Hi all:
I am looking to place a link in a course that opens mediaplayer, plays a file from a video server and leaves the moodle page at the course page.
Right now when I use the resource web link, mediaplayer opens and plays, but the moodle frame displays a white empty page. I need to press the back button to get back to the course.
How do I fix this
We experience a similar issue when we put a link to a ZIP file in a course (as an uploaded file with a pop-up window). I our case, a new blank window is opened just before the Open/Save dialogue box is displayed. The file downloads normally and we just close the blank window.
We chose to use the pop-up as the 'lesser of two evils'. If we set the resource NOT to open a pop-up, then we get exactly the same effect as you - ie blank page which has to be 'backed up' after the download.
Ideally, the download would take place on top of the course page, but I suspect there's a conflict here. In any case, it's not a show-stopper.
embed your mediaplayer in a HTML page:
Clase net, Enlace Académico|   | |
| Deze video in ASF-formaat wordt vanaf een externe site geladen. Ook de videoplayer wordt vanaf Microsoft zelf gedownload, dus de gebruiker hoeft het niet al op zijn computer te hebben staan. Je kunt dus hier naast deze video andere informatie op deze pagina zetten, bijvoorbeeld instructie over de video. Ik moet de instructies hiervoor nog verder uitwerken, nu alleen als voorbeeld wat kan... dus geen uitspraak van mij over dat rare geluid op de achtergrond of het wel erg kleine formaat van die geestverschijning bij de elektronische overheadprojector. (De eerste keer dat u deze pagina bezoekt wordt u ook gevraagd of u een audio plugin van Microsoft wil installeren.) |
I support this wish..Would be great if normal teachers could hang in multimedia, just by choosing the source from the resources-area 
By the way, I hear now this great lecture double, but do not see the remove buttons in my forum-entries...HELP!! (Did I cause this with the media-script?)
Does this mean that a user can dump a filename (with the right MIME extension) in a field and Moodle will play it? Would be great.
(Maybe also checkboxes for autostart on/off, and show/hide controlbar?)
ger, Martin placed the code in CVS to do this. You can add a video to your Moodle site as an uploaded file resource with a .wmv (I am not sure about other MS multimedia extensions) extension and it will play in the window similar to the sample you posted earlier. If is really slick.
The files he gave me that were changed were:
files/mimetypes.php
lang/en/resource.php
mod/resource/view.php
I am already using it with great success to allow my students to stream .wmv videos from my site.
The only problem we have run into is that it only works with IE. When I or my students use Mozilla (Netscape also I would assume) or Firebird we get a screen as shown below that just sits there. If I click on the direct link to it opens up WMP, but I get an error popup from WMP that says The source filter for this file could not be loaded. .
In Opera, the window shows a different skin (more modern) than shown below, but the results are the same as below.
I am pretty clueless about what is going on under the hood with the embedded media player, so I am at a loss to try and solve the non-IE browser issue (teaching sometimes gets in the way of all of my tech fun 
).
I was also trying to figure out if there was a way to show the total time of the video and the current position (in mm:ss) of the video. I looked around for some way to do this, but could not come up with any.
If you or anyone else out there could look into the browser issue, I know that it would certainly be appreciated.
Thanks!
The upside? She thinks the whole embedded media thing is great! No clicking, no pointing. It's just there.John, I asked Martin about this via email and he indicated that he had the same problem. So, I am wondering what you are doing differently? My videos are .wmvs encoded with the Microsoft version 9 codec. I will attach a relatively small one so that you can play with it if you want.
Your post is very interesting because I had a somewhat similar experience. I have a laptop that I take home every night and a docking station for it here at work. With the tiny speakers on the laptop, I have to leave the windows volume way up to hear anything. The docking station, however, connects to traditional speakers. Well .... I had used the laptop to listen to the "Computer Guys" at wamu.org at home the evening before and had the volume WAY up. At work, I clicked on the original post and (like you) was about blasted out of my chair trying to figure out what was going on. I did not see the video at first and initially paniced that some type of virus had invaded my computer and that the voice was telling me (in a language I could not understand) that in 30 seconds it was going to do a format C: on my machine or some other disasterous act 
!
On the serious side, this is a great feature. I initially had a majority of students in my online courses who used dial-up. To accomodate them, I would zip up the videos and they could download, extract, and view them. They liked that because they could watch them without tying up their phone line while watching them. More recently, however, more and more of my students are getting dsl or cable access, so streaming makes a lot more sense. I have started to put both versions on my site - the .zip and the .wmv. It takes a lot of space, but I have a hosting account with 4GB, so it is not a problem.
The only thing I don't like about it is using the Microsoft .wmv technology in that it limits my clients. All of my online students are running Windows, so it is not a problem for me. There is a WMP for the Mac, so I don't think .wmv would be a problem for them either (haven't tried it though). I am not sure how many people are actually running OSs besides Win and Mac, but they are (as far as I know) left out of being able to view .wmvs.
I build my screen capture videos with Camtasia and it produces excellent quality .avi videos. Unfortunately, they are also very large in size (30 - 40MB is not uncommon). I found that by fiddling with the settings of Windows Media Encoder, I could make very good quality .wmvs of those same videos with a roughly 10:1 reduction in video size.
<object
classid="CLSID:22D6f312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95"
codebase="http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsmp2inf.cab#Version=5,1,52,701"
standby="Loading Microsoft® Windows® Media Player components..."
id="wmvplayer"
align=""
type="application/x-oleobject">
<param name="Filename" value="http://myserver.net/moodle/file.php/2/pnorrod_sample_video.wmv">
<param name="ShowControls" value=true>
<param name="AutoRewind" value=true>
<param name="AutoStart" value=true>
<param name="Autosize" value=true>
<param name="EnableContextMenu" value=true>
<param name="TransparentAtStart" value=false>
<param name="AnimationAtStart" value=false>
<param name="ShowGotoBar" value=false>
<param name="EnableFullScreenControls" value=true>
<embed src="http://myserver.net/moodle/file.php/2/pnorrod_sample_video.wmv"
name="wmvplayer" type="application/x-mplayer2"
ShowControls="1" AutoRewind="1" AutoStart="1" Autosize="1"
EnableContextMenu="1" TransparentAtStart="0"
AnimationAtStart="0" ShowGotoBar="0" EnableFullScreenControls="1"
pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/Downloads/Contents/Products/MediaPlayer/">
</embed>
</object>
I saw in Multimedia Bible a script that first checks what browser it is and then chooses the player for that browser. (It also contains examples of different player interfaces for One Player. (Instead of the Modrian painting that I get normally with the new real one pl;ayer.)
The book is also about streaming media, but you need a separate stream-server..
(And I cannot kill the old professor because my edit button was gone:... my script did that... Question to Martin: If I give students their own course as teachers, how dangereous can their scripts be forother courses and the server?)
I saw it somewhere in the Moodle forum and used it as a good example 
Students ordial and learning results depend a lot of the skills of the actor: some teachers are great performers: they can turn students into ACTIVE listeners.
I remember an old professor, jumping on the table to show how monkeys handle a stick in a fight during his lectures in Antropobiology. I still know when a big monkey wants to kill you or just wants to frigthen you: sweet memories.. I never will forget.
(A good script can do the same, like they often show at Discovery Channel: Yes, just watching but.. nothing wrong with old wine in new bottles, as long as the wine is of good quality.. And also good to bring in some variation in the menu.)
