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Video in-depth

Product: FlippingBook Online

Our article How to add videos, links, and images to my flipbook?  shows you the basics of adding videos to your flipbooks. In this article, we delve into some important details. Here's what we'll cover:

 

Setting up Inline videos

Inline videos are great if you have enough space available on your page. They show up as a seamlessly integrated part of your content. Here's an example of an inline video 


When you set up your video as Inline, you can configure two additional settings:

  • Autoplay: When Autoplay is enabled, your video starts playing as soon as your reader opens the page on which you embedded the video. There are two things to keep in mind:
    • Autoplay only works on desktops, not on mobile devices!
    • If you have a video embedded on the first page that your users open, then the video will autoplay but the sound will be muted.
  • Start at makes your video start at a specific point in time. Very convenient if the video itself is long and you immediately want to jump to the relevant part!

Why does my inline video play in a pop-up anyway?

If you set playback mode to Inline, your video could still be played in a pop-up window. This happens in the following situations:

  • You view your flipbook on an iOS smartphone (in any browser).
  • You open your flipbook in Safari on a desktop.
  • Your video is placed in the middle of a 2-page spread: most PDFs consist of single pages. However, sometimes your PDFs consist of spreads, i.e. two pages on a single sheet.

When editing such PDFs in FlippingBook Online, we show the full spread in the Editor. But if you embed a video so that it covers parts of both pages, we show it in a pop-up.

  • Your video is too small to be played inline. If the size of your video (when shown in the browser) becomes less than 144x100 pixels, it becomes too small. We show such videos in pop-ups instead.

 

 

Setting up Popup videos

Pop-up videos are the ideal option if you want to show your video in a nearly full-screen pop-up so your viewers can fully absorb your content. They are also great if you simply don’t have enough space available on your page to add them inline Here's an example of a pop-up video.


When using Pop-up video there are two additional settings you can configure

  • Show Preview: YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia allow you to set up a preview image for your video. If you don’t configure it, they use the very first frame of your video. You can show this preview in your flipbook as well.
  • If you don’t need the preview image because you have an even better image in your PDF already, you can disable this option.

    Note that when you resize the video to fit your image, then by default it keeps the aspect ratio of your video. To make it fit perfectly to the image in your PDF, you can press the lock icon in the Position and size section. Now you can resize your clickable area at will!
  • Start at makes your video start at a specific point in time. Very convenient if the video itself is long and you immediately want to jump to the relevant part!
 

Why is there no preview image for my video?

When you embed a video, we contact the video hosting platform (Youtube, Vimeo, or Wistia) to download the preview image. But the hosting platform does not provide that image if you use certain privacy settings or access restrictions. If that happens, you still can embed the video. It will work perfectly fine, even though in the Editor you only see an empty blue box. 

In such cases, we advise you to review the privacy settings of your video first. If you are happy, then proceed normally. You could add an inline image to use as a video preview. Learn more in our article about adding private videos.

 

How to size and align videos to perfection

The standard way of sizing videos is to just move them around with your mouse and drag the corners. But what if you have several videos that you want to have exactly the same width, height, and position? Or how to make it exactly match the image or text on which you placed it?

Use arrow keys
One tool you have at your disposal is the arrow keys. If you select a video and then use the arrow keys, you can nudge it in any direction by a single pixel.

Change Position and size settings
In the menu panel on the right-hand side, we show the exact position and sizes in pixels. You can edit these values. So if you want several videos to be of the same size, and aligned on the left, then you can

  1. Change the first video to the ideal size.
  2. Write down the X value, width, and height of the first video.
  3. Manually edit the X value, width, and height of the other videos accordingly.
  4. If you want to align your videos horizontally, give them the same Y values instead.

In the example above, we aligned the small pop-up videos by manually making the X-position, Width, and Height of the second video identical to the values of the first video.

 

Problems when embedding video

It is possible that you get an error message when inserting your video URL.

  • First, make sure that the link to your video opens correctly: open a new tab in your browser and paste the link there to see if it works.
  • Remember that we only support YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia. Video links to other platforms or .mp4 files are not supported.  
  • If you only just uploaded the video, then simply wait for around 30 minutes and try again. YouTube, for example, doesn’t fully process the video right away, so some data that we need may simply not have been generated yet.
  • Make sure that the video is not set to be only available to the author.
  • Make sure that the video settings allow your video to be embedded on online.flippingbook.com or your custom domain. You can find more information in the Help Centers from  YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia.

Some videos can be embedded, but 

  • when you actually try to play them in the flipbook, you see a stop sign.

    The most common reason is that you embedded a YouTube video with age restrictions for an audience of 18+. YouTube does not allow age-restricted videos to be watched on most third-party websites (like FlippingBook Online).  
  • after you embed them, you see no preview. This means the video is probably password-protected or has restricted access settings. See our article about Adding private videos for more info. 

 

 

What if I only have a video on my device?

If you only have a video file on your PC (e.g. .mp4, .mov, or .avi) that you want to add to your flipbook, then you cannot directly embed that. Fortunately, both YouTube and Vimeo have free plans that are sufficient if you have limited requirements and are very easy to work with. We recommend Vimeo since it doesn’t add recommended videos when your viewer reached the end of the video, so it looks more professional.

 

 

Controlling the icons

By default, we add icons to videos to help your readers notice them. You can change their size, position, and behavior in the Icon Settings section. If you need some additional info as to how they work, have a look at our article Icon settings. If you want to change the settings for all the videos in your flipbook, then our Bulk change option is for you!

 

What happens to my videos when I replace the PDF?

If you replace your PDF with a new one (this feature is available in Starter and higher plans), then we will ask you what to do with any videos and other content you added: keep them (if your PDF is pretty similar with just a few small edits) or remove them (if you basically have a completely new document). If you made extensive changes in the FlippingBook Online Editor, then we recommend reading our article Can I replace my PDF without changing the URL? 

 

 

Can I hide suggested videos at the end of my embedded YouTube video?

While embedding YouTube videos into your flipbook, you always get the list of recommended videos at the end. There is no way to delete them completely, but you can limit them to videos from the same channel only. To do this, you should add the parameter rel=0 to the link you embed. For example, if your original link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHISMK00zDM, then your link for embedding will be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHISMK00zDM&rel=0. If your original link looks similar to https://youtu.be/jHISMK00zDM, then your embedding link will be https://youtu.be/jHISMK00zDM?rel=0.

 

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