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AUDIO/VIDEO DOWNLOAD VENUE
Audio/Video Attachment Limitations
This tutorial demonstrates how one might use the Item and Supplier (and even the Member) branches that Review Foundry offers to set up a combined music review section and audio/video download area for a community of music lovers. Of course, the discussion applies equally well to any other type of community whose interest revolves around audio or video recordings of some type--instead of music you might be interested in providing sermons, or podcasts of celebrity interviews, or motivational speeches, etc. Music just happens to be the most popular form of audio recording. If you wish to offer video feeds you can do that too.
The implementation of audio and video file attachments in Review Foundry is such that it is easy to add up to, say, a DOZEN audio or video tracks to each record. If you intend to add significantly more than this you are probably using the WRONG application, and should seek about for something designed specifically to handle large numbers of audio or video file attachments.
For example, if you intend to add a Favorite Tracks section to Member records, and allow each member to add whatever number of tracks they desire, then this is not going to work for you. There will always be a limit to the number of tracks that can be attached to a given record in the Review Foundry Item, Member, or Supplier tables--and the more you add, the less efficient the data storage becomes. So be warned: think in small numbers when considering audio or video file attachments. If, for example, you wish to add audio/video columns to represent an album of 20 tracks or less, for each record in the Item table, then you should have no problem. If you are using each record in the Item table to store a single track, then that works even better. Note that reviews are applied per record, so if you create an "album" of 10 tracks, the album is reviewed, and not the individual tracks. If you intend for single tracks to be reviewed, they will require their own table record.
In case you are wondering, Review Foundry stores file attachment data--and titles, running times, and so on--as extra columns in the original data record for the Item, Member, or Supplier. This means there is more flexibility in the nature of each element in the collection of attachments, but at the cost of efficiency in the way the data is stored (as column data, rather than extra records in separate tables). So this works well when the number of attachments, and extra attachment fields is small.
Custom code has been added to Review Foundry so that audio and video fields can be presented on the page with any of the Wimpy MP3, AV or WASP Players. This means a jukebox of MP3s can easily be added to a detail page. Likewise, video feeds can be embedded with ease. It is recommended that you make use of the Wimpy Player if you decide to add audio or video columns to your records.
Maximum Uploadable File Size
The maximum permissible size for an uploaded audio or video file depends on 2 types of file size restriction in Review Foundry.
The first restriction involves the value of the submission_max_kilobytes configuration variable. This is a hard limit on ALL uploaded files, regardless of MIME type. You can set this value from the Configure > Submit / Join page. No file can be uploaded that is larger than this limit.
The second restriction involves the maximum acceptable file size for a given MIME type, or file extension. These limits are specified in the UploadType table. For example, to set the maximum permissible byte size of an uploaded mp3 file to 10,240,000 bytes (10 Mbytes), edit the Max Filesize field of the mp3 record. You should set file size limits for ALL uploadable MIME types in the UploadType table.
In particular, be sure you have added records to the UploadType table for mp3, swf, and flv MIME types (which are of particular interest to anyone hoping to stream audio or video content within Review Foundry). Use the following record attributes to create these records:
id: mp3 mime_type: Content-Type: audio/mpeg mime_description: MPEG Audio max_bytes: 10240000 is_imagetype: No is_enabled: Yes
id: swf mime_type: Content-Type: application/x-shockwave-flash mime_description: Shockwave Video max_bytes: 10240000 is_imagetype: No is_enabled: Yes
id: flv mime_type: Content-Type: flv-application/octet-stream mime_description: FLV Video max_bytes: 10240000 is_imagetype: No is_enabled: Yes
Example Audio/Video Download Venue
This tutorial demonstrates how one should go about manipulating the Item table to represent audio and video recordings. It also explains, in particular, how records in the Supplier table can be used to represent recording artists. Items have been covered in some detail already in Tutorial One: How To Create An Affiliate Review Site and Tutorial Two: How To Create An Adult Review Site and we will borrow material from those tutorials here.
Continuing in our tradition of following the progress of a fictional Review Foundry webmaster, we conjure up Mike, a garage band music fan who has created an online community dedicated to emerging bands in the U.S. Currently his members use vBulletin to communicate, and now he intends to use Review Foundry to let them upload samples of their music and get feedback via reviews. These sample files can be audio clips, but they can be short video clips too. For this, Review Foundry is perfectly suited. Each band will get their own supplier profile page PLUS a separate detail page, where they may be reviewed independently of any given music track/clip that they have created and uploaded. Their music samples, uploaded as file attachments will also be available for separate review.
In Mike's case many of the steps needed to set up his audio/video file directory are the same ones that Clare encountered in Tutorial One: How To Create An Affiliate Review Site. Therefore, instead of spelling out the details of how to add the categories into which the audio/video files might be grouped, or the process by which rating attributes are created for those music categories, we leave those discussions to Tutorial One and concentrate instead on those tasks unique to Mike's case. In particular, setting up detail pages for audio and video files will require the addition of special file columns that allow for easy uploading and automatic presentation of the files for later download. The formatting of the audio/video file presentation on the page is already built into Review Foundry, so the entire process--as we shall see--is really very simple.
We will suppose that Mike has settled upon a suitable categorization scheme for the music files that bands will upload, a portion of which might include genres such as:
- Rock and Pop > Punk and Hardcore
- Rock and Pop > Heavy Metal
- R&B and Soul > Blues
- R&B and Soul > Funk
For each of the categories added, Mike wants to customize the selection of track/clip attributes (note: audio files will often be referred to as "tracks", and video files as "clips", in this tutorial) that can be rated by the members of his site. For instance, the attributes he decides are best suited for the Rock > Heavy Metal category are these:
- Head Banging Factor
- Lyrics
- Breakout Track
- Must Hear/See
Obviously, choosing the right selection of attributes for your categories will increase the likelihood that members will submit accurate ratings. It also improves the chances that your overall offering is well appreciated by your web traffic. In Mike's case, this might translate to increased downloads and more buzz about the site.
It should also be noted that if Mike allows bands to upload a given track/clip to multiple genres he might want ALL reviews submitted for that track to show in every genre REGARDLESS of the genre to which a given review was submitted. If this is the case he will need to configure Review Foundry early on to make use of SHARED REVIEWS--wherein all genres share a common set of rating attributes, so that the review and its ratings can slot into any genre. When rating attributes are genre, or category, specific this is not the case.
As an example, it would NOT be appropriate for the Head Banging Factor rating attribute shown above to appear in non Heavy Metal categories, so it would not appear in the set of rating attributes for a SHARED REVIEWS setup. The other 3 attributes, however, are more universal and could be shared across genres. So Mike needs to make a decision about this BEFORE he encourages bands to begin uploading tracks/clips. For more information on this, see the material on Shared Reviews in the Review Foundry User Manual.
Next Section: ADDING YELLOWPAGES
Documentation
Documentation for Review Foundry, which is entirely separate from these tutorial pages, is an ongoing project (as is this tutorial). You should find that there is sufficient information in the Review Foundry User Manual to answer most of your technical needs. Suggestions for improvement to both the User Manual and this tutorial are always welcomed. As more users gain experience with Review Foundry, and issues are resolved for its application in different areas, information gained from that experience will make its way into these pages.
Note: If you cannot find the information you are looking for in this tutorial, try the Review Foundry User Manual which you should find far more comprehensive than the instructional dialog found here.
Copyright © 2004 Random Mouse Software. All Rights Reserved.