TDL-hosted DSpaces feature an HTML5 media player that renders audio and visual media in an embedded player within the browser page.

Captioned Video and Audio Files

The media player will render captions for videos accompanies by a WebVTT captioning file.

The subtitles file must be in the WebVTT format, and no additional steps are necessary beyond adding the file to the item. If the primary bitstream is a video file, then the template will automatically search for a WebVTT file in the item and incorporate it into the player.

Thumbnails and the Media Player

TDL has refactored the DSpace templates to use the primary bitstream of an item when determining what to display in the thumbnail space. If the primary bitstream is an audio/video file, then the appropriate media player will be displayed. And if not then the regular thumbnail logic will apply, i.e. if there are additional files then the first will be selected and the corresponding thumbnail image for that file type will be displayed.

The new logic can best be explained with examples. We have a created a test collection on our training DSpace instance (https://training-ir.tdl.org/handle/2249.1/26171) that allows you to explore the various scenarios that are likely to be encountered when dealing with audio/video bitstreams in items.

The titles of the items in the test collections speak for themselves, but the key takeaway is that in the new templates an audio/video file *must* be set as the primary bitstream of an item in order for the media player to be displayed. In any other scenario, even if it is the only bitstream of the item, the regular DSpace template will be used to determine a thumbnail. This means that in items where an audio/video file is the only bitstream, we will need to make that file the primary bitstream for the new template to work properly.