Media player

Owned by Kristi Park
Last updated: Dec 11, 2023
2 min read

TDL-hosted DSpace repositories feature an HTML5 media player that renders audio and visual media in an embedded player within the browser page. The player will appear as a thumbnail image for relevant items (see Thumbnails and the Media Player below) and on the Full Item page next to relevant files.

On this page:

Captioned Video and Audio Files

The media player will render captions for videos accompanied 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 where the thumbnail would ordinarily appear in the Brief Item view. 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, you will need to make that file the primary bitstream for the new template to work properly.

How to set your a/v file as the primary bitstream

When you deposit a new item to the repository, you have the option to designate any file as the primary bitstream during the submission workflow.

If you need to set the primary bitstream after an item is already published, take the following steps:

  1. Navigate to the item in question and click "Edit this item" in the right sidebar.

  2. Click the "Item Bitstreams" tab.

  3. Click on the bitstream you want to make the primary. You'll want to click on the linked title of the file. This should take you to the "Edit bitstream" page with the file metadata.

  4. Under "Primary bitstream," click on the dropdown menu and select "yes."

  5. Click Save.