A youtube screen showing "only" what I want to show.

[Freyja Vanlager]

Hi, I come here withe a new question looking for your help. I'm building an auditorium with a screen where to show videos (youtube or other source) and my problem is that nobody see what I'm choosing and instead of this everybody can choose what to see. Is there any way to fix what is shown in a screen so the owner of the parcel is the only one to control de screen?

Thanks in advance.

[Maitimo]

As far as I know, there's no way to do this, except by instructing your audience to click on the same link and press "Play" at the same time. Even then, there will be differences due to individual users' network speed.

[Freyja Vanlager]

Thanks for you answer. I hope someone could know a different way 😉 

[Istelathis]

I think you can do it with parcel media,  I'm not overly familiar with it since I have never had a use for it.  From my understanding, everyone will see the same video though, I'm playing around with it now and I notice I can not click on links though - so I think you may have to manually change it each time you want to show different videos.  I'm also not sure how you would make it full screen for videos on youtube.

 

Here is LL's article on it

I think the above link is a bit dated, although it covers some of the basics.

 

Edit:
After searching, I did find a tutorial on how to make youtube videos full screen.  I tried it in SL using parcel media and it works.
https://www.h3xed.com/web-and-internet/how-to-link-to-a-full-screen-youtube-video

If you wanted to use parcel media, I would think perhaps having a notepad with all of the links you wanted to share listed in them would be a good idea.  Each time you wanted to change videos, you would change your parcel's media.  As an experiment I tried changing the parcel media and it worked relatively quickly.  The problem I would think of is ads, I'm not sure if they appear for everyone at the same time in each video on youtube.

Unfortunately, I don't have an audience handy to test any of this out.  If you do have some friends in world, you could give it a shot and see if it works for you.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Istelathis

[Mollymews]

for total control over what patrons of your auditorium can see then is best to host the youtube player on your own web server and point the MOAP at your host

as on our host we can script the youtube player using https://developers.google.com/youtube/iframe_api_reference

the most notable effect of server-side scripting is that everybody in the auditorium will see the same video frame at the same time (give or take a few frames due to internet lag)

 

[Freyja Vanlager]

Ok, first of all the "parcel media" solves immediately my first problem: to control what is shown and not to allow everybody choose what to see. Now, and specifically for Youtube videos, we have to handle the problem of adds like Istelathis suggests. Anyway it's a very good starting.

Probably the solution proposed by Mollymews the best one for a total control, and specially thinking not only in youtube videos but in some other kind of media. Now that I know the parcel media use, a wider range of possibilities are open.

Thanks a  lot for your help.

[Mollymews]

a caution.  If we are hosting a youtube player, for relay to our users, and we attempt to block adverts and links in youtube videos then youtube will block/ban our host from using their service. Adverts and links are deemed to be content, and content is the discretion of the content provider, not us the relay host

is best not to do this

to cater for this, we can LSL script a Reset button on our inworld TV.  Should a person click on a link in the video playing (taking them to another webpage/website), then if they click the Reset button the script will re-direct back to the current frame of our playing video

[Freyja Vanlager]

If finally I have to use an own web video server, I dont need to embebe youtube. I can show my own videos and avoid the add problem.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Does parcel media actually keep track of where the playback is, globally? Or does it depend on the type of media? (stream vs file playback)

I recall (from group-watching movies on a TV, many years ago) that anyone who joins late had to start watching from the beginning instead of where everybody else was at.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I recall (from group-watching movies on a TV, many years ago) that anyone who joins late had to start watching from the beginning instead of where everybody else was at.

That is correct. MOP is entirely client side, it's simply a web (almost) perfectly normal browser window run by the viewer's built-in web browser.

[Freyja Vanlager]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

That is correct. MOP is entirely client side, it's simply a web (almost) perfectly normal browser window run by the viewer's built-in web browser.

Why video has a different behaviour than other media like music? When you go to a club with live DJs or to a land with a radio, you dont start listening from the beggining of the session. 

[Madelaine McMasters]

8 minutes ago, Freyja Vanlager said:

Why video has a different behaviour than other media like music? When you go to a club with live DJs or to a land with a radio, you dont start listening from the beggining of the session. 

The music you hear at clubs is live streamed. Although YouTube does have live streams, they're rare.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Freyja Vanlager said:

Why video has a different behaviour than other media like music? When you go to a club with live DJs or to a land with a radio, you dont start listening from the beggining of the session. 

It's just as ChinRey said. When you play media, your viewer is directly accessing a URL. If the data behind that URL is an entire file, your viewer will start playing that file from the beginning because there isn't any kind of time-tracking functionality within the file itself. The data behind parcel streams is usually a stream of data rather than a specific file, so what you hear is what's coming in right at that moment. You could do the same with videos, but you'd have to be actively streaming that, which requires quite a bit of constant bandwidth and a more complex setup.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Freyja Vanlager]

58 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

The music you hear at clubs is live streamed. Although YouTube does have live streams, they're rare.

The music is no "really" live since someone put music files to share in streaming. I dont know why it's different if someone share video files instead of music ones.

[Freyja Vanlager]

7 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

It's just as ChinRey said. When you play media, your viewer is directly accessing a URL. If the data behind that URL is an entire file, your viewer will start playing that file from the beginning because there isn't any kind of time-tracking functionality within the file itself. The data behind parcel streams is usually a stream of data rather than a specific file, so what you hear is what's coming in right at that moment. You could do the same with videos, but you'd have to be actively streaming that, which requires quite a bit of constant bandwidth and a more complex setup.

Ok, I understand. I really dont want to show videos 24/7 but to show specific videos for specific events the same that a DJ do with music. So probably the mechanic should be the same. Youtube was only an example on the beggining, since I understood that I had to use my own video server, I dont need youtube directly since I can get the videos by other sources. Thanks a lot.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Freyja Vanlager

[Madelaine McMasters]

Just now, Freyja Vanlager said:

The music is no "really" live since someone put music files to share in streaming. I dont know why it's different if someone share video files instead of music ones.

"Live streaming" refers to the way the video/audio data is handled. In a live stream, even if the data is obtained from a file, it's sent in a non-stop stream that waits for no one. The stream behaves as if the source was live. If you view the stream, you get the data that's passing down the stream at that instant. This is the only way to ensure that everyone sees/hears the same thing at the same time. If the stream is coming from an existing file (not a live event) you can have navigation controls, but they affect the stream and all people viewing will see the same result.

Most YouTube videos are files. You can view them at any time, starting at any point, rewinding, pausing, fast fowarding, etc. Anyone viewing such a file can navigate it independently of others. If you wish to share a video with others, and have everyone in sync, you'll need a service (or your own server) capable of reading a movie file and forwarding it as a live stream to any and all viewers. In such a scenario, if Play/Pause/Rewind/Fast Forward controls were available, they would affect the stream going to everyone.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

51 minutes ago, Freyja Vanlager said:

Ok, I understand. I really dont want to show videos 24/7 but to show specific videos for specific events the same that a DJ do with music. So probably the mechanic should be the same. Youtube was only an example on the beggining, since I understood that I had to use my own video server, I dont need youtube directly since I can get the videos by other sources. Thanks a lot.

The general advice would be to get something like OBS Studio, which is a free program many streamers use.

You can use a Video Source to turn your files into a stream of data instead of just basically sending the entire file at once. That stream would then go to any streaming service you want, such as Youtube or Twitch (assuming they allow what you want to show), and use that stream service's URL for your prim media.

Youtube allows even livestreams to be navigated just like regular videos, while Twitch only has the "live" part.

OBS comes with tons of support for different services, including your own custom streaming service if you go that route.

You could even embed a non-interactive player to your own web server, depending on how specific your needs are. (You would still stream to Twitch for example, just display the page differently through your own server.)
https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/embed/video-and-clips#non-interactive-inline-frames-for-live-streams-and-vods

Edited February 18, 2022 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Freyja Vanlager]

Really thanks a lot. I'll do some tests with OBS.