Usability Issues with PoodLL

Usability Issues with PoodLL

by Eric Katchan -
Number of replies: 2

Hello we have just installed a number of PoodLL plugins on our moodle development environment in hopes of replacing nanogong and have seen some weirdness.


We are running moodle 3.0.5+ on RHEL 6 with postgres DB

We have installed the following PoodLL plugins:

  • Filter (2.8.6(Build 2016061600))
  • Recording (2.6.0(Build 2015121100))
  • Assignment Submissions (1.5.9 (Build 2015121101))
  • Feedback (1.0.6 (Build 2015121101))

I noticed a number of warnings in the error log:

[Wed Aug 17 16:42:40 2016] [error] [client x.x.x.x] File does not exist: /ROOT-DIRECTORY/moodle/mod/assign/skinvolumemeter.png, referer: https://SERVERNAME/moodle/mod/assign/view.php

[Wed Aug 17 16:42:40 2016] [error] [client x.x.x.x] File does not exist: /ROOT-DIRECTORY/moodle/mod/assign/plainskinbackground.png, referer: https://SERVERNAME/moodle/mod/assign/view.php


Is there some configuration issues we missed?


Also, when we attempted to submit an audio assignment, the recorder would appear, the audio would be recorded and could be listened to but when submitted, the recorder showed up again on screen and the page was still loading (spinning).  I noticed a brief glance of some debug information and realized that moodle was set to debug email sending.  If I stopped the page, and went back to view the assignment, the audio was uploaded and working (blue flow player).  When I turned the debug off, it appeared to work.


Also, for some reason, a tester indicated that they were unable to use the recorder but then it started working.  I know this is minimal information but is it possible that cache needed to be cleared or permissions for player needed to be accepted?


Any advice would be appreciated.  If I have more additional comments, I will add them.


Thanks


Eric


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In reply to Eric Katchan

Re: Usability Issues with PoodLL

by Justin Hunt -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Eric

Sorry for the slow reply. Those error messages about .png files can be ignored and they are annoying. I think I removed those in the latest version.

The other issues are a bit hard to pin down. Sometimes debug and other output can get mixed up in what should be meaningful ajax responses and even into the recorded files themselves. Of course this shouldn't really happen but I have seen it before. I would consider this not a likely cause of the other problems you reported.

There are many ways recording can fail, let me count the ways

  • The recording timed out during upload
  • The user's mic device is not recognized or not available
  • The user has not given permission via various popup dialogs to access mic device
  • The recording can't be uploaded due to bandwidth or network issues
  • There are file permission issues on the PoodLL files
  • There is a bug in PoodLL somewhere
  • There is not really a problem, but the user thinks there is
  • The file is recording ok, but its in a format that can't be played back
  • The PoodLL filter settings are to convert with FFMPEG but ffmpeg is not set up
  • PHP security settings, mod-security or suhosin are killing the file upload

And that won't be all of them. So its a bit of a minefield at times. Its most likely a permissions, network or device issue. Try really short recordings, and see if they work. If they do, and big long ones don't, then try using the red5 audio recorder (ie not the mp3 one). 


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