Make a video screen and watch videos on your Second Life land – part one

Last week I posted a three part series (part one, part two, and part three) about making better Second Life snapshots. Today I’m beginning a series on showing videos on your Second Life land. It’s relatively easy to set up a simple, no-frills system. The biggest problem is finding videos to stream, but they are out there. Here’s a step-by-step guide.

The first step is to have land on which you can change the media settings. Generally this can be done in one of three ways:
1. Buy land
2. Rent land
3. Join a group that owns land and will give you access to changing the land’s media settings.

The next step is to create a screen. A simple screen is easy to make. When you’re on where you’ll be showing videos, move your cursor to a bare spot on your land and right click. A pie chart will open with the word “Create” in the upper right. Click “Create”. You’ll see two lines of shapes in the popup window. Click the cube on the left (directly below the word “Click”, then move your cursor to the spot on the ground where you want to "rez" your screen, then left click. A cube will appear on that spot.

To shape the cube into a screen, left click the cube and in the popup pie chart, click “Edit” Click the “Object” tab in the popup window. Now we’ll set the thickness and dimensions of your screen. In the popup window, on the left side, you’ll see three sets of Z, Y, Z numbers. The sets are labeled “Position”, “Size”, and “Rotation”. We’ll change the Size numbers. Be very careful not to change the wrong numbers – if you change a position number instead of a size number, your screen could end up instantly on the other side of the sim!

The middle number. The Y coordinate, is the thickness of your screen. Set it to .1 (point one). If you want your screen at standard 4:3 TV screen dimensions, then set the X coordinate to 4.0 and the Z coordinate to 3.0. (use other numbers if you want different dimensions).

Your screen will now be 4:3, but it won’t look full size because part of it will be buried in the ground. To raise it, make sure your cursor is still in the Edit window and that the word “Position” near the top of the window has a dot to its left. Then look for the blue arrow on the screen. It points up. Move your cursor to one of the blue arrows, hold down your left mouse button, and use your mouse to drag the screen up until it’s the right height.

The next step is to put a media texture on the screen. To do this, move your cursor back into the Edit window and click the “Texture” tab. You will see two boxes. The left box looks like wood grain and is labeled “Texture” on the bottom. Left click it. The Pick-Texture window pops up. Where it says “Type here to search”, type “default media texture”. “Default Media Texture” should then appear in the list. Highlight it and then click “Select”.

The last thing to do is to name your screen so you can find it in your inventory. In the Edit window, click the “General” tab and type the name of your screen in the white box after “Name:”. This is how you will find it in your inventory.

You have now made a basic movie screen! Close the Edit window.

In my next article in this series, I’ll tell you one place to find free videos you can show on your property and how to set up your property and profile settings so you can watch them. In the mean time, build your screen.