Moodle

The issue has not gone away. In fact, I have also reproduced the effect in a discussion on the main Moodle server in http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=95174#p420372

The patch with forcing links suggested in MDL-13903 somehow does not make me happy.

Of course, I am not a programmer, so I am not qualified to understand the technicalities of upgraded code.However, as I said in the discussion 95174, why does this not cause an issue in 1.7.4 but in more recent versions? Why does a newer version break things that work perfectly in a slightly older version and cannot be fixed? After all media plug-ins have been a standard module. It's not like another issue that has been important to me that was broken and never fixed in the move to versions 1.8 and 9 from 1.7: The MoodleSpeex module. I'll raise that again separately.

Hi Nicholas,
A patch suggested forcing links resulted in two player applets being invoked in IE7. So that was no good either.
I have tried linking to an rm file in the same way on a testserver running Moodle 1.9 and get the same errors from Firefox 2.0.0.14. IE 7 will display with error message in status bar, but only on clicking the start button, not automatically.
On the moodle support forum I reported earlier, I linked to a video on a different Media server: the same error messages occur so it's not Media server related.
Mathieu suggested he could not replicate the error messages in an earlier issue I reported: He is running different software (FF3 instead of 2), and has not tried FF under Windows. I get the same error messages regardless of Windows version XP or Vista, and the behaviours of IE 7 and FF2 are consistent not only linking on my own Moodle server but also on the Moodle server that serves the support fora.
Please let me know what other information I can provide to get this fixed: it's driving me insane.
NGBerger

One cause could be the support for XHTML strict that came in 1.8. Moodle 1.8 now uses standards for accessibility compliance (such as the object tag instead of embed etc).

I just tried your forum examples in IE 7 on Vista (no problem, worked fine) and FF3 on Vista (doesn't work). But I think it's not working on FF because real player plugin isn't installing into firefox. I can't see it in the list of installed plugins (which would explain why it keeps asking me to reinstall). Does RM even support Firefox any more?

Thanks for your comments, Martin.
I take your point about XHTML and Moodle 1.8, although I am too ignorant about the detailed implications of object tags and embeds. If I have time, I'll try and read up on them. Shouldn't we have some warning about the syntax then? Or switch ram and rm off by default? Do you feel it might be worth considering to have it switched off on Moodle.org?
As far as FF and Realplayer are concerned, I still have an old installation (1.7.4) on a non-production server, and accessing that FF does play the video using the plugin with the same syntax as in the discussion forum, both on XP and Vista machines. Of course, I'm not an expert, but shouldn't the same browser refuse to play and ask for a reinstallation as well? I'm stumped. For now, I have disabled rm files in the filter settings. It's not as nice as having a player on the page, but at least it works in all the browsers opening the player standalone.
Streaming video is becoming a bit of a minefield, with new player technologies saving the whole media file on local clients. Without DRM software installed there's no way controlling what happens to the digital content on my media server. I am experimenting with Covcell's Red5 solution for now. This might eventually offer Flash alternatives to RealNetworks, the rm issue, as well as to MoodleSpeex and to the IE7 straight-jacket for Audiorecorder (University of Nottingham). Red5 and Tomcat are not ideal platforms for hosted or VPS solutions, though. I hope some great idea comes along ...

From the mozillaZine
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=206215
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Real_Player

"Many people experience problems with embedded Real media in Firefox. Because of improper coding of a website, coding specific to Internet Explorer or a failed installation of Real player and its associated plugins, pages with embedded Real media often fail."
"If the type attribute is not specified as "audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin" in the html embed or object tag, ra, rm and ram file types will not play."

The Moodle Multimedia Plugins .rm filter creates two embed tags with type="audio/x-pn-realaudio" instead of "audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin" we at ISU are going to test whether changing that will fix the problem.

The attached patch fixes this problem in FireFox and SeaMonkey. It changes 'audio/x-realaudio' to 'audio/x-realaudio-plugin' in the three lines in lib/filelib.php

• 'ra' => array ('type'=>'audio/x-realaudio', 'icon'=>'audio.gif'),
• 'ram' => array ('type'=>'audio/x-pn-realaudio', 'icon'=>'audio.gif'),
  + 'ra' => array ('type'=>'audio/x-realaudio-plugin', 'icon'=>'audio.gif'),
  + 'ram' => array ('type'=>'audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin', 'icon'=>'audio.gif'),
  'rhb' => array ('type'=>'text/xml', 'icon'=>'xml.gif'),
• 'rm' => array ('type'=>'audio/x-pn-realaudio', 'icon'=>'audio.gif'),
  + 'rm' => array ('type'=>'audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin', 'icon'=>'audio.gif'),

Hi Michael Sp,

That's perfect. Works a real treat. Super job!

Michael D,
Could this bug-fix be integrated into the main code as soon as poss, please?

Thanks for fixing this.

Norbert Berger

While double checking the filelib patch, I noticed a minor typo in filter/mediaplugin/filter.php that could be effecting some users. The value of the width parameter is not quoted correctly.

• <embed src="'.$url.'" width=240" height="180" loop="true" type="'.$mimetype.'" controls="imagewindow" console="video" autostart="'.$autostart.'" />
  + <embed src="'.$url.'" width="240" height="180" loop="true" type="'.$mimetype.'" controls="imagewindow" console="video" autostart="'.$autostart.'" />
  

Thanks for the patches Michael!