[Using Sakai] video embedding options for Lessons

[Charles Hedrick]

Lessons has a feature to embed videos and other content, "add multimedia". It currently supports only actual video files (.e.g MP4), Youtube URLs, and a random catchall for other URLs. For the rest you have to do "add text", go into "source" and add your own HTML.

I find that there are 4 different techniques that are commonly used. I'm thinking of simply providing a radio button to select one:

* video file - this is a file that you upload, e.g. an MP4 file or a Flash video. It can also be the URL of a file like this
* video sharing site such as Youtube or Vimeo. This is a URL to a video on one of those sites. It will start with http: or https:
* embed code. Some video sharing sites give you a "embed code." This usually starts with <OBJECT> or <IFRAME>
* iframe. Currently if I can't figure out what else to do with a URL I put it in an iframe. That lets the web site figure it out. This can also be used to embed news stories, etc.

Currently "add multimedia" supports only the first and last options. Those will stay unchanged
* I propose to use oembed, https://github.com/starfishmod/jquery-oembed-all, to handle video sharing URLs
* I propose to add an option for embed code. It will take raw HTML, pass it through filtering based on the level of HTML filtering you have set, and put it in the page

I don't much like presenting users with those alternatives, but I also can't think of a way to avoid it.

Any other thoughts?