Hi,

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to play a video held on a CD through CourseLab?

Thanks

You will encounter the problem that your student has to enter the letter of the cdrom drive (f.i. e:)

What have you tried upto now? What were the problems you encountered?
[:)]

Assuming that you made the course to run off of the CD the links to the files to play will be RELATIVE to the file that starts it, that is if it starts up on drive X: then the file will be looked for on X:/module/....
The only problem might be is the play back speed, this is going to be limited by the CD drive itself AND any security running on the PC. Not something you have any control over.
Many of the default AV installs set the AV engine to scan ALL files on opening (apart from a range of OS specific components which are monitored) some users will find the video hangs while it's scanned OR it runs slowly or chops.

Next if the module is calling a video which is external to the module itself then you need to be very path specific and point explicitly at the file.
So it is no good saying open the video on the drive E: as it might not be a CD/DVD drive. On this PC the drives from E: through to I: are mapped as parts of my RAID array and network NAS. The DVD drives are J & K.
On my usual work PC the DVD is F:
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The video EITHER needs to be in a fixed location that you can predict when building the module
OR maybe on a remote server playing as a component of a web pageaccessed by an IFRAME or external web page.
In this case you might get some cross site security pop ups as a web page opening another (a pop up) is always viewed as suspicious by the browser engine. However you can warn the user it will happen and advise allowing it.

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. What I am wanting to do is have an online package hosted on our LMS with high quality videos in it (it needs to be online so we can see if people have viewed it) My idea was to send participants a cd containing the large video files which are then played through the online package once started.

From your replies it looks like this isn't possible.

Have your LMS adminstrator place the CD files in same server and then assign a URL to them.

In CourseLab play the video files using the external URL function in the Video object.

Or use your own flash videoplayer: import this swf in Courselab and give the location to the videofile (flv) as flashvar parameter. Courselab will import the swf but not the flv.

Using flash isn't a bad idea, it does stream well and compression rates can be high.
The files would be best placed on the LMS server, you'll have a predictable source location.
One problem that might occur with streamed high quality content is the size itself, many LSPs will limit the download bandwidth or the totals a user downloads. If it is say 30mins of video then this might have some users seeing their download speed falling off dramatically. You really should warn the users if there is a big download requirement in terms of file size.

Furthermore, as the path/filename of the flv is only a Flashvar parameter, you may ask your student which drive your cdrom is and use the file, f.i.
First slide:
input 'which is your cdrom drive?' ->#drive
Later in the swf applet:
flashvar flvFile=#drive + "myfirstFile.flv"

Ehhhrm ... technically spoken it should be possible in one way or another. Just do some experiments.

Make a CD with a short movie (commercial?) in flv, wmv, mpeg.

Try to open it in Courselab - both internal as with external software. See if you can access the files after entering a drive letter.

What you want is what we did in the days of low bandwidth. You'll have to see if this is what you want your visitors to see and do.
[:)]

Hi,

I tried this idea yesterday, the problem is that courselab will import the file into its course folder rather than just making a link.