Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Using videos

By: Daniel Schneider

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The teacher actually is quite mad. Not just because of the video but because of the sum of difficulties she had (she was the one who struggled with the bugs in the assessment module discovered last year). She also found the usability of the now working module quite strange. I had to tell her to tick all checkboxes in order to provide feedback to students which is a bit strange (sorry I am busy too and can't test all possibile combinations in order to provide a more serious feeback).

I do think that the technical user community (you other guys in this forum) should be a bit more expressive about bugs if they encounter them and not adopt the usual "muddling around" strategy that is common to the Microsoft/Apple universe. While people happily accept the fact the even Word 2010 just doesn't work properly, teachers and learners do less accept similar problems when it comes to edutech and we have to be careful about this. Since Ernie and the LAMS are very responsive, it's a crime to remain passive is something doesn't work properly.

But maybe nobody ever did use this video feature ;)

- Daniel

Posted by Daniel Schneider

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Daniel,

This week I've been doing some testing with video uploading in LAMS.

The requirements are quite intense:

* Teachers should be able to upload any type of video files (.flv, .wmv, .avi, .mov, .mp4, etc)
* The video files have to be played in learner according to the software/OS the students has.
* Videos have to be played in mobile devices (whenever possible).
* If LAMS server is on a private network (no internet access), then videos should be played/streamed from the LAMS server.

I was planning to have one and only one video service in LAMS, but with these requirements, it doesn't seem that really can do this.

Therefore my current thinking at the moment is that we will need two different "tools" to handle this and you would use one or the other according to your requirements.

For instance, the Kaltura Widget has its clear advantages: pretty much takes *any* video file you can think of, does codec conversion and provides a fantastic content delivery network for faster video streaming. It also can provide different players according to your browser and/or mobile device. However, as this is an online service, if you are on an intranet (as some schools are), then this simply does not work for you.

The movieplayer plugin we use (the one your teacher was struggling with) has disadvantages. The main one is that if the user does not have the appropriate video plugin installed in his/her computer, then this won't work. Unfortunately, in many cases to install these video plugins you need to have administrator rights and most computer labs at universities/schools won't allow the students to install any of that. But, the movieplayer can play files directly from the LAMS server. And if you are in a private intranet with no internet access, then this would work for you.

So I think we need to have some instructions on these pages that will help the teacher make the right decision about the player/video streaming engine they want to use. I'm pretty certain that some simple text on each of this plugins explaining the pros and cons of each will save a lot of time and frustration.

Let me know your comments (if any).

Thanks

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione