<font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">A thought occurred</font> <font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">to me during our church service this morning (we don't use OpenLP in our church - yet!) when the preacher wanted to play both a YouTube video and a Vimeo video. VLC is installed on the computer we use, so the YouTube one was fine, but not the Vimeo one (I've since found out that Vimeo have blocked VLC playing videos directly).</font>
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First, as a bit of a feature request, as VLC can play YT videos directly, if an OpenLP user is using VLC as their media playing plugin of choice, surely it would be possible to have said functionality in OpenLP as well (similarly, with DVD clips, as you can specify what part of the DVD is used as an 'address' in VLC, again, this could be included?).
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Secondly, and probably only thought of because I'm currently doing some PHP work in embedding videos into an Internet radio player, I have come across a way that seems to work if people are wanting to play YouTube or Vimeo videos through OpenLP. I assume it would work with other video websites, but these are the two I am aware of - the same idea could work for other media sites like Audioboo or Mixcloud but I haven't checked into those. Of course, make sure that any videos you play via this method are legitimate and you're allowed to either by personal agreement with the video holder or covered under any licences your church may have!
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Step 1: Set up a theme in OpenLP that has a text area the size of your screen (eg, 1024x768) and with 0 margins. Probably a black background is best as well. I named mine 'FullScreen'.
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Step 2: In 'Configure Formatting Tags', create a new one with the description as something like 'YouTube' and the tag something like 'yt'. For the start HTML, enter: <font face="Courier New"><iframe width="1024" height="768" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/</font><font face="Arial, Verdana"> - note that the 'src' is incomplete, and change the width and height to fit your theme. For the end HTML, enter: </font><font face="Courier New">?rel=0&autoplay=1&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></font><font face="Arial, Verdana"> . Save.</font>
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<font face="Arial, Verdana" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Step 3: Create a Custom Slide, using 'FullScreen' as your theme, and for the slide contents, type in </font><font style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;" face="Courier New">{yt}</font><font face="Arial, Verdana" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> followed by the YouTube video ID you want to play. You can find this in your browser's address bar after </font><font face="Courier New" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">v= </font><font face="Arial, Verdana" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">and before </font><font face="Courier New" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">&</font><font face="Arial, Verdana" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> or if you go to share the video, it's the bit after the </font><font style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;" face="Courier New">youtu.be/</font><font face="Arial, Verdana" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> part of the address. End the tag with </font><font style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;" face="Courier New">{/yt}</font><font face="Arial, Verdana" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> so your full text for the slide would look something like </font><font face="Courier New"><font style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">{yt}</font><font size="2">/VF2pO7mRYHM{/yt}</font></font><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2"> . Save the slide.</font>
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<font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">Step 4: Go live with this slide, the YouTube video will start automatically when it goes live. In the 'Live' column of the screen you will see two slides, the first with the YouTube video ID on it, the second blank; you can stop the video playing immediately by selecting the second blank slide.</font>
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<font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">One major problem with this is that it doesn't stop the adverts appearing, so if you're playing a video that has adverts they will show (but you can cancel them if need be as you would if you were watching on YouTube's main interface).</font>
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<font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">For Vimeo, in Step 2, use something like vim for the tag; in HTML start use </font><font size="2" face="Courier New"><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video</font><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2"> and for the HTML end use </font><font face="Courier New" size="2">?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0&amp;autoplay=1" width="1024" height="768" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></font><font size="2" face="Arial"> . The Vimeo video ID code is the number at the end of the URL (it's a little easier to find on Vimeo than on YouTube!) so in your custom slide, you'd have something like </font><font face="Courier New" size="2">{vim}33794697{/vim} </font><font face="Arial" size="2">. Everything else is the same for that one.</font>
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<font face="Arial" size="2">I hope that's helped somebody; having worked that out may well encourage the transition over to OpenLP in my church!</font>