Large videos calling outside Articulate course

Feb 25, 2011

Leah Hemeon
By Leah Hemeon

Hi all,

I  have been asked to help solve a problem for a company. They had a consultant build a large course that is very heavy on videos. There are 8 videos each about 30 MB in size. They optimized the videos as much as possible but they are still big. They launched the course via an LMS and users immediately started saying that the course was taking minutes to load and the videos were choppy, etc.

They started working with the LMS provider and me. My suggested solution is to host the videos outside of the Articulate package and call them using a web object. The LMS can host the videos but have the below code they want me to use to link to the courses. I'm not familiar with Javascript and can't think of a way to use this in the web object function.

What suggestions do you have?

My other alternatives are to host the videos outside the LMS (I'm getting really close to recommending this) or (as the LMS wants us to do) break the course into about 25 pieces leaving the videos out and building the course within the LMS directly so the videos can be called within.

HELP!

Thanks so much!

9 Replies
Leah Hemeon
13 years ago02/25/11 at 2:37 pm (UTC)

Thanks so much Brian! This could be the solution - instead of trying to incorporate the LMS's javascript call. Here's what the LMS provider wants us to call... any solutions on how to use this?

javascript:NewWindow=window.open('video_popup.asp?vid=http://www.absorbtraining.com/courses/clients/23/test.flv
"','newWin','width=640,height=360,toolbar=No,location=No,scrollbars=No,status=No,resizable=No,fullscreen=No');
NewWindow.focus(); void(0);
Dave Neuweiler
13 years ago02/25/11 at 2:38 pm (UTC)

While video streaming is largely dependent of the Internet connection and the server, I've noticed something that may be of help.

I've noticed (and have no clue why this is) that video files -- HUGE video files -- play flawlessly when inserted into an Engage interaction as opposed to inserting the video into a PPT slide via Articulate Presenter.

For example, I have a 67 MB FLV video (just under 15 minutes) playing at full screen in a Media Tour interaction. It's run fine on multiple servers.

So give it a try... let me know how it works out!

Best Regards,

Dave

Brian Batt
13 years ago02/25/11 at 2:54 pm (UTC)

Leah Hemeon said:

Thanks so much Brian! This could be the solution - instead of trying to incorporate the LMS's javascript call. Here's what the LMS provider wants us to call... any solutions on how to use this?

javascript:NewWindow=window.open('video_popup.asp?vid=http://www.absorbtraining.com/courses/clients/23/test.flv
"','newWin','width=640,height=360,toolbar=No,location=No,scrollbars=No,status=No,resizable=No,fullscreen=No');
NewWindow.focus(); void(0);


In my screencast, all I did was populate the index.html file with the new video URL.  In your case, it's the absorbtraining.com URL.  So, I'd recommend throwing that URL in there (while following all of the other steps of my screencast) and I think you'll find that it works as expected.

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