I have made a 5 min. marketing video as an MP4 file.  It is posted on YouTube for the committee to see, critique, and approve.  My plan was to give it to them physically on a thumb drive.  They want to show it on a TV monitor at an open house as a continuous loop.  Is that possible?  How is it done?

Thank you.

It can't be done within the file (not an option of .mp4). The playback device must have a loop feature.

Hi Margaret

You can "simulate" looping by simply copying your timeline back to back say 12 times to turn your 5 minute video into a 60 minute video, or paste it 24 times if you want to make it "loop" for 2 hours.

Hope that helps

Mike 

Thank you, Mike, for the suggestion of creating a 1-hour video by copying my 5-minute MP4 video back-to-back 12 times.  I will pass that option on to the committee who asked me to make this marketing video to show at their open house in Dec.  Sounds like a good solution. 

What will hapen after 1 hour ? Someone will have to push the play button once again ? Then, after 2 hours ...   3 hours ...

The best solution is to stay with he 5 minutes long video and to activate the loop feature of the player. Wheter hardware or software, every player has a loop feature. Simple enough.

saby:

What will hapen after 1 hour ? Someone will have to push the play button once again ? Then, after 2 hours ...   3 hours ...

The best solution is to stay with he 5 minutes long video and to activate the loop feature of the player. Wheter hardware or software, every player has a loop feature. Simple enough.

Someone with more knowledge of electronics and players will have to decide how to play it.  It will be played on a large smart TV as people are visiting and taking tours of the senior living facility during a 2-hour open house.  I don't know what player they will use.  When they showed the committee a recent version from the YouTube link I sent, someone had a computer hooked up to the TV and played the YouTube link I had sent them in an email.  That's all I know, but others will be able to figure it out.  I'll pass along your suggestions.  Thank you, all who posted.

If my experince of turning up at a unknown place and being presented with a new piece of AV hardware on which to play my material for a talk or lecture is anything to go by, it hardly ever goes smoothly. DVDs and Blurays won't play, laptop outputs get shrunk or expanded, the sockets on the AV hardware aren't the same as any of the plugs I've brought with me. And then the sound doesn't work.....

Saby says all playback hardware will have a loop button and he is always right, but where will you find that control? I just fired up my "state of the art" OLED TV with a memory stick and it took me a good five minutes to work out how to make a video loop because it was not in the slightest bit obvious.

So, the sugestion to make a version with 10 or so copies in a row is a good failsafe, IMHO :-)

jjn:

Saby says all playback hardware will have a loop button and he is always right, but where will you find that control? I just fired up my "state of the art" OLED TV with a memory stick and it took me a good five minutes to work out how to make a video loop because it was not in the slightest bit obvious.

Aging slows down everything !

 

The guy in charge of playing the video at the open house worked at a radio station with their technology stuff.  I don't know just what he did, but he knows this stuff, and seems quite confident about playing it as a loop.  It's out of my hands, and I'm glad he's in charge.  If it were me, I would not be able to find the right button when needed - Yikes!!

 Thanks for all suggestions.

michaelzacharias:

Hi Margaret

You can "simulate" looping by simply copying your timeline back to back say 12 times to turn your 5 minute video into a 60 minute video, or paste it 24 times if you want to make it "loop" for 2 hours.

Hope that helps

Mike 

The marketing committee today decided they would like the 4.5 min. video to play for an hour.  The open house is 3 hours long, and they are okay with starting it again a couple times rather than buying looping software for the computer that will be showing it on the large TV.  Is there an easy way to copy the whole movie without missing a thing, and pasting it on the end, and doing it 12 or so times?  I did some experimenting and looking and not finding an answer.  The video is on 4 tracks with titles, music selections, and photo/video.  If I once knew, I have forgotten.

Thank you.

margaret45:

Is there an easy way to copy the whole movie without missing a thing, and pasting it on the end, and doing it 12 or so times?

Do not open your project but a new blank project. Open the Projects category of the library. Locate the thumbnail corresponding to your project. Insert it several times in the timeline. Export.

margaret45:

The open house is 3 hours long, and they are okay with starting it again a couple times rather than buying looping software for the computer that will be showing it on the large TV.

There is absolutely nothing to buy.

In VLC, there is a button :

 

In Film and TV, there is a Repeat feature in a menu :

 

In Mutlimedia Player there is a button :

 

If they are using a computer to play the video, what Saby presented is already available and free.They can have the video on a USB stick, use one of the mentioned players and that's it. Play the video from the USB stick with say, VLC, and let it repeat.

But if they plan on just using the TV with the USB stick, then creating a project, again as Saby mentioned, and exporting it to the USB stick for playback.

@Saby.... it's just too easy!

Tony P:

But if they plan on just using the TV with the USB stick, then creating a project, again as Saby mentioned, and exporting it to the USB stick for playback.

Even in this case I would be surprised if the software of the TV does not have a loop feature, whether with easy access or  not.

Progress - thank you very much.  John, who will show the video at the open house, and is retired from technical work at our local TV station, did not know about the loop feature on the player for his computer.  Now he does.  I sent him 3 of the photos you all posted to show him where it was.

Saby, I used your directions for making a 1-hour movie using my project from the Projects section in the library.  Worked well.  One thing I noticed and am curious about - the sound line is blank in one large area on each project, and yet the sound plays.  I had to use several different selections from royalty-free music because each is too repetitive to play for any length of time.  So I put them on 2 different tracks, and transitioned them at change-points in the video.  Everywhere else you can see the sound levels - don't remember what you call it.  Does not seem to be a problem, but I just wondered.

I tried exporting the 1-hour video as an MP4, but it did not turn out like the others.  It's a movie, apx maybe, but not MP4.  Not something I can copy to the thumb drive like the other versions I have made.  Will give it another try this evening.  It took a long time to export.  Don't think I have made a 1-hour video before.

Will let you know how it turns out.  Appreciate your help!  

Update:  The 1-hour video did export the first time, and the 2nd time this evening.  It saved each with a series of 15 numbers, and not the name I gave it.  It is 4.5 GB, and when I tried to copy it to my 16GB thumb drive, it said File is too large to copy to H:  I have no idea why, but guess it's not needed since John now knows how to use the loop on the player.  If you care to comment on this post and my previous, go ahead.  Otherwise, I'm probably good to go.

The drive is almost certainly formatted as FAT32. That's old these days, and has a 4GB file limit. ExFAT will allow larger files.