Since no thread seems to exist in Using Moodle, we better open one!
Moodle Language Lab is a language lab based on the Red5 Flash server. It's maintained by Patrick Thibaudeau and a new version has just been released.
Note that this is different from PoodLL, another language lab, which is currently being updated to work with Moodle 2!
Thank you for starting this thread Guido,
A version of this language lab will be available for Moodle 1.9 in early January.
I have also nearly completed a language lab manager block, which, for the time being, allows to request an archive (zip) of the streamed files from Red5. I did it this way because the Moodle Backup does not grab the files from the Red5 server.
Patrick
Great news, Patrick! A lab manager block sounds like a very good idea.
I still can't get mine to work unfortunately. I get the Red5 spalshscreen and the video plays back, so Red5 appears to be working, but the demos don't (although they install). I think I need to move them somewhere (they are currently in /usr/share/red5/webapps/)
Would you be able to post instructions on how to install the Red5 Application Adapter (RAP) in the doumentation here? The instructions start with 'Copy the contents of the RAP folder into the default web folder' but I don't know where I'd get a RAP folder from in the first place! All I could find on Google is Xuggler.
Also, do I need Apache? I have Tomcat running...is that enough?
Cheers,
Guido
Hi Guido,
oflaDemo should be located in /usr/share/red5/webapps/oflaDemo
Did you use the IP address when connecting to red5 demos or localhost? Note that localhost will not work.
Other things you may take into consideration:
I have updated the instructions. http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Moodle_Language_Lab
Yes you will need an Apache for RAP to work. Tomcat will not do.
Hope this helps.
Thank you so much for the update and reply, Patrick.
I spent a few hours on this yesterday and today, but I'm still out of luck unfortunately. I suspect it has to do with my Apache install or BigBlueButton, which is also running on the same server and utilising Red5.
Here's what I've done (on my Ubuntu 10.4 LTS server, called flashserver):
Here's the output from netstat -lnp | grep :80
root@flashserver:~# netstat -lnp | grep :80
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 699/nginx
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:8021 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 643/freeswitch
tcp6 0 0 127.0.0.1:8005 :::* LISTEN 27240/java
tcp6 0 0 :::8080 :::* LISTEN 27240/java
I have a couple of questions:
I'm also very interested in a good how-to for getting Red 5 running in conjuction with Moodle. I have SSH level control of my Moodle server running Debian Squueze but comprehensive instructions for any server would really help a lot.
Cheers,
Mike Smith
Brisbane, Ausralia
To anyone who can help.
We are having terrible issues with getting this plug-in to work. I had the highest hopes for it too! If anyone can help please reply. I will try to describe some of what we have done and perhaps someone will see a mistake and be able to help.
1. We are running moodle 2.1.1
2. We installed Red 5 .8 on Unbuntu 10.04
3. We installed the language lab folders
4. In Moodle we set the path to our Red5 server, name for the RAP, & passord salt value.
5. We created a language lab activity. When I first start to create the activity the recorder bar appears to be blinking and shortly after stops. If I try to record nothing transpires. I can click the buttons but it doesn't record. (see images)
I tried uploading an MP3. It does not play back for the student. A student can type text, the teacher can review what the student typed, but we still cannot record!
We suspect that our Red 5 .8 server is not working correctly, but can't be sure. We have followed the install instructions found here: http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Moodle_Language_Lab and installed the oflademo. I watched a Red 5 video tutorial that shows you how to install the demos, which is found here:
.
The demos don't appear to run for us like they do in the video tutorial. So, that is why I suspect something is wrong with Red 5, and since the tinymce recorder doesn't appear, I also suspect something is wrong with the language lab plugin.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
Rebecca
Hi Rebecca,
I do hope you get this working. I'm in a similar position. Can I ask, did you have Red 5 installed on Ubuntu simply because it was easier to use the Big Blue Button installation instructions to get Red 5 installed than if you tried to install it (and Tomcat) on their own?
Cheers,
Mike Smith
We used Patrick's instructions and we chose to install on Unbutu because the instructions appeared simple and straight forward. (And our moodle is running on Unbutu) Obviously we're missing something though.
We looked at the Big Blue Button moodle plug-in but for it to work we needed to supply additional service. We can't afford to run Big Blue Button for the few who want to use it.
Hmmm...I thought that Red 5 & this language lab would work on their own. Now you've got me thinking that perhaps we're missing a 'service' of some type.
Rebecca
I had much the same problem with activating the mic and making a recording. I too thought that the whole plugin was broken, but it is not. After a lot of effort I found a solution that might help you.
For some teacher/ course administrator actions the "flash requests permission to use microphone" window will pop-up. When you give permission the lab will work -- for that time and only for that user. But the popup never showed up for students when using Firefox in Ubuntu so you could not set that permission.
The user >must< give permission for flash to use the video or microphone, thank God. Imagine any application able to turn on the mic or video at any time to spy on you! To set this permission without the popup use the following URL:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html
In the settings window of the page select the host name of the moodle server and check "Always allow". Each browser user will need to set it themself in each browser (a real hassle) but at least then the recording will work. They will need to try using the app once to get the host name in the list. Note: this is by browser user, not course student.
Hope this will solve your problem.
Neil,
Thanks for your suggestion. We will test this out a.s.a.p. and report back if we have any luck with the Language Lab recording.
Rebecca
I have installed the language lab module on a Windows server, and I am having what appears to be the exact same issues as Rebecca. I did "allow" flash player to use my microphone, etc., but nothing changed in the interface. Hopefully someone out there has a solution...
Neil,
No luck. I went to the web link and my site didn't even show up in the list of sites that appeared to be attempting to use my mic and camera. I added it manually and with no difference. I also went through my browser and followed very similar screens and manually added my site with no change.
Our site technician wants to know how do we verify the flash player is installed with the plugin? He has never come across a place where installing anything flash related came up.
Still lost,
Rebecca
Our language lab connection problem was as follows:
In the activity module setup for language lab (within moodle), we had specified the path to our Red5 server as 192.168.1.80:5080. We could see by debugging with "FlashFirebug" that the connection to the Red5 server was never being made. After we changed the path to 192.168.1.80, without the :5080, the connection is now being made and everything appears to be working correctly.
Todd,
Thanks so much for contributing a suggestion. We have tried this with no luck to resolving our language lab/ Red5 issue. Glad it worked for you.
Rebecca
I am running Red5 1.0 RC1. Are you able to watch the video clips in your oflaDemo? What IP address do you use to access Red5?
Hi All,
I'm looking for a language lab type solution to add to our moodle site. Does anyone know of a moodle site runnig langnague lab plugin that I can see?
I just want to use it and try it out so we can see if it will do what we require?
thanks
Gareth
I don't know of any public sites yet. We are still testing on a local network. It is working well though.
Todd,
Sorry I didn't reply earlier. We aren't able to see the Red5 demo videos. I think our problem is with Red 5 and our technician is going to start from scratch. What he had read (through forums etc) is that everyone else has Red5 running on a separate server. We have it running on the same server as our moodle. I was waiting to answer you until after he went through setting up Red5 again but he's backed up and I'm just waiting.
I'm just like Gareth, I'd like to see the language lab working somewhere so I can trouble shoot and identify what is, or is not, working.
We have Red5 running on the same server as Moodle. This is a Windows Machine.
We are now setting up a Linux (Ubuntu) machine to try it all out, and we have had several problems getting Red5 to run properly.
First off, Red5 requires Java JDK (not the regular Java), but it needs Java JDK 1.6 (not the newer 1.7).
The Java JDK must be setup properly in the systems "environment variables".
Also, remember that your server needs a fixed IP address. Using "localhost" to communicate with Red5 doesn't work.
Then, after Java was taken care of, we had some strange things happen with Red5. We launched it, and it seemed to be working correctly, but then somehow, the "Work" directory within the Red5 1.0.0 directory disappeared, and Red5 would no longer run. We reinstalled it and it runs fine now.
In our experience, getting Red5 to run properly and install the appropriate demos, has been the difficulty. Getting the moodle Language Lab plugin to "talk" to Red5 seems to work smoothly.
Our experience was also that getting Red5 up and running and stable was the problem - not with the Language Lab, but with our own custom audio recording assignment which streamed student submissions to Red5 to be recorded. Once it was up and running, Moodle could connect to it easily enough - but it was never really stable.
We gave up on Red5 when I discovered that Flash Player 10.1 made it possible to capture audio data locally and process it, removing the need for a streaming server - Red5 was constantly giving us issues, but the new recorder hasn't had any issues at all.
Paul,
That is interesting and good news. How did you go about saving/submitting student recordings with the data stored locally?
Hi Todd,
My replacement audio recording assignment uses Flash to capture the audio locally, transcode it to MP3 and perform an HTTP POST to submit it as though it were a file being uploaded to Moodle. You can try it for yourself by grabbing a copy from the Plugins database, or browse the source on Github (note that the master branch is for 1.9 - there's a MOODLE_20 branch for 2.x.
The audio recording assignment is not a complete replacement for the Language Lab (and isn't intended to be - it's a replacement for our old audio recording assignment which required a Red5 server), but the potential certainly exists for it to be expanded beyond its current scope. Unfortunately, my time is quite stretched these days, so I can't really do much on it unless there's sufficient demand for it from our teaching staff - but if anyone out there has the time and skill to enhance it (or build something entirely new using my work as a starting point), I should be able to answer questions and offer the occasional helping hand.
-Paul
Hi all,
Looks like I've managed to persuade our IT support to let us setup a red 5 server, but the wnat me to find out how much space is required for the language lab to work.
Does anyone have any idea? We'd be using approx 100 students?
thanks in advance
Gareth
Since I can't access our server side, I have to wait on our technician. He's swamped, and hasn't had time to figure out the Red5 server issue. I've watched the forum traffic and have chosen the "Online Audio Recorder". Since it's flash based I could install the plugin and set it up myself. So, at this point we have bailed on using the Language Lab because of Red5 difficulty.
Rebecca
There is an issue with the latest version of Flash (11.2).I got this information from Patrick Thibaudeau after experiencing problems with the Lab.
https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3156305
We use the developper's Red 5 server.
François Lizotte
Wow - I'm glad we managed to ditch Red5; it looks like we did so just in time...
I feel sorry for those who are doing anything affected by this that's beyond the scope of alternatives like my online audio recording assignment type. Hopefully Adobe do something about it - and quickly!
-Paul
We will be upgrading our Moodle from 1.9 to 2.2 this June. Our English Language teachers are very interested in the language lab module but after reading through the posts on this page, I am a bit cautious. I'm wondering how many places have installed this module WITHOUT serious problems & for how many is it working as planned? Todd, it sounds like you have a smoothly running set up?
Thanks for any & all info...
We are testing LL right now and teh only time I could make it work properly is when I upgraded to flash 11.3 (beta) on my laptop. There is a bug in Flash 11.2 that is affecting audio replaying
I hope this information will help someone
Oksana
