Support linking to media on the story cover

[PeterDowty]

I am unable to add video via a link to a storymap cover.  I select "Add cover image or video" while editing the cover, and get the "Add an image or video" window with Upload and Link options, but the Link option is grayed out and having over the Link option gives a message "Currently, linking to media is not supported in this part of a story" (screenshot attached). 

Thank you for any help.

[OwenGeo]

@PeterDowty -- The message that you reported is expected. Linking to a media on the cover is not supported. The reason for this is because the cover is a critical part of a story and it's risky and not a best practice to have a dependency on an externally-hosted piece of media as the first thing readers see.

It seems you are asking for this to be added as an enhancement, so I'll convert this thread to an idea so others can vote on it (I do not see an existing idea for this request).

[PeterDowty]

Is this a recent change?  I ask because this documentation page (https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-storymaps/author-and-share/add-media.htm) seems to describe the capability of linking to video on the storymap cover.  

[InformationResources1]

Hi @OwenGeo, 

We have recently encountered the same issue as that of the OP.

Noting that it’s been a couple of months and the option is still greyed out on the StoryMap Builder, do you have any idea whether this feature will actually be introduced?

Thanks in advance,

Claudia

[OwenGeo]

Hi Claudia! Thanks for checking in on this. The status of this idea is "needs clarification." It has only one kudo and no information has been shared about why this request might be important to our community.

Due to the concerns mentioned above this enhancement is not currently under consideration since we don't see a compelling reason to add it that outweighs these risks. If you could provide some information about why the currently available option of uploading an image or video for the cover is not feasible for you that would start to help us understand how this enhancement might be useful, and if others also vote for this idea it would move up in our prioritization.

[InformationResources1]

Hi again Owen, thanks for your reply!

The main reason why we would like to have the option to link to a URL is mainly due to the file size limitation of 50 MB.

Thanks and kind regards,

Claudia

[OwenGeo]

@InformationResources1 -- I can't think of a reason why a cover video would need to be more than the 50-MB limit or an image more than the 10-MB limit.

A typical high-quality cover video that looks sharp when used with the full-screen cover layout should be between 5 and 20 MB. That would translate to a 1920 × 1080 video up to about 15 seconds long. For example, the video cover of this story is 20 MB. If you're using a video, I'd recommend looking into converting your video into a more web-appropriate format and you should be able to upload it no problem.

If you have an image that's larger than the 10 MB limit it's way larger than it needs to be. Resize it down to something that's about 3000 pixels wide and/or convert it to a compressed JPEG and it should easily be just a few MB.

[RanelSuurna1]

It would be nice to have something similar that MapCascade already had years ago. Media in the beginning of storymap is visually attractive and please bring this missing functionality back!!!