Category: Video and Multimedia

A SCORM-ready template: Part 2A. Add Flash Video to your learning module

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What files are required to add video to your learning module?

The player we are using for embedding streaming media into the SCORM template. is the Jeroen Wigering media player. Some of the necessary files are already included in the template and do not need to be touched:

  1. includes/mediaPlayer.swf (already included in template)
    this file generates the player according to the settings you include in the content page.
    mediaPlayer
  2. js/swfObject.js (see for more info on swfObject
    this file contains the code necessary to avoid the ActiveX problem with embedded SWFs in Internet Explorer, and generates embed code used by other browsers. A reference to this file already exists in the head of each module page, so you do not need to include it again.
    swfObject
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Synch video with slides in Adobe Presenter

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In my search for the best way to synch video with slides, I’ve tried a number of different software packages. At this time, I’ve settled on the Rich Media Project’s flash extensions as the most reliable way to create synched presentations, but I’m always looking for a better way.

When I came across Adobe Presenter, it seemed like another promising tool for this purpose, and possibly easier for clients to use than anything else so far.

Unfortunately it does not yet seem to be the case, at least not yet. When I tried to sync a video of a lecture with a powerpoint using Presenter, it proved to be a hopelessly frustrating and tedious task.

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Using the JW player to run javascripts at specific time points in the video

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Note: this tutorial is still very much in draft form. Additional instructions for those not familiar with javascript and more examples will be added soon.

The Jeroen Wijering Media Player is a widely used free, open-source Flash-based media player, available for download from Jeroenwijering.com.

The JW player has an extensive Javascript API which allows it to communicate with events and elements on the page it is embedded in. Using this feature, the player can execute javascript functions on the page whenever the video reaches a specific time point.

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Use Subtitle Workshop to generate captions for Rich-MediaProject

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Over the last couple of years, Microsoft Producer has become less and less of a viable option for synching powerpoint and video. Probably because of browser changes, it works on less browsers than before, and is no longer compatible even with Powerpoint 2007. So I went in search of a Flash-based replacement for MS Producer. I’ve found it in the Rich-Media-Project’s Rich-Media Pack I.

RMP I features 4 components: A Flash-Paper “player”, an FLV video player, a slide list and a media playlist. You create a flash-paper version of the powerpoint or word document, then synch it to the video with XML. The playlist is generated by another xml file, and the captions are created using a third XML file.
The only thing missing is an easy way to create the XML files, so I am creating templates for the captions and slide list XML files in Subtitle workshop. Below is the code for the Custom Format file for the captions:

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How to run Red 5 on a shared IIS server on port 80

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Setting up Red5 on a box which also contains a web server can be a challenge if you are restricted to using specific ports because of a firewall. Here is how we set up Red5 on a Windows 2003 server which also contains a production IIS server.

Our firewall only allows traffic on ports 80 and 443. This is non-negotiable, so we needed to work around the requirement.

The folks – in particular Walter Tak – on the Red5 mailing list pointed me in the right direction: Make another IP (or two) for Red 5 to run under.

IIS was already using ports 80 and 443, so the system administrator made two additional IPs for Red5 to use, one for rtmp and one for http. He then changed the settings in the Default Website Properties in IIS Manager: In Web Site Identification: IP Address, instead of (All Unassigned), he selected the single IP which we wanted IIS to listen on. We did not want IIS to interfere with port 80 on the IPs used by Red5.

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Using dynamic text to toggle a play/pause button

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I’ve been building a simple flash video player based on the one here and had the idea to use dynamic text to easily toggle the play button between the play and pause states. The Webdings font character for the play state is “4” and for the pause state is “;”

To avoid problems with fonts not displaying on some machines, click the “Embed” button on the text properties panel when creating the dynamic text, and embed the numerals.

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Updated tutorial on captioning Windows Media

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Subtitle Workshop, by Urusoft is free captioning software (donation-ware) which allows you to easily transcribe and edit captions and output the resulting file to many different formats. I’ll be focusing on Windows Media format here, but you will find this a useful tool for captioning DVD’s, Quicktime, and Flash as well.

Note: A much more complete exposition of the concepts summarized in this tutorial is available to members of the Elearning Guild in the article A Guide to Captioning Windows Media and QuickTime Using Subtitle Workshop

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