Adventures in IT: February 2018

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Start, Stop, & Autoplay YouTube Video via Link

There have been several instances when I've wanted or needed to trim a YouTube video to a certain segment, shared via a URL link, and have it autoplay as well when the link is clicked.

Here's simple instructions for how to do that:

First, we'll choose a video from YouTube to edit. I've chosen a SpongeBob clip here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifGpkKXWtGk&feature=youtu.be

Second, there are 3 main link parameters to be aware of for this...

?start=[timeinseconds] ......this sets the video start time, specified in seconds

?end=[timeinseconds] .....this sets the video's end time, specified in seconds

?autoplay=1 ......this sets the video to automatically start playing

(Note: At this time apparently there is no way to specify fractions of seconds or milliseconds. You gotta round to the nearest second you want.

You can add parameter elements together with a "&" symbol. For example:

To automatically start the video at 5 seconds in, end at 10 seconds, use:

?start=5&end=10&autoplay=1

To automatically start the video from the beginning, end at 15 seconds, use:

?end=10&autoplay=1

To automatically start the video from the beginning and play to the end, simply use:

?autoplay=1

Third, we need to add the appropriate parameters needed to the embedded form of the link:

On the YouTube video's main page, click the "Share" button, then click "Embed" button which will open a new window.

In the "Embed Video" window, you'll notice code similar to the following below:

The part of the code we are concerned with is between the quotation marks after src=

(see example in bold text below)

Your final YouTube link will consist of that URL from the Embed Video code, and just append the chosen parameters to the end.

For example:

This is the SpongeBob video linked above that automatically starts, from the beginning until 7 seconds in.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ifGpkKXWtGk?end=7&autoplay=1

Here is a Zoolander clip, that starts automatically at time 4:07 and ends at 4:15.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/8720XS-pquc?start=247&end=255&autoplay=1

And....

Finally, just for fun, here's Gary catching SpongeBob watching something embarrassing :)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/mhoymAarK0E?autoplay=1

Sources:

Playing YouTube video with start and end time using YouTube API
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19507063/playing-youtube-video-with-start-and-end-time-using-youtube-api

How can I set specific start and end times for an embedded video?

https://support.gospacecraft.com/hc/en-us/articles/204744184-How-can-I-set-specific-start-and-end-times-for-an-embedded-video-

How to Autoplay your YouTube of Vimeo Video

https://sunnylandingpages.com/blog/how-to-autoplay-your-youtube-or-vimeo-video-on-your-landing-page/

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Deploying an OVF Template from a Local ESXi Datastore

We had a test lab ESXi host setup that I wanted to run through installing an instance of the Cisco Virtual Wireless LAN Controller.

I had the OVF Template saved locally on the box's datastore, but upon trying to deploy the OVF Template, it asked for either a URL as the source, or to browse to a location that was accessible from my computer.

Thanks to a 2015 article from Andreas Lesslhumer, I found the trick to pointing the source file location to the local ESXi's datastore.

The below information was taken from their article here:
http://www.running-system.com/deploy-an-ovf-template-stored-on-a-local-esxi-datastore/comment-page-1/#comment-262778

So the OVF Template wizard initial prompt looks as below:

So my question was how do I access or tell the wizard to look at the ESXi datastore for the file?

According to the article mentioned above, I was led to navigate in a browser to the IP address of my lab host followed by /folder. For example: https://192.168.1.10/folder

I saw a link to "ha-datacenter" just as the referenced article indicated.