Video stories
Three short films made on the riverbank this term.
Where the video lives
None of these films are stored on this site. They are hosted on TRU MediaSpace (media.tru.ca), the university’s Kaltura service, and embedded here. That is the route to use: MediaSpace handles the storage, the streaming and the captions, and this site stays fast. Upload your footage there first, then embed it. The first two films below show the two ways of doing that.
1. Morning shift at the boat launch
A six-minute film following Dennis, who has swum at the public boat launch every morning since 1998. Shot over four mornings in April.
Added with an oEmbed link — the easiest method. On the video’s MediaSpace page open Share → oEmbed, pick a player size, and copy the short link it gives you (it looks like media.tru.ca/id/0_xxxxxxxx…). Back here, add an Embed block and paste it. WordPress recognises TRU MediaSpace and builds the player for you.
Use the link from the oEmbed tab, not the address of the page you were just looking at — the long address from the browser bar will only come out as a plain link.
2. The salmon count
Sample embed — the same MediaSpace video, added with the Embed code instead.
Ray Whitfield walks the same gravel bar every October with a mechanical tally counter. We followed him for two of those mornings.
Added with the Embed code. On the MediaSpace page open Share → Embed, choose a player size, copy the block of code, and paste it into a Custom HTML block here. Use this when you need something the oEmbed link can’t do — a start and end time, or a specific player.
Two things to fix after you paste it. The code Kaltura gives you has a fixed size (width="400" height="285"), so it will not shrink on a phone — replace those two attributes with style="width:100%;aspect-ratio:608/402", and wrap the whole thing in <div style="max-width:645px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto"> so it lines up with the text column. That is what this block does; copy it and swap in your own video address.
Two more things worth knowing. WordPress tidies pasted code as it saves, and quietly drops a couple of the attributes Kaltura includes — that is normal and does not stop the player working. And MediaSpace warns that taking the Embed code makes that video public to the world, overriding the sharing settings on the entry. Only embed video you are happy for anyone to see.
3. Eleven days of water
A short piece assembled from neighbours’ phone footage of the 2018 flood, with narration recorded in the community hall.
Embedded from YouTube. If a film already lives on YouTube or Vimeo, paste its web address on its own line and WordPress builds the player. MediaSpace is the better home for coursework — it stays inside TRU — but this works the same way.
Why not just upload the file?
You can add a Video block and upload an MP4 straight to this site, and for a ten-second clip that is fine. For anything longer it is a bad trade: video files are large, uploads fail against the size limit, playback is slower for whoever is watching, and there are no captions or transcripts unless you make them yourself. MediaSpace solves all four. Put the film there and embed it.