SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

As part of the standard Corporate Project Solutions project management process there always comes a time when you start to communicate the project to a wider audience than the project team, stakeholders and other key users / focus groups.

Typically this will be the time between completion of development / client testing and the go live date of your project.

Now the stakeholders, project members and focus groups will already be up to speed with how the solution works and training will be in place for key individuals as well.  But what do you do when the training budget cannot extend to the whole organisation?  Especially when that organisation could have over a hundred thousand users.

So to ensure that you have appropriate training material in place, you create videos, presentations, documentation and FAQ’s to help aid the user.  This plus an effective search solution can bring down the cost of training and ensure that your users are appropriately informed.

One of the key aspects of this would be to ensure that video material can be played within the web page.  This will allow the user to view the videos inline with the solution and can even be linked directly from the solution.  This is where the SharePoint 2010 Media Web Part comes into play:

Through my consulting travels I have found that clients have issues with knowing what is and isn’t supported by this web part.  So this blog post will hopefully shed some light and provide links to useful information.

So lets go through the web part options:

Change Media

The media web part supports Audio and Video formats.

Format support:

• Video: WMV (including VC-1), MP4 (H.264), 3GP
• Audio: WMA (Standard and Professional), MP3

Supported sources are from within SharePoint or from an external web address:
• From Computer: The user will be asked to upload the file to a location within SharePoint such as a document library or a site asset library.
• From SharePoint: The file already exists in SharePoint and you can select the file from a document / site asset library
• From Address: Allows the user to specify an external web address for example:

---

Change Image

This option allows you to add some presentation to the media web part by showing a picture before the user clicks on the play button.

Format Support:

• Image: jpg, png, gif, bmp (most common image formats are supported)

NB: Please note that the picture will not be shown if “Start media automatically” is checked

Properties

Title: The summary description for the web part and the video.

Whilst the video is stopped you will see this Title at the top within the web part as well as on the web part chrome.  When you change the title within the Media Web Part the chrome title will be synchronised when the page is saved.

For example:

Start media automatically: When this is checked, as soon as the page loads, the video / audio will start.

Loop until stopped: When checked, the media will continue to play until the user stops it via the in-built controls.

Player Styles

Styles: Two options are available out of the box, light & dark.

NB: After various bits of research, these styles appear to be part of the Silverlight control and cannot be customised.

Size Options

Horizontal Size: Changing the width of the media player

Vertical Size: Changing the height of the media player

Lock Aspect Ratio: When checked the horizontal and vertical measurements will be kept in accordance with each other.  So as you adjust the height, the width will change in keeping to maintain the aspect ratio.

NB: Please not that this also updates the width and height properties on the web part

So there we go, all the options covered for the Media Web Part.  I know that a number of people have had issues with some of the styling options on the TechNet forums so hopefully this provides a concise view of the options available.

Useful Links:

Media Web Part FAQ: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sanjaynarang/archive/2010/05/20/media-web-part-in-sharepoint-2010-faq.aspx

Supported Media Formats: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189080(VS.95).aspx