Viewing Video in Moodle 1.3.1

Viewing Video in Moodle 1.3.1

by Allan Carrington -
Number of replies: 3
G'day all

And greetings from Adelaide South Australia. I am an Instructional Designer and not a techie as such ... so be gentle with me smile

I am excited that 1.3.1 can now handle Quicktime and enables video clips to be inserted for multimedia support of pedagogy. Many times I anticipate they will be "talking head" like. Add to that the downlaod/file size constraints of online delivery and I have found that an ideal playback size to be 240 x 180 pixels What Apple calls the "Internet size" in iMovie for example.

Am I missing something like a setting choice but when I load into Moodle for playback it only plays it back at 580x450 pixels. They look terrible. If we have to render videos with enough data for that size they will bloat out in file size. Most videos for online delivery dont need to be played back at that large view size

I hope I have done something dumb or missed a setting. Being able to specify the playback size would be such a help.

Look forward to being wrong.

Regards
Allan
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In reply to Allan Carrington

Re: Viewing Video in Moodle 1.3.1

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Currently, you need to hack mod/resource/view.php for this - there is no per-movie setting.

Quicktime is usually very good at scaling up movies, though.

Another option is to use a HTML resource and create a simple link to the file, then the Moodle filter plugin will embed the movie at a 400x300 size.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Viewing Video in Moodle 1.3.1

by Allan Carrington -
Martin

Thanks for the quick response and I really appreciate the software and the possibilities for online learning for the rest of us smile (i.e. the teachers/educators wanting to do online learning and teaching outside a institutional framework.)

I am thrilled that Matt Riordan in Ohio USA, who wrote the Teachers Manual, is working with me to help Christian Churches and Ministries use Moodle to set up online learning and teaching for their constituencies.

I will ask Matt to help me hack the view.php to view at about 240 x 180 pixel size for the moment. My multimedia training makes me squeeze every kb out of the files that is possible and using the new MPEG4 codec @ the Internet Size the video files are manageable even for dial up. However they do not render well at the larger size but that is cool they weren't designed to.

Could you please add a video playback size adjustment onto a wish list smile, or even just play it back at the size of the video as defined by the Quicktime Player. Then we can define the separate window to appear like a pop up. Then shorter smaller in playback size video clips which stimulate or prime reflection and discussion will become powerful manageable pedagogical support don't you think?

Again thanks

Regards
Allan
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In reply to Allan Carrington

Re: Viewing Video in Moodle 1.3.1

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Unfortunately there is no really good way to tell the Quicktime plugin to "play the video at it's native size", so it must be pre-defined somehow. There is a parameter scale=1 but this causes problems with the control bar (ie often you see no play button).

Scaling has not been a big problem so far, because the scaling in my experiences is usually very good, and you certainly don't lose any information or slow anything down by having a video scaled up. ie it's just like moving close to the screen to better view a squinty little picture.

Here is a auto-embedded
which is 240 pixels wide....it looks OK to me when scaled up to 400 wide.

Clicking on the link above will this open a new window with the video playing at native size.  This is another option for you  ... just specify "open in new window" for your link (ie target="_blank")
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