Issue with BBB Recordings

Issue with BBB Recordings

by Tina Brown -
Number of replies: 4

Hi All,

I currently have Moodle 2.85 installation with the latest BBB plugins. I am using Genericconf as the BBB server. When I create an activity for a BBB recording it records the session as I can see this in the Genericconf logs. However when I have created the BBBrecordings resource and click on it there is no recording, it is completely blank. Yet, when I use the Blindside networks test server I can see the recording correctly. I am helping a client out who is on a budget here in Australia. I am only a novice user of Moodle so any hope or pointers of how to get things behaving would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

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In reply to Tina Brown

Re: Issue with BBB Recordings

by Jesus Federico -
Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Tina,

First thing you need to check is if the recording or recordings actually exist in the BigBlueButton server you are trying to connect.

If you are running a BBB 0.9, sometimes the users forget to push the recording button (even though the meeting was set to be recorded, the user must push the button to really start recording). Or for any versions, sometimes the recording was not processed for some reason.

I would recommend you to do a direct request to the BBB server by using api-mate http://mconf.github.io/api-mate/ (or ask to your system administrator to do so)

You can query all the recordings and look for the one you need by title, or if the recordings are too many then you need the internal meeting ID and query for recordings in that specific meetingID.

Let us know your findings



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In reply to Jesus Federico

Re: Issue with BBB Recordings

by Tina Brown -
Thank you Jesus.  I have entered the data into the that link. How do I tell if the recording exist from it please. I am the technical person trying to solve this, I am more a support person than a web support person. Once I can understand the output of the link I can give you that information and we can resolve this issue. I have looked at the Generic Conf and I can see that the meetings have been recorded on their server.
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In reply to Tina Brown

Re: Issue with BBB Recordings

by Tina Brown -
Looking at the API Mate. I clicked on getRecordings and it returned code "Success" so I assume that the recording is present on the Generic Conf server given that information. And then when I click on publishRecordings I get "Success" and "True". I hope that is the information you needed from that tool. Thank you.
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In reply to Tina Brown

Re: Issue with BBB Recordings

by Jesus Federico -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Tina,


Not necessarily. And I am afraid you need to have a good understanding of how the recordings are managed in the BBB server.

Are you doing the getRecording request for the specific meeting you are looking for?


The BigBluebuttonBN plugin will show you only the recordings related to the BigBlueButtonBN activities in the course it is. If there are recordings in the BBB server from other courses you will see them by using the getRecordings command, but they don't necessarily belong to the course where you have the recordingsBN instance.


You need to execute the query for the specific meetingID you are looking for. You can see that ID if you launch into a session from your moodle and while you are in you run a getMeetings command using apimate


Take that ID and use it to recover the recordings. If after the recording is made you have recordings in the recordings element, so all is good. NExt thing to look at is the connectivity between your Moodle server and the BBB server


The response is always an XML file like this

<response><returncode>SUCCESS</returncode><recordings/><messageKey>noRecordings</messageKey><message>There are not recordings for the meetings</message></response>

If there is success and no recordings. Well there are just no recordings.

If there is success and there are recordings, in the element recordings you should see something like this for each recording in that server:

<recording>
   <recordID>26961dd06cd95364e5fc58cdb3e69837609b59ee-1414094627549</recordID>
   <meetingID>3c9da89e522728730c41bd16c82624d4-2-1</meetingID>
   <name>BBB Test</name>
   <published>true</published>
   <startTime>1414094627000</startTime>
   <endTime>1414095020000</endTime>
   <metadata>
      <originservername>192.168.22.147</originservername>
      <contextactivitydescription>Test</contextactivitydescription>
      <contextactivity>BBB Test</contextactivity>
      <origin>Moodle</origin>
      <recording>true</recording>
      <context>English 101</context>
      <originversion>2.7 (Build: 20140512)</originversion>
      <originservercommonname />
      <origintag>moodle-mod_bigbluebuttonbn (2014101002)</origintag>
   </metadata>
   <playback>
      <format>
         <type>presentation</type>
         <url>http://ANYURL/presentation</url>
         <length>7</length>
      </format>
   </playback>
</recording>

You are looking for the recording for an specific meetingID that belongs to the activity you created in your moodle

<meetingID>3c9da89e522728730c41bd16c82624d4-2-1</meetingID>


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