How to link to a youtube or vimeo video in Adobe Presenter

It is possible to play a YouTube video directly inside Adobe presenter, using Google's YouTube ActionScript 3 API.  The code is below. 

You neeed to update the code with the desired VIDEOID (x2) and the video size (my_player.SetSize).  You also need to change the document size of your Flash project to match the YouTube video dimensions.  Finally, you need to remove or update the "startSeconds" and "endSeconds" depending on whether or not you want to play a specific segement of a given YouTube video.

Fix up the code, paste it into a Flash project and publish to SWF.  Then add the SWF to your PowerPoint via the Adobe Presenter plugin, publish the PowerPoint and you're in business.

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Security.allowDomain("www.youtube.com");

var my_player:Object;

var my_loader:Loader = new Loader();

my_loader.load(new URLRequest("http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID?version=3"));

my_loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.INIT, onLoaderInit);

function onLoaderInit(e:Event):void{

          addChild(my_loader);

          my_player = my_loader.content;

          my_player.addEventListener("onReady", onPlayerReady);

}

function onPlayerReady(e:Event):void{

          my_player.setSize(000,000);

          my_player.cueVideoById({'videoId': 'VIDEOID', 'startSeconds': 0, 'endSeconds': 0, 'suggestedQuality': 'large', 'rel': 0});

}

Inserting the link is easy, just put a hyperlink on the slide to the YouTube video, then set the Advance By User setting to yes (in Slide Manager), so the presentation will wait for the user to view the video and then come back to the presentation when they are done. Then the user will need to select play to continue on with the presentation.

Alternatively, you could look to build (or search for) a SWF that would call to the video on YouTube and play it within the SWF. You would still need to put that Advance By User setting to yes, as the Presenter application will have no knowledge of the durration of the object on the slide.

Also keep in mind that the default time out setting for users not interacting with the presentation is 30 min. This means of you send a user off, or have them sitting and watching, but not interacting with the presentation for more than that time, their session will be timed out and any further interactions (wich will happen since Presenter pre-loads the content locally on their computer) will not be reported. You may need to chance the Time Out durration (Administration section of Connect) to accomodate your longer presentations.

It may also be worth having the video separate from the presentation, since it is so long. You could use a Curriculum in Connect (if you have the training module) to place the FLV video as an object before or after the Presenter content, or you could use the external training object to link directly to the video.

As a parting thought, you are likely to struggle with effectiveness of training with eLearning objects that are longer than 15-20 min in durration. This is due to the fact that the users attention span and screen saver will cause them to lose focus on the training. Most students need a break every few min to collect themselves.