Click the record button to start your recording, then again to stop it, and then click Upload and Insert Video.
- From your Videos: if you've previously added and published a video in a place, you'll see the video listed when you click From your Videos. Select the video you want to insert, then click Insert Video. (Note: the "From your Videos" section only lists videos that have been previously embedded in content belonging to the same place.)
Video Uploading and Recording Guidelines
For the best performance and quality use the following list as your guideline for recording and uploading videos:
- Upload the original video file, Converting the video to a different format can degrade the quality.
- Remember that the higher the video quality, the better. Converting or recording in a lower format degrades the video quality.
- Sound quality may be poor if the frequency is below 40kHz.
- The higher the data transfer rate for your network connection (kbps or mbps), the faster the video upload will be.
- Upload webinars in 4:3 format.
- You can upload videos in 4:3 or 16:9 (standard or widescreen) format.
- Limit video size to 1GB. Although video size is unlimited, you may experience timeouts and inconsistent performance for videos >1GB due to Internet, network or browser limitations.
Video FAQ:
What video formats are supported?
Your video can be uploaded if it uses a supported container type, video codec, and audio codec:
- Supported video file types: AVI, MOV, WMV, MP4, MPEG, FLV, 3GP, and 3G2.
- Supported video codecs: All of the popular MPEG-4 variants like DivX, XviD, H.264, 3IVX, and MSMPEG4, plus Windows Media 9.
- Supported audio codecs: MP2, MP3, WAV, AAC (typically seen in QuickTime files), Windows Media audio, and for mobile devices AMR in both narrow-band and wide-band varieties.
Can users download videos for offline viewing?
No. Downloading video assets is not currently supported.
What is the minimum bandwidth required?
All videos are streamed at 500 kbps. If available bandwidth is less than the minimum amount required, the video will buffer and users will get a buffering indicator in the player.
When will an uploaded video be available for playback?
Double the time of the video length. After you have successfully uploaded a video, the system encodes the file into a format that is optimized for streaming to the built-in Flashbased player.