[Xerte] Inclusion of close captions on videofiles anduseofplaylists

Tue Mar 24 09:15:52 GMT 2009

Regarding a comparison of the accessibility of the JWFLV player as
compared to the player in Xerte, you may well be right regarding
keyboard users, I would not claim to be an expert regarding
accessibility issues. One of the many attractions for me of Xerte are
the accessibility features that are built in to it.

I have a requirement for taking video footage of interviews and editing
the footage down into discrete chunks that demonstrate different stages
of the interview, e.g. introducing yourself, contracting, challenging,
summarising etc. By using play lists I could re-use the chunks in
different learning objects, e.g. one object could deliver a complete
interview, another different examples of contracting, etc.

My current very limited knowledge of Flash and my previous experience of
using the JWFLV player tended me towards a solution that would enable
the JWFLV player to be called in Xerte and passed the play list which in
turn would identify the FLV files and close caption files to include.
Any solution that provided a similar capability in Xerte would be
wonderful. 

I am in the middle of launching a Company wide VLE based on Moodle at
the moment. Hopefully when this settles down I will get a chance to look
at the recent work that Julian has put into enhancing the FLV player in
Xerte. However I have to stress my Flash skills are limited, though I
think having now discovered Xerte the case for my getting to know Flash
is now overwhelming.

Kind regards

Johnathan

Johnathan Kemp
IT Dev. Manager
Connexions Staffordshire
www.cxstaffs.co.uk
01785 355714

-----Original Message-----
From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of E.A. Draffan
Sent: 23 March 2009 20:52
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Inclusion of close captions on videofiles
anduseofplaylists

Sorry to ask but are you sure JWPlayer will be as accessible as the
XERTE option from the point of view of a keyboard users?  We have had to
add HTML tags to make sure it is accessible in all browsers such as
Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Safari. The keyboard access works in
Internet Explorer but not always in the other browsers. See example
http://www.lexdis.org/strategy/62  Our method of handling the difficulty
is fairly basic but I am not sure if there is another option at the
moment.  I know folks in Washington University have been looking at the
same issue. 

Best wishes E.A. 

Mrs E.A. Draffan
Learning Societies Lab,
ECS, University of Southampton,
Tel +44 (0)23 8059 7246
http://www.lexdis.ecs.soton.ac.uk
http://www.emptech.info

-----Original Message-----
From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 23 March 2009 12:12
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Inclusion of close captions on video files
anduseofplaylists

Yes, it could be done, I am sure. I'd be happy to provide some support
to ayone wanting to have  go at it, but I'm a bit busy to take it on
myself at the minute. Presumably if you could play FLVs and give them
captions etc, you woulnd't need the JW player? Just build a similar
solution in Xerte?
There would be little point in recreating the JW player, if that's all
that's required, but if you wanted to integrate more sophisticated FLV
support with alll the other features of Xerte then it might be worth it.

Ulimately what would be great is to have a 'captionFile' property on the
Movie icon, point it to a caption file, and then have the movie icon
fire an onCaption event everytime a new caption point is encountered.

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Johnathan
Kemp
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 12:03 PM
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Inclusion of close captions on video files
anduseofplaylists

Hello Julian,

The JWFLV video player uses an xml configuration file, an xml playlist
file (which identifies the flv file and the close caption file to play
for each entry in the playlist) and separate xml close caption files
which are in a format unique to the JWFLV player. The makers of the
jwflv player supply a module that can be loaded into subtitle workshop
(free software) to generate the close captions in the necessary format.
If you have other software e.g. aegissub (also free, but which I found
easier to use than subtitle workshop) then you can output close caption
files in the .ass format. Subtitle workshop can import these and then
convert them to JWFLV format.

>From what you say I suspect it would be achievable to call the jwflv 
>player
from within xerte. 

I have been able to set up both coldfusion code and php code to call the
flvplayer and pass it the necessary parameters, so I guess it is now
down to my improving my action scripting and understanding of Xerte.

I am looking forward to your forthcoming online tutorial on Friday 3rd.
I may not be able to be there live, but there's always the recording :-)

Kind regards

Johnathan

Johnathan Kemp
IT Dev. Manager
Connexions Staffordshire
www.cxstaffs.co.uk <http://www.cxstaffs.co.uk/>
01785 355714

________________________________

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 20 March 2009 10:27
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Inclusion of close captions on video files and
useofplaylists

The play list is just an xml file, so Xerte could easily enough load it
and create a list of items, that when clicked loaded and flv into the
player. 

Synching up the display of captions to the playback of the video would
mean tracking the current playhead time in the video and showing the
caption. I assume that the caption file is also xml, something like
this:

<captions>

  <caption time="00:12"><![CDATA[Here is a caption</caption>

</captions>

Which is all the inforamtion you'd need to also support them,

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Johnathan
Kemp
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 5:14 PM
To: xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: [Xerte] Inclusion of close captions on video files and use
ofplaylists

Prior to looking at Xerte I have been experimenting with the jwflv
player, which is free for non-commercial use and has a modest licence
fee for commercial use.

This is flash based and allows for the playing of flv files, with
support for the use of playlists and close caption files.

Is there any support within Xerte for the use of playlists or close
caption files?

If not has anyone looked at the possibility of calling the jwflv player
from within Xerte?

Kind regards

Johnathan

Johnathan Kemp
IT Dev. Manager
Connexions Staffordshire
www.cxstaffs.co.uk <http://www.cxstaffs.co.uk/>
01785 355714

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