how to include video properly

Video fitting within Showkase is performed by the '/_themes/kosel/js/jquery.fitvids.js' file (to give a uniform presentation of videos on the page). If you do not want the auto-fitting of videos, try manually editing your Showkase page in a plain text editor and remove the following code from near the bottom of the page:

<script>
  $("section.content").fitVids();
</script>

Also, I notice that only one of your videos is available in HD.
If you have access to the original videos (and they are available in a higher resolution), you could perhaps re-upload them to YouTube so that they are available in a higher resolution (and appear less blurred in a large viewport).

If you are looking to create the equivalent of a Gallery Index Page for videos, then there will likely be a lot of work involved.
There is no automated way within Showkase of creating thumbnail images for videos and listing them as links to open the videos fullscreen. This would all need to be done manually with knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS (and an imaging program to create the thumbnail images).
As you are aware, such a solution would not be unique to Showkase so try a web search with terms such as 'video thumbnails click play fullscreen' and see what comes up. If you find a solution you'd like to try, you should be able to copy and paste the code directly into the body of a Showkase page.

Whether you use YouTube or Vimeo (or some other video host) is really up to you. If you are familiar with or already use a certain video host, then it might be wise to continue using it (for ease of use).
An alternative option would be to host your videos on your own web server and play them in an embedded video player such as JWPlayer.

I realise that this is not a direct solution to your query but it might point you in the right direction or at the very least offer some food for thought.

Perhaps other users reading this thread will have some other suggestions...

Hello again,

I am back with results I could find:

• tried JWPlayer, which provides solution for playing videos from your own server. Nice, but has no parameter to make it autoplay in fullscreen mode. Moreover it does display its logo overlaid on your video in its free version

• went back to youtube, trying to find some way to launch it from the image link in fullscreen mode. There is none it seems. The best I could find and achieve was chromeless mode, which does not fill your whole screen, it just fills your whole browser window. That is obviously not exactly the youtube fullscreen mode. Moreover, viewers may get lost, since the only way to get back to the webpage, from this chromeless youtube player, is pressing the back navigation button in their browsers.

• so I re-enabled your jscript which auto-fits videos to full page width - and to solve a problem with 4:3 videos, I have slightly edited iframe parameters, look below.

original code for iframe youtube video embed contained absolute height and width sizes in pixels, width="640" and height="480"
Video fitting script on Listviewer page then fills the full width of the page, but is ignoring the height, therefore enlarged the older 4:3 video so much that it would crop bottom part of it (on 16:9 displays).

My little hack solved it for me. I have changed absolute sizes to relative: width="100%" height="55%"
interesting for me was to find out that if I combined relative height in percents with absolute width in pixels, it also interpreted height as absolute and displayed the video only 55 pixels tall. :D After I have changed the width to relative 100%, it worked just fine.
(cannot post the whole code, because this forum doesn't allow me to post any links, not even within code tags, sorry)

PS: I am already re-rendering the mosque animation to small HD, 16:9 ;) Other 2 animations are unfortunately so old, that they were produced to final PAL resolution at that time, and there is no way (or will) to remaster them to HD