Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Angela Gibson -
Number of replies: 10
Hello, I'm a new Moodle user. First let me say that I am really impressed with the ease of use and robust capabilities of the Moodle platform! And of course, the price is unbeatable! smile

However, I am having a problem with media - specifically Quicktime movies. I used a G4 Powerbook running Mac OS X 10.3.8, an iSight camera, and iMovie to create and edit a video for my Moodle class. The movie itself is 153 KB, so size shouldnt be an issue.

I was able to very easily upload the movie to Moodle by doing the following: logged in as Admin, I selected Add a New Resource from the dropdown menu, then Link to a file or web site, then Choose to upload file, selected the folder I wanted to add the movie to, then found the movie clip on my hard drive and uploaded it, then clicked on Choose once the file was uploaded.

I was able to immediately play the uploaded movie clip by simply clicking on the link. I was able to play the movie using Firefox 1.0, IE (Mac) 5.2.3, Netscape 7.2, and Safari 1.2.4. I was also able to play the movie using Virtual PC 7.0.1 running Windows XP Pro and Firefox 1.0 and IE 6.0 for Windows.

The problem is that none of my students could play the movie. The movie would not play on a Sony Vaio running Windows XP Pro through any web browser. The movie would not play on another G4 Powerbook running Mac OS X 10.3.8 with the above named browsers. And the movie would not play on three other Windows machines (exact specs of these unknown).

When trying to play the movie, there is a message at the bottom of the browser that says "waiting for lbinc.us" and then Done. But nothing happens. There is simply a black box (after the Quicktime Q goes away).

Can anyone please help????

I have already tried the following:

Checked all firewall and antivirus software settings. (But if anyone has experienced what I have described and you have exact steps of what the firewall settings should be, please let me know.

Checked that all browsers and OS software was up to date (i.e. all patches, plugins, service packs, browser versions, etc.).

I even changed permissions on the movie file to see if that would help...didnt think it would, but hey, Im desperate here!

I also tried just creating an HTML page on my website with the movie embedded and use Moodle to link to that page, but the movie still wouldn't play.

Ive run out of ideas. I dont understand why the movie will play just fine on my computer but no one elses. How frustrating!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Angela
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In reply to Angela Gibson

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Ray Lawrence -
Hi,

Is multimedia plugins active? If not navigate to Administration > Configuration > Filters to activate.

I'm not quite sure if you're managing to get the movie to play in Moodle, or whether it's commencing playing but then failing.

Ray
 
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In reply to Ray Lawrence

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Angela Gibson -
Hi Ray, Thank you for your quick response and suggestion. As it turns out, I did NOT have my multimedia plugins active! So I did as you suggested. Unfortunately the movie still did not play. However, your help was much appreciated because without the important step of activating the multimedia plugins, I'd have never gotten the movies to work! Thanks again! smile

Angela
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In reply to Angela Gibson

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Mark Stevens -
Angela,

I have rather general advice first.  Your site is not secure now.  You need to move your moodledata/ directory outside your www/ directory.  You should also have a .htaccess or an index.html or something to keep prying eyes away from your directories.

Regarding your movie, the permissions do need to be set properly, and I think they are.  The movie tries to load, but then I get errors which say the file isn't found.  Can you get info on your movie in your finder, confirm that it's 154K, and reupload it to your server.  Then relink it to your resource.

Do this after you have changed the location of your moodledata/ directory and changed your config.php to reflect this change.

Good luck.
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In reply to Mark Stevens

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Angela Gibson -
Hi Mark, thank you for pointing out my issue with security on my site. You are absolutely correct!

I moved my moodledata out of the www directory as you suggested and I got the following errors:

Warning: mkdir(/home/eglobemarketinc/www/lbinc.us/moodledata): Permission denied in /home/eglobemarketinc/www/lbinc.us/moodle/lib/moodlelib.php on line 1897


ERROR: You need to create the directory /home/eglobemarketinc/www/lbinc.us/moodledata with web server write access

Warning: mkdir(/home/eglobemarketinc/www/lbinc.us/moodledata): Permission denied in /home/eglobemarketinc/www/lbinc.us/moodle/lib/moodlelib.php on line 1897


ERROR: You need to create the directory /home/eglobemarketinc/www/lbinc.us/moodledata with web server write access

I'm not PHP or MySQL literate enough to know how to correct this, so I moved the directory back to where it was. However, I know it shouldn't be there. If you have time, could you help me with instructions on how to get this directory moved and still have it communicate properly with the database?

Also, I will make an index.html file and get it up on the site. That I knew I needed to do, but was trying to get this class working first.

Thanks again for your help! smile

Angela
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In reply to Angela Gibson

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Mark Stevens -
Angela, sounds like you are doing great smile 

Three things need to be done (order isn't important, but they must all be done smile)
1.  Edit your config.php file to change the location of the moodledata/ folder.
2.  Move your Moodledata/ folder.
3.  Change the permissions to the moodledata/ folder
After you move the moodledata/ folder outside the www/ folder, you need to set the permissions on the moodledata/ to 777.  This will allow Moodle to write changes and will get rid of the permissions errors you got above.  Changing the permissions on a directory can be done in different ways.  Are you using CPanel, SSH, FTP or?
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In reply to Mark Stevens

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Jesse Thorstad -
Angela,

Since you use a Mac, I'd recommend Transmit for an FTP client, if you don't already use it. It makes permissions a breeze. Just select a file, or directory, and do Command-I (for "Get Info). There you can change the permissions in a snap!

Jesse
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In reply to Mark Stevens

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Angela Gibson -
Hi Mark,

Thanks so much for your help! I did as you instructed and it worked beautifully!!!  big grin

I'm actually using a combination of iManager (kind of like cPanel), SSH, FTP, and SFTP.

Thanks again for providing the steps to secure my site! I really appreciate it!

Angela
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In reply to Angela Gibson

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Mark Stevens -
Angela,  It's great to hear that it's working.  Did you get your cron working yet? --Mark
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In reply to Angela Gibson

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Jesse Thorstad -
Angela,

How long is your movie? 153 KB seems awfully small. It makes me wonder if you uploaded a reference file instead of a self-contained movie.

It would maybe explain why it plays on your machine, which is where the actual movie file resides, but not others.

Just a thought...

Jesse
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In reply to Jesse Thorstad

Re: Quicktime Movie won't play - can anyone help?

by Angela Gibson -
Hi Jesse, Thank you for your reply! You were CORRECT!!! approve I had not uploaded the actual movie but some type of reference file. The actual movie is 3.8MB. Too big to upload as a file directly into Moodle (limit 2MB upload), but I made a separate HTML page with the movie embedded and referenced it from Moodle and it works like a charm!!! Also, because Ray pointed out that I needed to activate my plugins.

Thanks again for your help! smile

Angela
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