Thanks for your consideration.
I teach web development and understand the documentation regarding embedding Flash.
However, I create Flash videos that are 800x600 because students say the code is easier to follow with the larger format. What I have been doing is using Compose a Web Page, to write an explanation, etc., of the video and link to an absolute URL where, on the same site, I upload the video. This has worked well because it's fast and because it gives me the opportunity to connect with narrative and offer a reliable link.
My question is this. At this point I am building my own site, outside of the college, where I will offer some additional, more advanced lessons. There are topics outside of our curriculum students are interested in and our college is supportive instructor freelancing; helps to keep us current (and motivated). I can employ the same methodology, or find another, but I'd like to make the URLs a little tougher to guess at. For example, logically, I might create a URL along the lines of www.site.com/css/positioning/absolute_positioning.html. I prefer students don't go to www.site.com/css and see a directory of materials.
I saw on another post there was a backup folder? Is there a logical location for these folders/files? Or do you know of a different approach altogether? I don't need to keep out a student with an obsession to find the videos. I'd like to slow down the guesser who wants to engage in the "aren't I more clever exchange".
Thank you. Kelly
Hi Kelly,
I think you might be interested in the FLV Player module:
http://code.google.com/p/moodle-flv-player/
With this, you can deploy videos with notes and any HTML you like as an activity instead of as a resource. It's aimed at non-developers and so it's easy to use and no coding is necessary. It provides a simple menu of options and parameters for dimensions, auto-play, links, standard TimedText (SMIL) captioning, security settings, etc. and it embeds the video player automatically choosing between the very robust, effective and standards compliant method leveraging SWFObject and alternative HTML embedding methods according to the users web browser setup (basically, it can successfully embed the Flash media player in any browser even with Javascript turned off, with the single exception of Firefox with the NoScript or FlashBlock plugins activated).
You can deploy videos from YouTube.com as well as any video hosting site that has an appropriate crossdomain.xml policy file. It even supports RTMP streaming
It leverages the ubiquitous JW FLV Player from Longtailvideo.com and requires a licence for any commercial use. In your case it's probably not necessary to purchase a licence. I'd prefer to use an open-source GPL media player but I still haven't found one that has all the functionality and compliance that's desirable for e-learning.
There's a few demos of it on my Moodle with various examples of its features: http://matbury.com/moodle/course/view.php?id=9
If you decide to try it out, please let me know your opinions and any observations that could be helpful for future versions of the module.
I think you might be interested in the FLV Player module:
http://code.google.com/p/moodle-flv-player/
With this, you can deploy videos with notes and any HTML you like as an activity instead of as a resource. It's aimed at non-developers and so it's easy to use and no coding is necessary. It provides a simple menu of options and parameters for dimensions, auto-play, links, standard TimedText (SMIL) captioning, security settings, etc. and it embeds the video player automatically choosing between the very robust, effective and standards compliant method leveraging SWFObject and alternative HTML embedding methods according to the users web browser setup (basically, it can successfully embed the Flash media player in any browser even with Javascript turned off, with the single exception of Firefox with the NoScript or FlashBlock plugins activated).
You can deploy videos from YouTube.com as well as any video hosting site that has an appropriate crossdomain.xml policy file. It even supports RTMP streaming
It leverages the ubiquitous JW FLV Player from Longtailvideo.com and requires a licence for any commercial use. In your case it's probably not necessary to purchase a licence. I'd prefer to use an open-source GPL media player but I still haven't found one that has all the functionality and compliance that's desirable for e-learning.
There's a few demos of it on my Moodle with various examples of its features: http://matbury.com/moodle/course/view.php?id=9
If you decide to try it out, please let me know your opinions and any observations that could be helpful for future versions of the module.
Thanks Matt. Before I posted my question I looked at your site and product and am interested in giving it a try. However, in reading your materials it seemed that you are in beta and looking for developer input.
For the question I posted I am looking for a stable approach, basically a recommendation for the best place within Moodle to upload for least likely guessing of a URL.
Thanks, Kelly
For the question I posted I am looking for a stable approach, basically a recommendation for the best place within Moodle to upload for least likely guessing of a URL.
Thanks, Kelly
Hi Kelly,
The standard place to keep media files is in the Moodle course directories, which are outside the public domain and can only be viewed by a user via a PHP proxy script when the user is logged in to that particular course.
An IT savvy student could look at the Moodle page source code, find the link URL and could try to predict the file names of your video files so in this case, all you have to do is make the file names unpredictable, e.g. http://yourmoodle.com/file.php/99/video/my video_1_zpdivnvfhe67w7e4u8hj95rt89.flv
There's some examples and a brief explanation about Moodle's moodledata directories here: http://code.google.com/p/moodle-swf/wiki/MediaFilesAndPathsInMoodle
If you want really specific control over who can view video files and when they can view them, I'd consider using a bucket server. Bucket servers are very cheap (with Amazon Web Services you only pay for what you use) and you have specific control over every single media file. Sites like Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket and YouTube all use bucket servers.
Good luck!
The standard place to keep media files is in the Moodle course directories, which are outside the public domain and can only be viewed by a user via a PHP proxy script when the user is logged in to that particular course.
An IT savvy student could look at the Moodle page source code, find the link URL and could try to predict the file names of your video files so in this case, all you have to do is make the file names unpredictable, e.g. http://yourmoodle.com/file.php/99/video/my video_1_zpdivnvfhe67w7e4u8hj95rt89.flv
There's some examples and a brief explanation about Moodle's moodledata directories here: http://code.google.com/p/moodle-swf/wiki/MediaFilesAndPathsInMoodle
If you want really specific control over who can view video files and when they can view them, I'd consider using a bucket server. Bucket servers are very cheap (with Amazon Web Services you only pay for what you use) and you have specific control over every single media file. Sites like Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket and YouTube all use bucket servers.
Good luck!