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Thank you very much for your great post.   I absolutely enjoyed it and just wanted to say that.

trancendental:

There's no limit to what you could store in the database and have as a searchable parameter: track length, music genre, rep number, chore moves, chore innovations, recommended up/down/same weights .... and so on.

Then, all of this information could be used to generate/suggest mix-n-match tracklists for instructors.

I guess it comes down to how much time Mel and you want to put into this. I know it has been a bit of a "labour of love" so no pressure!

Indeed Rick, those are definately some avenues we are exploring, but, as you said it's all time. It's going to take some time, but I'll keep slugging away at entering stuff into the database.

I would love to enter in snippets of choreography, not so that people can look up chorrey (that would be illegal), but so that people could search: which releases has there been a tricep dips in...........for example.

I think it's an absolutely awesome project, but I haven't yet figured out a way to complete it in one month. lol

Then there's the logical problem of getting all the choreography for all the programs. For 5 of the programs that is easy for me.........but the other programs I don't teach will prove more difficult. Then there's the old releases that no one has copies of anymore. Would be nice to have the database "complete".

But still, it will take me a long time to do, but I'm certainly enjoying expanding and growing the site.

misfit:

trancendental:

There's no limit to what you could store in the database and have as a searchable parameter: track length, music genre, rep number, chore moves, chore innovations, recommended up/down/same weights .... and so on.

Then, all of this information could be used to generate/suggest mix-n-match tracklists for instructors.

I guess it comes down to how much time Mel and you want to put into this. I know it has been a bit of a "labour of love" so no pressure!

 

 

I would love to enter in snippets of choreography, not so that people can look up chorrey (that would be illegal), but so that people could search: which releases has there been a tricep dips in...........for example.

 

 

That's a very good idea to provide some accurate information.

It is possible in your website to have a flash video plug-in to play videos rather than the icon link to lauch the video?

Just a question of ergonomy and look and feel IMO.

hmmm, I don't quite understand what you mean tiger? Could you explain a bit more?

It does actually use flash to play the video, I just use it in a pop up to display it. Maybe you could clarify what you mean for me?

Misfit,

I mean: is it possible to play the video embedded to the current window rather than a pop-up in another window

Just a suggestion.

Ah I understand what you mean now.

It is possible, but when I was considering a design for the site, having the video load within the same page would mean ALL videos being preloaded. I decided against this, because I felt that it would be a bandwidth nightmare. Nevermind people who are using dialup. The way I have designed it now, the video does not load at all until clicking on it. At the moment there's only a few videos for each program, but as more future releases have video sizzlers available, this is going to be a lot of preloaded videos on the page!

I also have considered plans to just display only 10 releases at a time for each program. But even if I do implement this, it still wouldn't be a good idea to have 10 videos loading at the same time.

It may be possible to not call the videos until the user clicks, but having it appear in a lightbox style window, I felt, was the nicest, cleanest design solution. I am of course open to all suggestions though, so I will keep your idea in mind (as well as if anyone else has any technical solutions?).

Keep the suggestions coming!

misfit:

 

It may be possible to not call the videos until the user clicks, but having it appear in a lightbox style window, I felt, was the nicest, cleanest design solution.

I wouldn't change a thing. The lightbox model for displaying media is very slick and intuitive, esp the way it shadows out the rest of the page content.

The only suggestion I'd make would be to enable autoplay. Users have become accustomed to that from U-Toob, and it took me a couple of seconds to realise I needed to click to get the videos to play.

Just out of interest, do you host the videos directly, or are they called from elsewhere?

misfit:

Ah I understand what you mean now.

It is possible, but when I was considering a design for the site, having the video load within the same page would mean ALL videos being preloaded. I decided against this, because I felt that it would be a bandwidth nightmare. Nevermind people who are using dialup. The way I have designed it now, the video does not load at all until clicking on it. At the moment there's only a few videos for each program, but as more future releases have video sizzlers available, this is going to be a lot of preloaded videos on the page!

I also have considered plans to just display only 10 releases at a time for each program. But even if I do implement this, it still wouldn't be a good idea to have 10 videos loading at the same time.

It may be possible to not call the videos until the user clicks, but having it appear in a lightbox style window, I felt, was the nicest, cleanest design solution. I am of course open to all suggestions though, so I will keep your idea in mind (as well as if anyone else has any technical solutions?).

Keep the suggestions coming!

Thanks Misfit. I think preloaded videos is not a problem as far as we have DSL broadband?

Sorry for those who have still use dialup

trancendental:

 

Just out of interest, do you host the videos directly, or are they called from elsewhere?

The videos are hosted on our server,

This ensures our viewers the best possible quality,thus viewing the videos the way Les Mills meant it to be,

also hotlinking does not make for a reliable website, not to mention any legal issues that could pop up.

trancendental:

I wouldn't change a thing. The lightbox model for displaying media is very slick and intuitive, esp the way it shadows out the rest of the page content.

The only suggestion I'd make would be to enable autoplay. Users have become accustomed to that from U-Toob, and it took me a couple of seconds to realise I needed to click to get the videos to play.

Just out of interest, do you host the videos directly, or are they called from elsewhere?

Thanks Rick. Autoplay is easy to enable. I did originally have autoplay, and was toying whether to keep it on or off. I eventually decided to leave it off, mainly because I wanted people to notice that they have to press the stop button before close the lightbox. This I will be fixing tho, and I will almost surely enable autoplay then.  

tiger75:

Thanks Misfit. I think preloaded videos is not a problem as far as we have DSL broadband?

Sorry for those who have still use dialup

As the tracklists expand, this really wouldn't be a viable option. The more that is loaded in the page, the slower it will load, no matter what you're connection speed.

alexander:

also hotlinking does not make for a reliable website

Depends on where you src from , but I take your point.

misfit:

As the tracklists expand, this really wouldn't be a viable option. The more that is loaded in the page, the slower it will load, no matter what you're connection speed.

Not to mention, that page would become very cluttered.

It's something I always juggle with my blog. Having enough media to add some visual interest, but not so much that it overwhelms the page.

trancendental:

Not to mention, that page would become very cluttered.

Well, I would probably put it in a collapsable div, but yeah.........you're spot on.