PHOTOS & VIDEOS - HELP PAGE!!!

This is the page where you'll find photographs and videos taken by your island friends and neighbors. They can be of any subject, as long as it's of local interest and presented by local people. These photos and videos are mostly of other local people or events, but occasionally there will be photos and videos of their travels. An example of this would be the video-slide show of the Pass-a-Grille Community Church's trip to the Holy Land. We encourage you to send us your photos and videos so they can be shared with the whole community. There are links on the top and bottom of the page to facilitate sending in things to be posted.

So How Does it Work?....First the Photos...

As you can see on the right, the Photos and Videos page is divided into five columns. The three columns on the left contain the photo albums and the two on the right contain the videos. Each column is clearly labeled as to which is which. To open a photo album, click on either the photo or the underlined red text immediately beneath the photo. That text is the title of the photo album and will immediately open the album. When the photo album opens you will see a page like the one on the left, with several small photos.

When you move the cursor to a picture, the pointer becomes a magnifying glass. That means that when you click on the picture it will make the image larger so you can get a better look at it. Your screen will look like the photo on the right. You can individually select each photo by clicking on the small photo to enlarge it, then clicking on the large photo to reduce it. Sort of like picking up a photo for a closer look, then putting it back in the album. Using the photo album this way, you can view the photos in any order you like and skip over the ones that don't interest you. Notice the control markings on the lower right corner of the photo frame. These controls permit you to view the photos as a slide show and will automatically show one picture at a time until all photos in the album have been shown. Each photo is shown for 5 seconds before going on to the next, but you can pause and resume the slide show at any time with the Pause/Play button. You can also go through them manually by clicking on the left or right arrows.

The Videos are even easier... ( But don't even try playing the videos if you're still using a dial-up connection )

Click on a photo in the video columns and you go to a page for that video, complete with video player similar to the one shown here. On the right side of that page you will find the title and a description of the video, the running time and file size, and a technical note about playing videos on the internet. Some of our videos are short clips, but some are very large and require quite a bit if time to download or buffer before playing. Add to this the complication that it all works a little differently depending on which browser you use. You may be asked to download a video player if you don't already have one on your computer, or to download the latest version of a video player you already have. All of the basic video players are free, so don't feel you have to upgrade to a more deluxe model. You want the latest version, not the most deluxe version.

In spite of it all, we have attempted to make this as easy as possible. Hopefully, if everything works right, all you have to do is push the play button on the video player. Some of you may not even have to do that because some browsers are set to play automatically. Most of you will just have to click the play button. If it does not start within 30 seconds click the play button again and give it a another few seconds. If it still doesn't play, the text instructions to the right of the video player instruct you to right click on the red underlined text and select "Save Target As" which will download it to your computer. After it has downloaded, you can play it directly from your hard drive.

One final note...Before moving on to another page, don't forget to stop the video player. Some browsers do this automatically, others do not. You might find yourself on another page and still be hearing the sound of the video playing.