NowComment has two different ways of treating streaming media commenting:

1. Enhanced Video Commenting (Integration with YouTube and Vimeo)

2. A Special Note about Vimeo Embed Codes

3. Standard Video Commenting (Videos from Sites other than YouTube and Vimeo)

All video documents work best our 2-pane (default) view.

1. Enhanced Video Commenting (Integration with 3rd-Party Embedded Media Players)

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Videos hosted by YouTube and Vimeo will have a blue toolbar on the top edge of the media player in NowComment (similar to our image commenting toolbar) with three controls:





1. A video hyperlink to the corresponding right-pane comments. The first video's link have the label “Video 1”, the second “Video 2”, etc.
2. A link to the “help” page you're reading now (this is actually the 3rd link, but we're getting it out of the way before tackling the “add comment” link).
3. An “add comment” button with three orange dropdown options:
   
   
   
   
   1. “at current time” — this option lets you comment right where you stopped the video. A video “Add Comment” window will pop up:
      
      
      
      
      
   2. “at a different time” — this lets you insert your comment at a different time than right where you stopped the video stream. It's most often used to go back a few seconds to fine tune exactly where you want your comment to start. A data entry box will pop up to ask “Add comment at:” (with the current time showing by default):
      
      
      
      you then specify the desired time (in HH:MM:SS format, meaning Hour:Minute:Second), and NowComment will immediately show you the video frame at that time so you can keep changing the time until you're happy with where your comment is placed. You then click the “Continue” button to move on to the same “add comment” window described above.
   
   For both the “current time” and “different time” options, blue vertical comment bars in a gray area directly underneath the video player show where existing comments are.
   
   
   3. To make a general comment not related to any particular part of the video, choose the “on whole video” comment option. Existing whole video comments will only show in the comment area, not underneath the video player.
   
   

Note: when you start making a comment the media player stops immediately so you don't lose your place in the video stream while you're concentrating on what you're writing.




Clicking on a Comment

Clicking on a vertical comment bar will scroll your screen to highlight the corresponding comments without moving the video's progress bar from its current position; this lets you see what others are saying without losing your place in the stream. Clicking on the timestamp header above the text of a comment (i.e. the right pane in 2-pane view) will move the progress bar to that point in the stream (e.g. in the screenshot above, clicking “00:27” in the right comment pane will move the left pane video to the 27 second point in the video) and the video will immediately start playing from that point.

Note: we can integrate other 3rd party sites with NowComment at a very reasonable cost. Please contact us if your school or organization would like NowComment to support in-context commenting for SoundCloud, C-SPAN, CNN, or other audio/video sites.




2. A Special Note about Vimeo Embed Codes

Vimeo uses a paper airplane icon as its “Share” button; clicking on will bring you to a page with, among other things, the video embed code. Above the far right end of the embed code text box is a link that reads “+ Show options”. Click on that link to see important options. For the NowComment commenting toolbar to work properly with Vimeo, you need to either:

• edit the embed code shown by default to remove the JavaScript routines around the “iframe” tags and tweak the parameters, or (we recommend)
• click the “Show options” link to override the “Responsive” default and choose “Fixed Size” instead (don't necessarily choose the size shown in our screenshot).

Once the options are visible, for “Size” choose “Fixed Size” rather than the default “Responsive”.



3. Standard Video Commenting (Videos from Sites other than YouTube and Vimeo)

You can still comment on videos embedded from any other site that allows embedding, but comments on videos from other sites won't have an image commenting toolbar integrated with the media player; instead, for commenting purposes, the media player will be treated as if it were a paragraph of text, and you double click on the video's paragraph number to make your comment. For such comments on non-YouTube and non-Vimeo videos, if your comment is about a specific starting time or time segment in the media stream, start your comment's “Summary of Comment” field with the “time stamp” information, e.g. “6:20-6:33 — Mary Poppins blows in with the wind to apply for the nanny job.”

Last updated May 1, 2018