Videos on Sparkhouse Online are an important part of any sparkhouse Sunday school curriculum. Any video that is part of your Sparkhouse Online subscription can be previewed, streamed, buffered, or downloaded. Additionally you can also do any of these actions with the video of any sample lesson in curricula you're not subscribed to. Just look for the gold-colored star next to these sample resources in the
Library.
Previewing
In the
Library or on the
Class/Event Detail page you can find a magnifying glass icon at the right side of any resource listing. Click on this to preview that video.
Streaming
Streaming videos from Sparkhouse Online is EASY, and saves you time downloading and hard-drive space storing these large files. To stream a video, just start previewing the video and simply click on the Full-Screen icon in the bottom video control bar - it's right between "HD" and "vimeo" near the right side. Streaming requires a good internet connection.
Buffering to play
Have a good internet connection near, but not in your classroom? Then you can buffer the video and still avoid downloading it! When you preview a video you can see, in the control bar at the bottom, a bright blue bar that shows you where you are in the video. There's also a light grey bar that moves ahead of the blue one - this is the buffering.
Buffering doesn't save the video on your computer where you can find it later, but it does save it to a temporary file that you can use as long as you have the preview window on the site open (it'll expire after about 15 minutes, just so you know). So open the preview in a location where you have a good internet connection, let the light grey buffering bar get all the way done, and then walk down to your classroom and play the video!
Downloading
You can of course download videos from Sparkhouse Online, too. NOTE: these are quite large files to download (150MB+), so downloading could take several minutes or more (if there are traffic jams anywhere along the web paths from us to you).
There are some different ways this can be done:
Download from preview window: at the lower left corner of every preview window is a "Download" link. Click on this and your download will begin.
Download directly from the Library page: from the Library page you can download one or more files using the handy check boxes and the "Download Selected Files" link at the lower left of the list of resources. When you use this tool you will download a compressed ".zip" file to your computer (compressing make the download smaller). Simply double-click on this to de-compress the download, and you'll see the files themselves. For each video that you chose to download you'll receive an ".html" file with the title of the video. Double-click this to open it. It'll open in your web browser, and it provides with a quick version of these instructions for streaming, buffering, or downloading, plus a link to click on to get the video file.
Downloading from Class/Event Detail page: When you open a grade level panel on the Class/Event Detail page you have two different options for downloading. If you click on the download icon at the far right of any resource listed, you will simply download that resource. If you click on the "Download All Files" link you will download a compressed ".zip" file to your computer (compressing make the download smaller). Simply double-click on this to de-compress the download, and you'll see the files themselves. For each video that you chose to download you'll receive an ".html" file with the title of the video. Double-click this to open it. It'll open in your web browser, and it provides with a quick version of these instructions for streaming, buffering, or downloading, plus a link to click on to get the video file.