Media Lesson

Hi
First of all, congratulations to all those who presented Xerte at the Apereo conference last week in Baltimore! I especially liked the new Media Lesson. One question about it: Will it also work with YouTube or other streamed video (comparable to how PopcornMaker works)? We currently only have a small Xerte installation and are avoiding uploading videos to avoid performance problems. Instead we are embedding YouTube or our own streaming service. The same question actually applies to the current Synched Video page.
With regard to YouTube, we currently embed using iframes rather than using the YouTube page. The latter doesn't work because our institute blocks web addresses which don't start with https. Would it be possible to change this in the new version, so that any address starts with https?
Thanks

Hi
thanks for the congratulations, those of us who attended and presented in Baltimore really enjoyed it and of course there were other sessions including hands-on workshops that weren't streamed. Importantly there were other members of the developer and wider community unable to attend but who made major contributions in the build-up to the beta release ready for the conference - particularly Fay from Nottingham and John from Glasgow but also others too many to mention. Fay developed the Media Lesson page type and may reply here but yes you can already use Vimeo links within the Media Lesson page type e.g. vimeo.com/122478351 and I think YouTube too but I'm not sure what link format works with that.
With the Misc > YouTube page just use the embed code with the http: removed e.g. //www.youtube.com/embed/WEHEXrD2_58
Likewise the synced video page now supports vimeo and YouTube links e.g. the Vimeo link above or www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEHEXrD2_58 of course these are relatively new developments and part of the xerte3beta code. If that's what you have try the above and let us know.
HTH
Ron

Hi Ron

Thanks for the rapid reply! And, yes, a huge thank you to everyone who has put so much time and effort into Xerte! It really is appreciated! I've just installed Xerte 3 Beta on my laptop and it's exceeding all my expectations! So much so I can't stop using exclamation marks!!! My colleagues and our students are going to LOVE this version.
Ron, your tips for Vimeo and YouTube worked great, but I couldn't figure out how to use YouTube in the Media Lesson either. Maybe Fay can give us a tip.

Two more questions:

1) I've installed the Beta 3 version from the download section. Do I now need to install the update directly below it? I found the dates a bit confusing as they both state last update 08-06-2015.

2) On the gap fill page, when you right click on a word in the gap fill text section, you get the browser menu rather than the usual Xerte menu with the option 'mark word'. Where's the best place to report such things (assuming this hasn't already been corrected in the update)?

Thanks again to everyone for their brilliant work!
Best wishes
David

Hi David
glad you think your colleagues and students are going to "LOVE" the new version!
I'm pretty sure Inge has tested YouTube with the media lesson page so we'll post the answer here as soon as we've confirmed what format to use.

re your questions:
1. No at the moment once you've installed or upgraded to version 3 and while the dates are the same you don't need to add the update too but in future there may be updates where it's simpler to just download and add the v3 update only rather than the full version.

2. This has been raised previously on our issues list on github but then closed indicating that it has been fixed. However I'm going to re-open the issue because there does seem to be a problem at the moment whereby you can use the right click menu to mark word in the description box (which won't actually achieve anything) but not in the gap fill text box where it would. However in the meantime you can just manually add the | character either side of the word you wish to be marked which is all the right click option does anyway. This does work as a solution for now.

HTH
Ron

Hi,

Yes I had it running last week and I used the url from the embed code. Tried it again today but it doesn't work anymore... We have to find out what's wrong. We'll let you know.

Bye,
Inge

YouTube in Media Lesson - yes as Inge said this was working but it looks like YouTube has changed something that's broken the way popcorn.js gets the data it needs. There's been a fix in popcorn.js so I'll see if that works (although some comments on their site suggest it's still not fixed properly...)

Re. the gap fill issue, the mark words functionality is back. That one was all me, I can't blame that problem on YouTube!