Streaming Video
March 13, 2007 12:00 AM
Streaming, WiMP, and What Not....Can we clear this up? Sir... and Jz... You guys have lots of good things to contribute in this discussion, but can we clarify a few things regarding terminology?Sir: you say you are "streaming", now to me, this means you have a media server, and have rendered your videos into a streaming format, and in your calls to the videos in your Lectora pages, you are calling videos, which RESIDE on a streaming server. Now, that may not be the case because you indicated you have to wait for them to cache... that tells me you are not "streaming" per-se, but simply storing the videos in a "video" folder and it is part of your whole package you uploaded as your SCORM course. Then when the user clicks on the link or button or an action occurs to launch the video, it is being called from the location the video resides, and not necessarily a "Streaming" video server. If that is the case, then that makes more sense to me, because I too have the same problem, and have caching issues with larger .wmv files. I have in previous posts confirmed that even multiple video files located on a single Lectora page will not CACHE until they are called or an action occurs to get them, even if they are not streamed.I have wanted to investigate the utilization of a streaming server and wonder if others in this forum or Trivantis have any good NFO on this. I want to investigate this because of the delay which we all agree is cumbersome when a user views a video. I have had problems, as you indicated here, when I want to synchronize an event (either next page, display key points of a video lecture) and I time those items to appear in parallel to the video playing. However, because the other items on the page begin their timed session (your 200 seconds you referenced) upon the video STARTING, they get messed up because there is not a differentiation between video STARTING and the video STARTING AFTER IT TOOK 30 SECONDS TO CACHE... in other words if it takes 30 seconds for the video to cache before it beings to play, this 30 second delay is not taken into consideration when I have other scripts executing 200 seconds after the video starts... which means they start after 170 seconds of the video and the video runs 30 seconds longer than the rest of the events.... This is a big problem with me and maybe others too.So JZ discussed using the WiMP *... I cannot find enough good research data on this plugin to just order it. I am pretty competent with video manipulation and translation between different audio and video versions and editing them. However, I too am disappointed with the default player and controller functionality of the audio and video player embedded within Lectora.JZ and or others... can you elaborate on the use, maybe some details, or a link of further info for us here in the forum to empower us to see the functionality and examples of the WiMP and how it benefited you?Sir... can you clarify the use of a "Streaming" video and if you or others have any experience in using a real Streaming Video Server vs simply placing videos in a video folder while uploading the files to your LMS.And to all who have stayed with me during this dissertation... does anybody have any tips, tricks, or advise on either of these two topics: the WiMP * or using a Streaming Video Player, or any other compressions that work well. I know there are those who have worked with Flash... but that is a whole new ball game.Thanks to all for the replies in advance. I have just upgraded to 2007 this week and hope to install by tomorrow, so I have a bit more examining to do. I can be contacted at bfredrick@cmsstl.com directly if you have examples or ideas to share. I am here to help too... if anybody needs some assistance, please feel free to reply to this post or email me directly.
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