Although it’s primary use is as a photo gallery piwigo has the option to display all of your videos too. It actually does this remarkably well.
The best way I have found to enable videos is as follows:
Firstly download handbrake (open source / free video convertor) and convert your videos to mp4 format, remembering to click on the “web optimized” tab. This will allow your videos to play almost instantly and allow people to quickly scroll though your video without having to wait for the whole file to load.
I’d suggest that for a good quality web video you don’t really need to go for anything larger than 720 width when converting your file. I find that this gives a good amount of quality without an overly large file size.
Now, create a gallery in piwigo for your videos to go, ideally you need to use ftp / sftp as the files are typically too large for web uploading
eg. /galleries/our_holidays/videos
Now, upload your videos to that directory. (remember that piwigo does not like spaces or – in file names, so remove any before uploading them)
Create a subdirectory of your new video folder called pwg_representative
eg. /galleries/our_holidays/videos/pwg_representatives
If you place a jpg in the /pwg_representative folder with the same name as a video in the /videos folder it will automatically link.
example
/videos/video_123.mp4
/videos/pwg_representative/video_123.jpg
You can use a simple screen capture tool to make your video thumbnails from your favorite paint program or by using Snagit.
Alternatively if you have a lot of videos, Video Thumbnail Maker can do hundreds of thumbnails / videos in batches very quickly.
Go to the admin section of your site and choose plugins, manage, other plugins available>
Search for “jplayer” and install it. Then go back to manage and activate the plugin.
Now, go to tools, synchronize, tick files and folders, untick simulation and hit submit.
Thats it, your new video category should now be visible and videos should play in piwigo!
