Media Info and Troubleshooting

The SCBOE Show & Tell site uses inline media player functions to allow you to play our content directly on the page. At times we’ve found that some users have difficulties with this and we’ve setup this page to help in troubleshooting these issues.

Our content is produced and encoded in a variety of ways. As such, you’ll find that different file types are used throughout the site. While they generally serve the same purpose, the creation phase is what really determines how the content is produced. Below I’ll go through our different media types and how they can be viewed, both online and offline.

Media Applications

Our media files are designed to play in either Windows Media Player (wmv) or the QuickTime Player (mov, m4a, m4v). We recommend using the latest versions of each if you are having problems viewing the files.

Windows Media Player
QuickTime Player

Playing Files

Our inline player offers some nice features that we believe make it easy and convenient to view our content.

Video
Movie Display
This shows what a movie file will look like. The movie can be played inline in the browser or a download link is provided next to or below the video.

Enhanced Podcasts
Our Enhanced Podcasts will scroll through pictures as the audio plays. Here are some images of the inline player.

Enhanced Podcast Closed
Here’s how the player looks when the file isn’t being played.

Clicking the ‘plus’ will open the file to this…

Enhanced Podcast Open
Notice that the download link is still present; it has just moved below the video.

MP3s
MP3 files can also be played inline with our player…

MP3 Player Closed

And here’s what it looks like when it’s playing.

MP3 Player Open

Troubleshooting

RealPlayer

We’ve noticed that RealPlayer seems to ‘take over’ the functions of our inline player when QuickTime file types are played. If you are playing these files on a computer located within the school system and you see a something like this…

RP Inline

Contact your TC or Technician as we have a procedure to fix this issue. If you’re a home user things are a little trickier. We don’t recommend using RealPlayer unless absolutely necessary. There are alternative codec packs that will allow you to play RM files. We realize this might not be a good solution for some, so if you really want to use RealPlayer try downloading their enterprise version here. It is still free but doesn’t come with all of the ‘extra’ stuff the normal installer comes with. Installing this will remove your current version, and our media files will play after you’re done.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *