MediaMosa Virtual Cutter project

The final report for the project MediaMosa Cutter can be downloaded here. The document also contains a manual for the installation and configuration of the modules needed for this tool.

Source Code

The source code for the Virtual Cutter project is available on GitHub:

Virtual Cutter

• https://github.com/mediamosa/MediaMosa-VirtualCutter
  Contains the modules virtualcutter, weblectures_mm and weblectures_ui.

The Fideo / MediaMosa Web lectures player is also needed and can be downloaded at

• https://github.com/mediamosa/MediaMosa-Player

The currently best way to view a demo of the tool is at:

• http://previews.oneshoe.nl/rug/virtualcutter

A MediaMosa Virtual Cutter?  Great! What is it?

My name is André Rosendaal, and I am excited to get started with an project that aims at developing a MediaMosa version of one of the tools I created in the past to help people in using streaming media in education. As this tool, the Virtual Cutter, had been available since over 10 years, the best way to explain the target of the project is give a short introduction to the Virtual Cutter. If you know the tool, you can skip this section and go to the next paragraph.

What is the Virtual Cutter?

The Virtual Cutter is a web-based tool that allows one to create clips from streaming media files that you find on the internet. It can be linked to an asset on a video server, as for example is done in SURFmedia. There you will see a link to the Virtual Cutter for every asset in the database. 'Cutting' means that you indicate the beginning and the end of a clip within a streaming multimedia file. After you have entered these marks, the Virtual Cutter will generate the HTML code that plays this clip. You can use the HTML code in a webpage or in any other file that can contain hyperlinks, such as Word and Powerpoint files. The basic idea is that you don't actually edit the file, but receive a link that just plays exactly the clip you have created. Additionally, you also get the HTML code to embed the clip in a webpage. The Virtual Cutter is multilingual, and has several interesting options that I will not discuss here. Take a look at the website if you want to learn more.

So why a MediaMosa version?

Good question. As I have written in the previous paragraph, the Virtual Cutter can be integrated in any videoserver, so why a special MediaMosa version? SURFmedia runs on MediaMosa, doesn't it? Well, there are a couple of reasons for this. Although the tool can be used from within SURFmedia, it is a totally separated website and its development, although supported by SURFnet, is not part of MediaMosa in any way. By creating a MediaMosa version, we will have the opportunity to directly communicate with the server software, to make it possible to integrate the cutter in new MediaMosa tools, and hopefully to profit from collaborative work in the MediaMosa community. We will also have the opportunity to rebuild the cutter and make it fit for the next generation web tools. We are therefore aiming at making it an HTML5 tool, with a fallback to Flash.

Blackboard

In this stage, we have planned two possible realizations of the MediaMosa Cutter. On the one hand we will create a sample webpage in the front-end of a MediaMosa server that allows visitors the create a clip from a streaming file and use it elsewhere. More important for my university, the University of Groningen, will be an adapted version of the MediaMosa Building Block for Blackboard, developed by Tom Kuipers from the University of Amsterdam. That version of the building block will allow students and teachers not only to embed an asset from the server to Blackboard, as it does know, but  also to create a clip from this asset - in Blackboard - and store it either in Blackboard or in a separate document. For us this is vital, as the Virtual Cutter has proven to be a very useful instrument while using streaming media in education.

Is this the end of the Virtual Cutter?

No.The main reason for this is that the Virtual Cutter is used worldwide and I am committed to supporting all current and future users. Having only a MediaMosa version would mean letting these users down and I do not intend to do so. 

Functional Design

OneShoe, the new partner in the MediaMosa Cutter project, has started building the GUI. Read more about this and the first version of the functional design document in the full story.

We had some start-up problems, causing us to look for a new partner who could do the technical part of the project. We are glad OneShoe took up the challenge, and today they have started with the first part of their activities, creating the GUI design. This GUI is based on the work we did before the summer, when OneShoe and I discussed the functional design of the cutting tool. This document is unfortunately avalilable in Dutch only. Click to download. 

Main characteristics:

• The player will be HTML5, with fallback to Flash;
• URL's to play generated clips have to be copied by the creator manually (i.e. no storage on the MediaMosa server);
• Only basic functionality, no play lists;
• Multilingual interface;
• No additional work on authentication;

The interface design

OneShoe recently showed me their first draft of the User Interface for the MediaMosa Cutter. It looks like this:

What you see here is a (HTML5) player with a slider for setting the current position of the streaming file. It has also two additional markers to mark the beginning and end of the clip. These points can also be created by pushing the 'mark start' and mark end' button. In the lower right part of the image, in the section 'Copy your results', the output - the code to play back the clip - is displayed in three different formats: HTML code to create a hyperlink, HTML code to embed the player, and finally the URL to play the clip. We will probably skip the first field, assuming all users will be able to create a hyperlink using the URL that is generated.

In the meantime, the IT department of the University of Groningen is re-installing MediaMosa and the Blackboard Building Block for MediaMosa, which we will need for testing the first version of the Cutter. Testing is planned for week 45.

The online prototype

A working prototype of the Cutter is available online. It does not yet have all the designed functionality, but is ready to be tried. Don't hesitate to send me any comments we can use to make improvements before releasing version 1.

With one week to go before our project - and that of the others - ends, I 'd like to take the opportunity to show you a working prototype of the MediaMosa Cutter. You can find the prototype here.

Create a clip by clicking on the 'mark start' and 'mark end' button. Click on 'play from here' (which should actually be labelled 'play clip') to play back the clip. You can modify start and end markers by dragging them to the left or right. In the next version, you will also be able to modify the time code manually.

After creating the clip, you should use the HTML hyperlink or HTML embed output to publish the clip on a webpage or any other document that can contain hyperlinks. In the current prototype, only the HTML embed output reflects the clip you have created. It currently links to the Cutter instead of the final player window.

Try the Flash fallback: if you open the page in Chrome, it will give you the HTML5 player. In Internet Explorer (I tested version 8), you can work with Flash instead. Thus, we are supporting the future of HTML5, while at the same time support those that still depend on Flash.