Questions
Photo versus video as lede image
If a couple of photos are added to a story, the photos are displayed under the headline; hooray! If a YouTube video is added to a story, the video is displayed under the headline; hooray!
But if there are both photo and video child assets, the visual under the headline defaults to photos, and pushes the video to the bottom of the story on mobile or a sidebar on desktop (unless the video is dragged into the body of the story). That's much less exciting.
If an article has both photos and videos, we'd like to have the flexibility to choose which is dominant. The easiest way: The asset listed first should win. (If it's not the easiest way, it's still what we'd like to happen.) Is that possible?
Answer
I'm interested in how others want to use this feature (versus how it's set up). Dragging a video inline is a workaround that we often use, but it's not the same.
I know for child image assets they have a custom property "position: showcase." And it seems the same works for YouTube videos but not BLOX mp4 videos. I'd like to see that feature available. Here's some info about the custom properties: http://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/editorial/assets/misc/article_a1a8f4a6-b6e6-11e4-823f-47b9d88935f6.html
Thanks Nick! Those are for Zen and Erica has a Flex site. Most of those custom properties were built before we has inline asset support.
On both platforms (Zen and Flex), we think inline assets are the best way to go. That is our recommended way to do "positioning" within an article.
I believe that if you have 1 video and 3 photos, for example, you can pull the photos inline and then the video will be used for the "main display" area. Again, that functionality is for Flex.
Thanks!
In the "main display" area, anything that does not have a specific position will compete for that slot. If there is only a video, it will win the main display. If there are photos and a video, the photos will win. However, if the photos have a specific position (such as showcase, or inline), they don't compete for the main area and then the video will show.
So here is an example on my test site:
That story has a YouTube video and two photos (and some other stuff but it doesn't compete for the "main display" area). I made one photo a mugshot, and the other one a showcase, and now there is nothing left to compete with the video for the main display area, and the video shows up in the main display.
Or I could have dragged the photos inline, and then the video would be left in the main display area. Or, like you said, you could position the video instead.
It's just that if there is no other positioning information, we choose the photo instead. So you need to apply positioning information in order to tell us the importance of the items.
Let me know if this helps!
I know how the work-around works, and we use it often, but it takes more time and clicks than flipping the order of a few child assets. I'm trying to improve efficiencies. TCMS and Blox already are very click-heavy applications. I'm looking for ways to make the system faster and easier to use. This is one way.
Hi Erica!
We've talked more about this, and we will see if we can do something along these lines as you suggest. We also saw that some of the related items (we are adding better support for siblings per our previous discussion) should also be in asset order (as per the related panel).
There is some concern that this is not immediately obvious to users of the system - however this seems to be logical (using sort order) than other non-obvious behaviors. :)
Anyway, we are still working on the sibling asset display, and I will see if there is a way to do this (showing youtube vs. photo based on sort order) after that.
Thanks! =)
I wanted to bump this one, as we are moving down the road with Field 59 and other video elements. It seems like we would need an easier way to display videos as a lede item in the story. Currently the only option for doing that is to drag the video inline and then drag every other photo attached to the story inline somewhere. That could be really tedious, especially on wire stories that constantly are updated by the AP. (For example, if you wanted a hurricane video channel to stay atop the hurricane stories.
It seems like a couple of options. 1. Have the top video, youtube (or html asset with the #video tag) default as the top item on a story. related photos would then be placed inline as a gallery or at the bottom of the story as a gallery. (where videos currently go if they aren't dragged in line). 2. On some channels enable an top-of-story utility position that could host a smart video player or video playlist like sendtonews or NDN ... when using that position, photos would default to the same spot as on No. 1. ... Instead of having a bunch of game photos from an NFL game, i would match rather see game highlights at the top. Better user experience and more $$$.
I didn't put in a ticket request because i want to see how others would use this.
Our newsroom is converged with a TV station, so we make videos a big priority. I like inline assets, but it's really cumbersome to have to do this to each article. All of our daily content has a video that we cut out of the show and attach to the article.
Also, our inline assets are appearing in the copy when the designers pull them on the page. This wasn't happening a few months ago, but I've had to stop using inline assets because of this issue. Workflow wise, it would be much easier if we had a custom property that could be assigned to videos. We currently use an inhouse system to cut the videos from the show and it sends ti to blox, so I'm sure that system could append the custom property to the video. Ideally, this custom property would push the asset to the showcased area.
Anyway, I'd settle for just being able to move the video to the top. Right now, I'm changing some of the photos to the mug shot presentation mode. This pushes the video up and photo down.
Also, unrelated, but is there an autoplay option for videos?
Customer support service by UserEcho
On both platforms (Zen and Flex), we think inline assets are the best way to go. That is our recommended way to do "positioning" within an article.
I believe that if you have 1 video and 3 photos, for example, you can pull the photos inline and then the video will be used for the "main display" area. Again, that functionality is for Flex.
Thanks!