You can watch our tutorial video on interactive templates here, or read the article below.
In this article, you will learn how to use templates in the Interactive Studio. Using templates will let you work more efficiently when your interactive project contains recurring interactivity. Templates can also be applied at the playout level, so that the same interactive elements are shown on every clip played through that playout.
For example: you want your interactive project to promote 5 products. The introduction clip contains 5 buttons, where each button brings the viewer to the corresponding product video. Most likely, you’d like each of those videos to have a button that brings the viewer back to the introduction clip.
To avoid repetition, you can easily create a template to add the same interactive elements to multiple videos. Editing an element in a template will automatically update that element in all videos where the template has been added.
1.0 | Create a template
To create a new template:
- Navigate to the “Template” section in the Online Video Platform.
- Click “Create New Template”.
- Fill in the title, description (optional), and the size of the template.
- Click “Save” to get started.
The Interactive Studio opens where you can add the interactive elements you’d like to apply to multiple clips. Read more about adding actions to buttons:
- Navigation
- Contact
- Give more information
Notice that there are no time codes in the timeline section of the studio. This is because templates are not time-based since they’re not part of a clip.
2.0 | Add a template to a video
After publishing the template, you are ready to apply it to a video. To do this:
- Open the video in the Interactive Studio.
- In the left panel, click the “Template” tab.
- Drag the newly created template onto the canvas to add it to the clip.
Simply apply these steps in multiple videos to avoid having to add the same buttons and actions.
In the steps above we dragged the template onto the canvas. However, by clicking the arrow instead, all template widgets will be placed into the video separately. Although all the template widgets are added, they are no longer attached to the template source. As a result, any changes you make in the template will not show up in a clip when applying a template in this way.
3.0 | Editable properties
When you’re working on a video that contains a template, by default you won’t be able to change the template widgets. However, in some cases you might want to edit a template widget.
Let’s imagine one of the product videos needs to navigate to a different contact page. For this you would need to edit the OnClick action. To make this possible:
- Go to the template and click the pencil icon.
- Select which properties should be editable in individual videos.
- Publish the template.
- Go back to the specific video and note that it’s now possible to edit the selected action even though it’s part of a template.
Keep in mind that if you want to change the OnClick action later, you’ll have to do it in this clip instead of the template.
4.0 | Apply a template to a playout
In addition to applying templates to individual clips in the Interactive Studio, you can assign a template directly to a playout. When you do this, the template is automatically applied to every clip played through that playout, without having to add it to each clip individually.
This is useful when you want a consistent interactive layer across all content in a playout, such as a persistent navigation button or a recurring call-to-action.
To assign a template to a playout:
- Open the playout in the Online Video Platform.
- Go to the Miscellaneous tab.
- Under Playback preferences, select a template from the Interactive template dropdown.
- Save the playout.
From this point on, the selected template will be shown as an overlay on every clip played through this playout.