New beta feature available: video snippets block

[Kasra]

Hello!

The video snippets block lets you play video files uploaded to an attachment field. You can preview a whole video, or specify start and end times by selecting duration fields containing timestamps.

We’ve been using it internally for meeting recordings and user research sessions. In these bases, we have the videos stored in one table, and we have a second linked table (“Nuggets” in the screenshot below). The records in this second table act as bookmarks into specific parts of the videos.

→ Click here to join the beta. Once you click that link, the “Video snippets” block will be available in the list of blocks when you go to install a block.

P.S. The source code for this block is available here, so you can remix it if you’re in the custom blocks beta.

[ScottWorld]

Thanks, @Kasra! Where should we be sending feedback on this beta? The first feedback that I have is that this block doesn’t work as expected if there is more than one attachment in the attachments field:

• If all the attachments are videos, it will only play the first video in the attachment field. (And there is no way to shuffle the order of attachments.)
• If the attachment field contains a mixture of videos & other files, it requires the video to be the very first attachment in order to be played. (And there is no way to shuffle the order of attachments.)

It seems like the only way to get this to work would be to link to videos in another table, where each video is its own separate record in the other table.

Then, you could use the Video Snippets Block in that OTHER table instead of the main table.

[ScottWorld]

@Kasra My 2nd feedback is that I can’t get the “Duration Start” and “Duration End” times to make any difference in where it starts playing the video. Even though I’ve set both a Duration Start and a Duration End, it always starts playing from the very beginning of the video.

p.s. I am working with an .mp4 file.

[Kasra]

Feel free to keep submitting feedback in this thread during the beta!

Right now the block only works with the first attachment in the cell, mainly because the start/end times don’t quite make sense if you have multiple attachments in a record. But that’s useful feedback.

I can’t get the “Duration Start” and “Duration End” times to make any difference in where it starts playing the video

• What is the “Duration Format” option for your duration fields?
• What browser are you using?

[ScottWorld]

Kasra:

• What is the “Duration Format” option for your duration fields?

h:mm:ss for both duration fields

• What browser are you using?

Safari 13.1.1 on macOS 10.15.5

[Alex_Magnus_Leh]

Hi, I’m very interested in this feature and am trying to get it to work for our project. We have a WIP field that often can contain multiple videos, as well as a FINAL field which has a few videos at times. When I click on an entry that has videos it tries to load the video but the play button remains greyed out. Is there a way to choose between the videos? Is our format (mp4) not compatible with the viewer, maybe?