Help:Videos

Overview

DCCWiki's curated videos help users understand complex topics or provide a demonstration of concepts that may be harder to grasp with just pictures and words.

The videos section is not intended to be a complete list of all videos, instead, it's meant to provide a curated list of videos that demonstrate a concept succinctly as possible. Videos that are overtly sponsored by a single vendor should be avoided when possible; however videos about a product by a 3rd party are good.

Still Fresh

Currently the content and templates surrounding the videos are very basic, but they get the job done. If you have template or module building experience, please contact us at [email protected] to see what we can come up with to improve the layouts.

The goal will be to be able to find videos based on category and keywords. This will be more developed more once there's more videos.

Guidelines

First some do's and don'ts:

Do:

• Videos must concentrate on a single topic.
• Videos should be as short as possible to get the point across.
  • Many videos found contain unnecessarily long intros and discussions that may not be relevant to the topic.
• One article, one embedded video. Additional videos can be linked from the See Also section of articles.
• Videos by the vendor are acceptable if no 3rd party creators have produced content regarding the topic at hand.
• Embedded videos in pages should also have a dedicated page in the Videos name space.

Dont's

• Use videos that promote a single brand.
• Have excessive sponsor promotions at the start or middle of the video.
• Reviews of products are acceptable; however they should not be sponsored by the vendor.
  • Reviews of vendor provided products must be disclosed within the video.

How to

There are two areas to add videos:

1. Relevant videos can be embedded into the bottom of an article.
2. The Videos namespace is used to hold all videos that may not necessarily belong to a single article or for articles where additional videos can be helpful.

Embedded

Embedded videos help the reader understand the content discussed within the article and are simple to do. The following example makes use of the video inline template. This example comes from the Digitrax_Zephyr_Express article:

{{video inline
|service=youtube
|id=LoBbArN0u1Y
|description=A video about the Digitrax Zephyr Express
}}

For detailed help, see the Video inline template.

Videos namespace

The Videos namespace is used to old all the articles with just a video on it. This allows articles with a single embedded video have a list of additional related videos the user may be interested in.

This example comes from the Videos:Digitrax LT1 decoder tester article:

{{video youtube
|id=ohPPU2SnII0
|article=[[Decoder_Tester|Decoder Tester]]
|description=A video on using the Digitrax LT1 decoder tester. More details at [[Decoder_Tester|Decoder Tester]].
|summary=A video on using the Digitrax LT1 decoder tester, from the DCCWiki article on decoder testers.
|category=Decoder
}}

Each video service provider (YouTube, Vimeo, etc) has a specific helper to make it easier to add videos from each provider. List of current helpers:

• Template:Video youtube
• Template:Video vimeo

For a list of possible service providers, see the Video Template #Supported services for a list of possible provider. Anyone is welcome to create additional video helper templates. However, if you are unable to or need some assistant, please open a support ticket by emailing suppport: [email protected]