In this article, I’m going to give you an introduction to the new Media Player module for Moodle. It’s a flexible, robust and feature-rich method of deploying video in Moodle as an activity.

The Media Player module for Moodle using Searchbar and Playlist features

In November 2009, I started the FLV Player module for Moodle project. It was a way of deploying video in Moodle that was robust, standards compliant and above all easy to use for non-developers. It’s been a great success and I’ve have a lot of feedback from teachers, course content developers and admins. As a result of this, I’ve decided to update the module and include a number of new features. I’ve developed this new version as a separate and distinct module to avoid teachers and course content developers having to redeploy existing instances of the FLV Player module due to conflicts between the old and some of the new module’s settings.

You can already deploy video in Moodle. Why create a Module for it?

Moodle already has media filters that automatically convert HTML links to video files into instances of video player plugins, including Flash, QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Video. These work well for basic video deployment but don’t allow users to:

• Decide which video player plugin to use
• Control how the video player looks and behaves
• Allow you to deploy streaming video from a media server
• Do anything other than basic video playback functions

The Media Player module uses a single, extremely well developed and supported Flash video player (JW FLV Player) which effortlessly and gracefully handles the majority of web video formats, including FLV and F4V (Flash video), M4V and MOV (Quicktime) and MP4. It also supports the new and popular H.264 (Blu-ray) video CODEC and of course the most asked for feature in web video players, a variety of playlist formats.

Also, the only way to deploy captions with video is to hard-code them into the video file which is inflexible, doesn’t adjust when the video is scaled and doesn’t support multiple languages. External captions, on the other hand, are very flexible, easy to edit and easy to read at any magnification.

Obviously, many teachers and course content designers would like to do much more than basic video playback deployment for e-learning purposes and that’s where the Media Player module comes in.

But video is a resource. Why is Media Player an activity module?

If you only deploy video and nothing more, then it isn’t interactive and it would be unreasonable to call it an activity. The Media Player module includes options that have quite a high degree of interactivity such as Snapshot and Searchbar. As you’ll see while you read this article and try out the demos, it’s much more than a video player and will continue to support more features as they become available.

So what can I do with the Media Player module?

There’s a lot you can do with it and you can also use all of these features in combination with each other. The features are difficult to describe and I think it’s much better to see them demonstrated. See the links at the end of this article for some demos.

Here’s a list of the available options:

• External captions files: Supporting the popular SMIL and SubRip captions standards which allow very detailed control over how captions are displayed. You can also deploy the same video multiple times with different captions that play in the same playlist. Learners can immediately see what captions are available and there is no screen refresh when they select different ones. The captions can also be turned on or off at any time during playback.
• High and normal definition video files: You can deploy two versions of the same video, one normal definition and the other HD. Users can switch between the videos according to the speed of their Internet connection. If you use a streaming media server, you can also use automatic bandwidth checking so that the video player automatically finds the optimum definition of video to play.
• Info box: A consistent way to display information about the video being played (title, description, author and date deployed). An easy way to comply with copyright and licensing requirements.
• Livestream: This one if for live video broadcasts from media servers. Normally, users have to keep checking manually and refresh the web page every few seconds to see if a live broadcast has started. This feature automatically checks at defined intervals to see if the broadcast has begun without refreshing the web page and then plays the video so users are free to do other things while they’re waiting.
• Logobox: Include a logo with videos and also a link. It also supports Flash animation files so you can have an animated logo. The link could be to a web page or to a downloadable ZIP file.
• Metaviewer: Displays metadata information of the video files being played. It’s a convenient way for teachers and course content developers to find out essential information about the video file such as the exact width, height and duration.
• Playlists: By far the most asked for feature on video players is the ability to deploy several videos in one player. For example, if you have a video which is very long, it’s necessary to split it up into shorter (5 – 10 minute) sections or chapters and deploy them in order in one presentation. It supports thumbnail images, titles and descriptions for each item on the playlist. This means that users can easily return to a video and carry on watching from more or less where they left it. It’s also much easier to find a particular section without having to download the entire video. It supports several standard playlist formats including those produced by YouTube.com and iTunes.
• Search bar: Allows users to perform keyword searches on sites such as YouTube.com or, if you have a custom search script, anywhere you wish to define. It’s useful if you’d like users to do research without leaving your site.
• Snapshot: Allows users to take snapshots of frames of the video being played. The snapshots are stored in the course files directory and a link returned to the user. They could use this to post snapshots in course forums or blogs. The ability to store snapshots is controlled by creating a special directory in the Moodle course files directory for each user. To protect your server and users’ computers, the Snapshot feature follows the Flash Player security model and only allows users to take snapshots of videos hosted on the same site as the Moodle. It’s possible to enable other sites but only with a correctly configured crossdomain.xml policy file.
• Use YouTube.com as a video hosting service: Play videos directly from YouTube.com without any annoying advertising or popups and without users accidentally “clicking through” to the YouTube.com site. Only a small unintrusive YouTube.com logo appears in the bottom right of the screen. A cost-effective solution if you don’t mind making your video content publicly available and has the additional benefit of promoting your e-learning courses to a huge audience.

How can I start using it?

The Media Player module plugin for Moodle is open source and available to download and install from the project site hosted on Google Code.

Can I see a demo?

There’s an HD (1280 x 720) video tutorial, deployed using the Media Player module, demonstrating how easy it is to deploy video with it here (login as a guest).

There are more demos of the various features on my Moodle here (login as a guest).

There seems to be a heated and highly polarised debate in progress about Flash and HTML5. There also seems to be a lot of misinformation flying around and some misunderstandings about what Flash and HTML5 are, what they can do and how the future of the web is likely to shape up in the next ten years.

Microsft, Apple, Adobe and Google are all competing for their own particular profit models and market share. Most of the debate and the disagreements have little to do with what the best technology for the web is or what’s best for developers and users. The link at the end of this post is a sober, well-informed article written by Jeremy Allaire, founder of the Flash MX platform, ColdFusion and Brightcove.

Also, please note that the developments in HTML5 RIAs that they’re talking about are in quite a long-term time frame by web technology standards. Don’t be fooled by Google’s “hard push” campaigns and their YouTube.com/html5 beta demo. Try it out in IE8 and you’ll see it’s still the Flash plugin video player and Internet Explorer still accounts for almost 59% of web browser usage, with versions 6 and 7 making up the majority share. Unless there’s some radical change in web browser user behaviour, we aren’t going to see a widely distributed full implementation of HTML5 on users’ desktop browsers for at least another ten years.

Here’s the article:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/the-future-of-web-content-html5-flash-mobile-apps/

In February 2009, I released the first beta version of the FLV Player plugin activity module for Moodle. It leverages the ubiquitous JW FLV Player and has been very popular among teachers and course content developers working with Moodle. I’m working on a substantial update for the module and in this article I’m going to write about some of the improvements and new features in it.

What has changed?

The most significant changes in the module will be:

• Support for alternative HD video streams.
• Support for audio descriptions.
• Uses simpler SWFObject 2.2 embed method.

Alternative HD video streams

The current FLV Player module can play any video format supported by Flash Player, which includes FLV, F4V, MOV,  MP4 and Youtube.com videos as well as MP3 and AAC audio files, and JPEG, PNG and GIF images (animation is not supported) and Flash animation files. See here for a full list of supported formats.

The new version of the player now supports an alternative HD video stream. This means that users can switch between normal and high definition video at the click of a mouse. All you need to do is provide two video files, one normal and one HD for the player to switch between. This is particularly useful for providing an alternative low definition stream to users with slow or intermittent internet connections.

Audio descriptions

This one’s still a bit buggy and doesn’t allow full control over the audio file. An audio description is a second, separate MP3 audio file that can be deployed alongside a video. It is synchronised with the video so that if you seek through it to a new point in time, the audio file plays at that point respectively. Users can switch the extra audio on and off as they like.

Audio descriptions are typically used for accessibility support for the visually impaired but can also be used for multi-language support, optional narrator’s voice overs, director’s commentaries, etc. I’m sure instructional designers, teachers and course content developers can come up with some creative applications for this feature.

SWFObject 2.2 embedding

Previous versions of the FLV Player module were a little “inconsistent” across different browsers and some suffered from bugs when it was necessary to perform Flash Player upgrades for users who don’t have Flash Player 9.0.115 or later installed. I’ve upgraded the module to SWFObject 2.2 and used a static embed method so that even with Javascript disabled, the video player will work, as well as detecting users’ Flash Player versions and informing them if they need to perform a Flash Player upgrade in order to view the video content, instead of automatically deploying Express Install, giving users more control. The new embed method has been successfully tested on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome.

A prompt to upgrade to the required Flash Player version.

Other features still supported

As well as these new features, the new version of the FLV Player will continue to support:

• HTML notes under the video playback window so you can put lecture notes, diagrams, graphs, tables, photos, links to files or pages, etc. on the same page.
• TimedText, RealText, ASX, ATOM, RSS and XSPF video caption formats (Users can now switch captions on and off).
• XML Playlists.
• Skins to change the visual appearance of the player (also includes support for XML based skins).
• Definable player control colours.
• Video poster images before playback commences.
• A variety of other JW FLV Player plugins (as a CSV list).
• Player configuration via an externally loaded XML file so that course-wide player policies can be established.

When will the new version be ready?

Many thanks to the brilliant developers at LongtailVideo.com for all their ideas and hard work. I’m still testing and trying to “iron out” the bugs in the FLV Player module but this should be finished in the next week or so. Unfortunately, there’s a bug in the Audio Description plugin, which is beyond my control and I’m waiting for the respective developer to resolve the issue. Hopefully, this will be soon.

Update…

After spending some time going over the various requirements for supporting the new plugins, the changes to the module code and the database table structure, I’ve realised that a number of the changes would “break” older instances on Moodle courses and lead to a lot of extra work for teachers and course content developers. With this in mind, I’ve decided to leave the FLV Player as it is for people who don’t need a feature-rich media player.

I’m now developing a very feature-rich “Media Player” module that will support most of the plugins currently available for the JW FLV Player as well as playlists and all the other features that we expect of a good web video application for e-learning. The module editing page will also be better organised to make it easier to use. The JW FLV Player plugins that I’m experimenting with at the moment are as follows:

• Audio Description
• Captions
• HD
• Info Box
• Live Stream
• Logo Box
• Meta Viewer
• Search Bar
• Snapshot

Please note that the Live Stream and Snapshot plugins require a server-side script and will not be enabled as standard for security reasons. The search Seach Bar plugin can use custom search scripts but only YouTube.com search will be enabled by default.

Here’s the Google Code project home page: http://code.google.com/p/moodle-mplayer/

I’ve had quite a few inquiries about using web cameras to record video for e-learning purposes. On the face of it, it seems to be an easy way to record high definition video very cheaply. In this article, I’m going to talk about what’s available at the moment and what you can realistically expect from an HD web camera.

Several HD (high definition) web cameras have appeared on the market recently promising to record up to 1280×720 pixel resolution video at up to 30 frames per second for an outlay of around €100 or less. The specific webcams that I’ve seen are the “Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000“, the “Microsoft LifeCam Cinema” and the “Creative Live! Cam Socialize HD“. Although these cameras are capable, in theory, of the claimed results, it’s important to bear in mind what else is necessary to achieve them. Unfortunately, the average PC or Mac on sale today does not have the processing power required to compress and record a high resolution video stream. Only the Microsoft product information appears to be completely open and honest about this, recommending an Intel Dual-Core 3.0 GHz or higher CPU and at least 2GB of RAM. Less powerful computers will struggle with high resolution video streams and usually compensate by automatically reducing the frame rate from 30 frames per second to as low as four frames per second, hence the words “up to” next to the frame rate you’ll see in manufacturers’ descriptions.

High definition blur

The effect of a slow frame rate on video is quite noticeable: if anything in view moves, it gets blurred. This really defeats the whole point of high definition which is clear, sharp image quality. To see this in action, have a look at the many web camera reviews posted by users on YouTube.com and look for anyone who moves their head or hands in front of the camera. You can then compare these with reviews of 3CCD high definition camcorders to see the difference.

Also, you’ll need to acquire software that is capable of compressing and recording the webcam video stream to a high quality format, the best one being MPEG -2 (DVD quality). If the video stream is compressed too much, for example with H.264 (MP4  or MOV), any subsequent editing or recoding that you do will substantially reduce the image quality.

To be honest, you’d get better results from getting a “normal”, cheaper PC and spending the money you’d save on an MPEG-2 high definition video camera. It’d be a lot more flexible and easier to shoot on location plus you’d get the added benefits of decent optical zoom and no PC fan noise in the background to deal with.

…or Why don’t videos of the same type, i.e. AVI, MPEG, etc., work on everyone’s computers?

With broadband Internet connections becoming the norm, video on the web has become commonplace but beware, authoring video files for deployment on the web can be a minefield -  WMV, FLV, MOV, MP4, F4V – There’s a dizzying array of video formats these days. In this article, I’ll take you through some of the terminology and possible problems that you might face when including video in your on-line lessons.

Here is possibly the most common scenario for novice web designers and e-learning course content developers when using video: You’ve created a great video for your learners and deployed it on your chosen LMS (Learning Management System), tested it on a variety of computers with a variety of different web browsers and everything works fine. You feel like your done a good job – mission accomplished. However, you soon get feedback from learners that they can’t view the video on their computers. You check the different combinations of operating system and web browser and re-create their configurations but it still works for you and not for them. What’s going on?

Don’t worry, everyone who has worked with video on the Internet has been there at some time or other. More often than not this is a CODEC issue.

What’s a CODEC?

As some of you may already know, CODEC is an abbreviation of coder-decoder. Most simply put, it is the bit of your media player that converts the compressed video stream into uncompressed, watchable video. The most common CODECs in use on computers are: MPEG-2 (DVD), MPEG-4, FFmpeg, Theora and the new H.264 CODEC (Blu-Ray) which offers the best file size to quality ratio. Here is a list of current video CODECs.

What is a media container?

You’re probably already well aware that video comes in serveral flavours for the Internet. You probably heard of Flash Video, QuickTime, etc. The most commonly used media containers on the web are FLV, MOV, M4V, MP4 and AVI. For use with Flash and Internet in general, the most widely used and compatible is FLV (Flash video). As of Flash Player 10, Flash based video players can also support a variety of other media containers such as MP4, MOV and M4V.

How can I find out which media container a video file is using?

When you have a video file on your desktop or in a directory on your computer, it’s usually represented by a graphic icon something like one of these:

This does not represent the media container, it merely represents which default application (media player) your operating system will use to play the video when you double-click on it, for example Quicktime Player, Flash Player, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player (WMP) or Nero Showtime. You may have seen that the icons sometimes change when you install a new media player.

In order to find out which media container the video is in, you need to look at the file extensions. These usually look something like: video.mov, video.flv, video.wmv, video.mp4, etc. In Windows, by default, the file extensions are hidden so that inexperienced users don’t inadvertently change them, rendering them unplayable. If you want to know how to display file extensions in Windows and why this is useful, you can watch this tutorial.

What’s the most compatible way of deploying video on the Internet?

Personally, I think it’s unwise to ask learners to download and install media players or CODECs on their computers if they can’t play your chosen media format. Consider these points:

• Learners might not be using their own computer when they study, in fact, they might study on serveral computers at home, at work, at school, at university, at a library, etc. They’d have to download and install the media player or CODEC everywhere they went.
• Learners need administrator privileges to install software such as CODECs. The vast majority of computers at schools, universities, libraries and businesses only allow their IT guys to install software because of the security risks that it can entail.

The good news is that the hard work has already been done for you by big Internet companies such as Google and Yahoo! All you have to do is follow their lead. The most universal video format on the web today is Flash video, also known as FLV. It’s difficult to find a computer, these days, that doesn’t have a version of Flash Player already installed on it. If  it has Flash Player installed, it can play FLV video and the new Flash Player 10 also supports a number of other media containers – MOV, MP4, F4V, etc. – and supports H.264.

FLV also supports a number of useful things:

• FLV Cue Point data – This allows you to easily add dynamic captions to video. Dynamic means that the captions are stored separately as an easily editable XML file and can be changed or updated at any time without having to recode the entire video file. Here’s a starter tutorial for developers on how to deploy selectable multiple language subtitles with Flash Video. FLV Cue Points can also be used to trigger other events like playing a sound or animation, pausing the video and prompting the user to respond to something, and so on.
• Alpha transparency – This means that you can use “keying” (Chroma key), also known as green screen to make areas of video transparent so that you can layer it over different backgrounds. Lee Brimelow has recorded a video tutorial on the basics of including alpha transparency in Flash video using Adobe After Effects and Adobe Flash Professional CS3/CS4.
• It’s relatively easy to develop a custom media player in Flash that has specialised functions, for example a rolling transcript of the video dialogue, an on-screen menu system or any kind of interactivity, and an interface that matches the rest of your web site.

What’s the easiest way to deploy video in Moodle?

And finally, I’ve written a plugin module for Moodle, which leverages the very popular JW FLV Player by Jeroen Wijering. Once installed, it’s a matter of using the module wizard to select or upload the video you want to play and setting the player’s behaviour and appearance. It’s open source (free) of course and you can download it here. You can also see a variety of demos of it in action on my Moodle demo course (Login as a guest).