best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

by juan tate -
Number of replies: 8

Hi Gordon,

I would appreciate your advice on how to use hot potatoes with sound embedded in moodle.

I would like to make them work in any browser without having to worry about plugins. That's why I thought of Flash. I prepared a set of activities with mp3 and a flash player proposed by Stan Bogdanov in http://ewbooks.info/hotpot/tutorials/hotpotatoes-tutorials/flash-mp3-players.html (the second one). This is the code:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="hbs_mp3player3but.swf" width="150" height="20" style="vertical-align: middle;">
<param name="type" value="application/x-shockwave-flash" />
<param name="src" value="hbs_mp3player3but.swf" />
<param name="data" value="hbs_mp3player3but.swf" />
<param name="codebase" value="hbs_mp3player3but.swf" />
<param name="FlashVars" value="TheSound=your_audio_file.mp3" />
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="movie" value="hbs_mp3player3but.swf" />
<param name="loop" value="false" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
</object>

I added the code to each activity and then placed the player in the file with the activities. They worked well locally but keep giving me problems when uploaded to the school's moodle and when I open them from outside the school.

Some of them work but others don't. I suspect that the sound is taking ages to download and the player won't start until the whole sound file is stored somewhere in my computer. I must say that the school's server ADSL upload speed is not very good (250 kbps). Once they work the first time they work well when I try the activity a second time.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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In reply to juan tate

Re: best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Juan,
as you say, this issue is probably connected with the size and number of audio files.

  1. Please could you tell us approximately how big each audio files is and approximately how many audio files there are in a single Hot Potatoes quiz?
  2. Could you give guest access to your Moodle course so we can come and have a look?
  3. If you choose just one of the problematic quizzes and upload it to my server, how does it perform then?

regards
Gordon

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

by juan tate -

Hi Gordon,

First thing, thank you for your fast reply.

Each activity (JCloze) has one single mp3 which is about 1 Mb.

Let's say that my problematic files are all of them but there was one that didn't work at all. It was only a mistake in the link to the audio file. Sorry, I just realized when uploading it to your moodle.

In any case all of them showed a problem (even in your platform) the first time I opened the activities (nothing happened after clicking on the play button; I had to click stop or move the slide bar for it to start playing). This problem is worse in my school's moodle. More loading time which, of course, must be due to the upload speed.

Isn't there any other simple way of improving this? Perhaps using streaming or something similar?  Would you suggest any other flash player that does not show these problems? It would be nice to find one that, apart from working better, also has a better appearance? Perhaps I could reduce the mp3 files sizes? How?

Another question that worried me was, when allowing the flash functionality in my moodle site, it advised ('as a default security measure, normal users should not be allowed to embed swf flash files'). Can this be a real problem? What does moodle mean by normal users? How can I avoid lems with this?

Cheers,

Juan

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In reply to juan tate

Re: best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Juan,
I'm afraid I don't know enough about Flash and streaming to be able to answer your questions.

All I can say for sure is what I use:
  • small audio files (usually less than 100kb, a large one would be about 300kb)
  • the Moodle media player (with "waitForPlay=no")
  • on my university LAN
... and my students don't generally have to wait more than a second or so for the page to load and the media to be ready.

It seems to me that 1MB is quite large for an audio file that you want to use in a HP quiz. The more students you have, or the lower the server and network capacity is, or the older your client computers are then the longer you will have to wait for the audio file to download.

If you are taking your settings from Stan, then maybe he can give advice on how to optimize them? I suggest you prepare the html verions of the quizzes and put them on your server outside of Moodle, then you can show Stan and maybe he can advise what to do.

regards
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

by juan tate -

Hi Gordon,

Thank you, again, for your fast answer.

I have reduced mp3s and thigs got a bit better. For your information, I haven't had any problems using them in schools LAN even with quite large groups (about 30 students). Probably because they do not usually start the same activity at the same time. The only problem I have is when working with moodle from outside, which is, obviously, due to slow upload in the schools server.

Probably a different player would improve things a bit. Perhaps a player that indicates that the sound is downloading. With this, students would know they just have to wait a bit and that 'the thing' is working. Any further suggestions would be welcome. In any case, I have already found some information (this same forum) on how to embed the moodle media player in Hot Potatoes and will give it a try.

Cheers

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In reply to juan tate

Re: best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Juan,
the most flexible media player I have come across is the flowplayer:
And the following Open Source player looks good too:
As is often the case, the more flexibility you have, the more settings you need, but both the above players have a simple version, as well as advanced versions which give you all the settings you could dream of.

enjoy!
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

by juan tate -

Thank you, Gordon.

I'll have a look. I have also tried dewplayer which I found browsing this forum. It looks nice, it is easy to work with and works very fast.

I'l try the two you advised too.

Cheers.

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In reply to juan tate

Re: best way of embed mp3 in hotpot activities

by Glenys Hanson -
Hi Juan,

I've found FlowPlayer good for videos and Dewplayer good for audios. I haven't tested all there are out there of course, but those two work just fine for me.

Cheers,
Glenys
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