USB Flash setup for Come Follow Me videos on Roku Player

[cglancy]

The April through June curriculum videos for "Come, Follow Me" are now available with the USB Video Manager. Also, thanks to rknelson, the 2013 Worldwide Leadership videos are available.

You will need to update to today's version of USB Video Manager:

Windows: http://glancyfamily.net/USBVideoManager.msi
Mac: http://glancyfamily.net/USBVideoManager.dmg

[mattcragun]

I just want to point out that Roku also has a channel called Roksbox. You have to set a computer up as media server, but there is a simple tutorial to do that with the built-in Windows 7 server. You can essentially just export your files to USB using "USB Video Manger", but just select the directory where your media files are hosted on Roksbox. The only change you have to make is to rename the folder.jpg files to the actual name of the folder they represent and move them up a level so they are at the same level as their folder.

I will see if I can put together a tutorial or something.

Roksbox is a one-time fee of $12.50 for unlimited Roku's. I've looked at plex, but it is much more complicated.

Just wanted to share.

[lstrom]

this is wonderful and will be a huge time saver. It has been a huge learning curve since January, re: how to provide youth teachers with the new learning resources. There was much to learn with the WD media player, especially how to navigate the videos on the flash drives. I hope that everyone who is struggling is able to find this forum.
I do have a question. I am the branch (thus meetinghouse) librarian. I haven't heard anything from a STS. Is it okay that I am taking this project on, or am I to request that the STS (assuming we have one) set it up? (We are part of a large Calgary Alberta stake.)

[russellhltn]

I do have a question. I am the branch (thus meetinghouse) librarian. I haven't heard anything from a STS. Is it okay that I am taking this project on, or am I to request that the STS (assuming we have one) set it up? (We are part of a large Calgary Alberta stake.)

What do you mean by "set up"? If the branch is going out and getting equipment, I would think the STS should at least be kept in the loop. The stake may have some plans you are not aware of.

If it's the downloading of videos and setting up the flash drive, I would see that as less intrusive into the STS's area. But at the same time, it seems like something that would be nice to be done once and copied for each unit of the stake instead of each meetinghouse having to struggle though it on their own.

It's possible that the STS hasn't gotten involved because no one has asked him to. For all he knows, maybe the teachers aren't using the videos.

[hansene2]

Charles,

I am very excited about this application. I was looking into building something, but what you've done is fantastic. Thank you!

I have a quick question. As I'm looking at the content for September, I noticed a couple of things: 1) it appears that all of the videos for the young men are available (as suggested in the learning outlines); 2) the Sunday School is missing one video from the learning outlines: "Let Your Light So Shine"; 3) the young women videos appear to have all from the lesson outlines (including one in the outlines but not in the list under the videos for Come Follow Me: https://www.lds.org/media-library/video ... r?lang=eng); the one from the outlines, but not the youth media page is: "Deep Beauty".

So my question (which maybe isn't super quick) is this: does the list of videos for download get populated dynamically? Why is the Sunday School missing the one video?

A comment/observation/concern. Our stake is late to the game in getting the content on USB drives, but we are excited to roll it out. One concern is giving the teachers confidence that the videos they've looked at online in their lesson preparation will be available when they check out the device on Sunday to teach. I'm not sure how much content is copyright restricted and so it can't be downloaded, but this is something teachers would need to be trained to look for (i.e. knowing that if they watch the video at home and the download link/option is not available that this video will not be on the USB drive). In the case of the missing Sunday School video noted above, this is available to be downloaded, but for some reason isn't showing in the list of videos for Sunday School for September.

In browsing some of the other posts on the digital media forum (and my own observations), as well as me not knowing exactly what to expect in terms of adding new content from time to time, it seems that trying to ensure that our drives have all the videos available that an instructor might want to show (assuming they can be downloaded), is somewhat of a challenge. I have noticed that the video section noted above under the Video, Audio, and Images portion of lds.org doesn't contain every video listed in the outlines. If you have a moment, I would love to get your thoughts on this challenge as well as responding to my question about the missing Sunday School video from September.

Again, thank you so much for your effort and for sharing this. It's a big improvement to what is available on the lds.org site as the zipped files there are only low resolution, etc.

[rknelson]

I'm not Charles, but I am a fan of his work and helped put together the "Come, Follow Me July-September 2013" library file which the USB Video Manager uses.

So my question (which maybe isn't super quick) is this: does the list of videos for download get populated dynamically? Why is the Sunday School missing the one video?

No, they are not automatically populated. The "library" file (an XML file with links to each video and associated thumbnail picture), lives on Charles's server and is downloaded to your computer when you run the USB Video Manager. These files are created by hand - using eyes to scan each lesson, make a list of the videos, cross referencing them with the video download page to get the link to the thumbnail image, and then entering the information in the XML file. It is a little tedious, and certainly can have errors. However, the benefit of the USB Video Manager is that the library file only needs to be created once, and can be used by everyone to download from the source without any issues with re-distributing the videos themselves.

I have found inconsistencies between the lessons, and the ones under the link you mentioned above. Sometimes the challenge is the name in the lesson link being different from the name of the video itself (for example in the Sunday School July lesson: "The Sacrament Helps Us Draw Closer to Jesus Christ" is the listed in the lesson, but the file you download is actually named "Special Witness Elder Oaks").

Feedback is welcome and I would love to have someone volunteer to "Check" the files.

A comment/observation/concern. Our stake is late to the game in getting the content on USB drives, but we are excited to roll it out. One concern is giving the teachers confidence that the videos they've looked at online in their lesson preparation will be available when they check out the device on Sunday to teach. I'm not sure how much content is copyright restricted and so it can't be downloaded, but this is something teachers would need to be trained to look for (i.e. knowing that if they watch the video at home and the download link/option is not available that this video will not be on the USB drive).

I completely agree! A teacher must be able to conclusively know during the week while preparing that the video will be available during class. We create a PDF file with a list of all the videos on the USB Flash drive each quarter. This is emailed to Bishop's and Stake YW/YW/SS leaders to forward to all teachers. The file for Q3 2013 is here:

USB Flash Contents 2013 Q3 general.pdf

(49.54 KiB) Downloaded 822 times

.

In the case of the missing Sunday School video noted above, this is available to be downloaded, but for some reason isn't showing in the list of videos for Sunday School for September.

Please send a private message to me with the details (a link to the lesson page and the name of the video) and I will look into this and fix it. It's probably my mistake.

In browsing some of the other posts on the digital media forum (and my own observations), as well as me not knowing exactly what to expect in terms of adding new content from time to time, it seems that trying to ensure that our drives have all the videos available that an instructor might want to show (assuming they can be downloaded), is somewhat of a challenge. I have noticed that the video section noted above under the Video, Audio, and Images portion of lds.org doesn't contain every video listed in the outlines. If you have a moment, I would love to get your thoughts on this challenge as well as responding to my question about the missing Sunday School video from September.

It's a bit of a nightmare to deal with the differences. I suspect some videos are not listed purely because the format (360p, 720p, 1080p vs. 500K, 1000K, 2500K) is different. They are all MP4's, but are seem to be rendered for resolution (360p) or for streaming bandwidth (500K). Practically speaking, I really only care about small, medium and large, but it is clear that the church web pages are somewhat template driven and perhaps that causes some limitations on what appears. I don't doubt there are copyright issues with some videos, but others are available for download in other places on lds.org. That said, I try have EVERY video referenced in the lessons available. To accomplish this we have a separate set of XML files I use for our stake, which reference a few additional files which cannot be downloaded directly from lds.org but which I create on my computer.
For example, the September YM lesson on tithing suggests:

Read, show, or tell the story about Elder Pratt’s grandfather from “The Lord’s Richest Blessings.”

So our USB Flash has that 4 minute video clip excepted from his conference talk.

[rknelson]

The USB Video Manager library files have now been updated for the Q4 (October - December 2013) "Come, Follow Me" curriculum videos. The "Bible Videos - The Life of Jesus Christ" have also been updated with the new videos released as of today. Attached is a list of the videos we are placing on the 16 GB USB Flash drives in our stake. All videos are Medium resolution (generally 720p), except the Mormon Messages which are Low resolution (360p).

If anyone finds a missing video or problems, please let me know.

[mprusse]

The April through June curriculum videos for "Come, Follow Me" are now available with the USB Video Manager. Also, thanks to rknelson, the 2013 Worldwide Leadership videos are available.

You will need to update to today's version of USB Video Manager:

Windows: http://glancyfamily.net/USBVideoManager.msi
Mac: http://glancyfamily.net/USBVideoManager.dmg

I just downloaded and attempted to run the Mac version. It crashes every time. I'm running Mac OS X 10.9. Is there a fix?

[cglancy]

Thank you mprusse for the feedback. I believe I have fixed the problem for Mac OS X 10.9. I needed to update a software library and rebuild.

Please download using the same link and try again. Let me know if you have any more problems.

[cglancy]

Thanks to rknelson the January through March 2014 curriculum videos for "Come, Follow Me" are now available with the USB Video Manager.

I have also updated the USB Video Manager with several bug fixes. The new version is 20140102.