USB to TV how?

[Steve Bleasdale]

OK so i am on the band wagon of giving USB out this year for wedding movies and being so used to DVD what is the best way of doing this as my day at having a look has seen me throw things at my computer.

New 8gb USB, 40 minute film, formatted fat 32 in the USB, in Encore downloaded file to folder on hard drive as HD 1080 x 1920 mp4, Tried to find folder on hard driove and its hidden in a cache system on hard drive? Finally found file, dragged and dropped to the USB, USB to TV, folder there on TV, but says no folder when trying to play?
OK start again, back in encore download as 720 x 1280 hd high quality, folder found in drive in cache system again?, drag and drop into USB, same again no folder found but you can see it in a folder on screen..
F............go back to DVD,...

[Dave Partington]

Steve, not sure why you're using Encore, that's for DVD, Blu-ray and Flash ;)

Grab yourself Handbrake (it's free) for the better h.264 encoding with smaller files.

Then you need to figure out HTML, CSS and maybe some javascript to make an awesome player on a computer, or just have the eh.264 files that play on TVs.

You don't need Encore for any of that!

[Steve Bleasdale]

Ah OK Dave, i am on prem pro and naturally it links to encore so i thought go ahead and use that as i am used to that. But even so, all USB will not play in certain TV so whats the point i may as well stick to DVD. You know what its like in UK. My son has given me three files on his USB, played in my mums TV to no avail then my TV a year old only and will not play?? So i give my clients USB and then all hell breaks loose ringing you saying they cant play the dam movie...

[Steve Bleasdale]

Ah ok so just use media encoder full hd and save to drive then use handbrake?

[Chris Harding]

Hi Steve

Clive in Ireland mentioned he had figured out how to use HTML5, CSS and Java to make his interactive menus on a USB drive . Maybe he will share with us ..just some basic code or a simple template would be great???

Chris

[Steve Bleasdale]

Maybe Chris...Cmon Clive.....

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Steve Bleasdale

But even so, all USB will not play in certain TV so whats the point i may as well stick to DVD. You know what its like in UK. My son has given me three files on his USB, played in my mums TV to no avail then my TV a year old only and will not play?? So i give my clients USB and then all hell breaks loose ringing you saying they cant play the dam movie...

This is the issue with providing files on USB they may or may not play on the device that the client plugs them into as there is no standard for playback let alone any standard for menus. This is why discs & Blu-ray will remain the default for years to come. If Apple provided a way for a small business to deliver private videos to targeted clients through iTunes then we could all forget about physical delivery but until that time DVD & Blu-ray are the only standards based way of delivering video to clients.

[Taky Cheung]

There is no standard in TV USB port that can read movie files. Even if it plays on yours, it might not play to many TVs out there.

A safe bet is to have your customer get AppleTV or Chromecast that can mirror content to TV.

[Clive McLaughlin]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Hi Steve

Clive in Ireland mentioned he had figured out how to use HTML5, CSS and Java to make his interactive menus on a USB drive . Maybe he will share with us ..just some basic code or a simple template would be great???

Chris

Hi guys,

It's probably a pretty low tech solution compared to what Taky has put together.

Any CSS I used was simply for styling. And I'm not keen allow you to fully use my template. I did waste like £18,000 on a student loan to go through uni. I guess 'waste' is too strong a word, but only occasionally doing thinks like this still doesn't go far in justifying my fees at the time!


Anyways, I'll try to explain the barebones.

A main html file which contain the hyperlinks to the video pages. The video pages all contain the html5 video code. The html video code points to the digital video files on your USB (probably in a subfolder). So the main page contains the links - and the user just uses the browser's back button to return to menu. My simplistic version of course offers no 'chapters'. But the videos have a full playbar so moving to a certain point shouldnt be problematic for clients.

Go to 2:10 on my video to see how it looks.

PIGMINTFILM USB Product Packaging on Vimeo

P.S. the jittery look of my videos on the USB is becuase of the screen capture software - not an accurate representation of how they play off the USB.

HTML5 video code:

<video width="320" height="240" autoplay>
<source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>

[Clive McLaughlin]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

This is the issue with providing files on USB they may or may not play on the device that the client plugs them into as there is no standard for playback let alone any standard for menus. This is why discs & Blu-ray will remain the default for years to come.

I have to disagree. You can do nothing with Blu-Ray/DVD aprt from using on a Blu-Ray/DVD player. Unless of course you 'rip' them.

The flipside is USB has various benefits/uses/methods to play. And if you really want, you could make your own DVD or pay somebody to.

[Steve Bleasdale]

Cheers Clive nice one thanks mate.
OK can someone take me through USB download from original movie from the time line because i am going to blow up the dam thing in a minute.
I have 4gb, 8gb, 16,gb, 32 gb usb flash drives.
From prem pro go through media encoder full hd 1080 x 1920 high quality OK loaded into hard drive good, plays great on computer, ok so in goes USB 16gb.
File is to large for destination drive, soi format to ntfs downloading great, try in TV, will not play, brand new LG TV ... WTF...

[Clive McLaughlin]

What format did you encode to? mp4?

[Steve Bleasdale]

Talk about frustration....
Am i being paranoid?
USB flash drives been in production years yes?
So why cant they all play in TVs...
Am i paranoid that i am thinking TV companies don't want you to play movies through a USB stick so that you wont get sky TV and Netflix and all other movie downloads?
Jesus how hard is it to get a film to play through a USB.......

[Steve Bleasdale]

Originally Posted by Clive McLaughlin

What format did you encode to? mp4?

Ye Clive.

The movie 45 minutes long about 11gb.. Full HD high quality 1080 x 1920 HD.264, media encoder upload, plays brilliant on three computers, two TVs noooooooo.

[Taky Cheung]

Originally Posted by Clive McLaughlin

...And I'm not keen allow you to fully use my template. I did waste like £18,000 on a student loan to go through uni.

hehehe Clive!!!!

I'm at this point won't be sharing online tutorial or stuff like that for several reasons. Actually those HTML5 codes are very simple. You can google it.. it's all there.

If you want to create a chapter, there're several ways to do. But the easiest way is to specify the video start time. You add the #t= with the number of seconds when you want the video to start. For example, you want to start the video at 1:26 of the video file, add #t=86 like this.. (1 min x 60 sec. + 26 sec = 86)

<video width="320" height="240" autoplay>
<source src="movie.mp4#t=86" type="video/mp4">
</video>

Also the auto play feature is disabled for mobile browser by default. They did it on purpose so people won't incure huge data cell phone bill. Because of that, you should add a poster frame to the video. Same like the thumbnail setting on YouTube or Vimeo. Say like I have a file called thumbnail.jpg I want to use when the video placeholder is displayed on the page.

<video width="320" height="240" autoplay poster="thumbnail.jpg">
<source src="movie.mp4#t=86" type="video/mp4">
</video>