Educational Video TG2 Clouds

FrankB · January 06, 2012, 10:22:29 AM

Hi all,

we're currently testing the possibility of streaming educational videos directly from www.nwdanet.com via HTML5

For testing purposes we have produced this 23 something minutes long video in which I'm doodling around in TG2, talking about how to manipulate cloud, the camera position, the sun etc... it's pretty much a beginner level video.

We would like to optimize this service going forward and in order to do that, we need your feedback. Please watch the video at

http://www.nwdanet.com/terragen-tutorials/66-understanding-tg2-clouds-part-i

DOESN'T YET (!) WORK WITH FIREFOX or INTERNET EXPLORER

It should work fine with either Safari, or Chrome, however Chrome's implementation of HTLM5 doesn't seem to give you the controls to go fullscreen.

Please provide feedback here in this thread, specifically on the following aspects:
1 - Video Quality... is it easy to watch, is the quality and frame rate good?
2 - Audio.... is the narrator easy to understand? Is the level of background noise acceptable?
3 - Content... is the speed of the "presentation" ok, or is it too fast, too much detail or not enough detail (for a beginner level tutorial)?
4 - Streaming... is the content streaming fast enough to your location, so that you can watch the video without the player having to pause and load in the middle of the stream?

Your feedback is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Frank

Dune · January 06, 2012, 11:11:32 AM

Good idea, Frank. But it doesn't work in Opera. Just a blank space with controls that don't work.

FrankB · January 06, 2012, 11:25:21 AM

Quote from: Dune on January 06, 2012, 11:11:32 AM
Good idea, Frank. But it doesn't work in Opera. Just a blank space with controls that don't work.

yeah thanks, I forgot about Opera. Have you been able to see the video in Safari or Chrome? If yes, I would appreciate some feedback to the questions I posed above.

Thanks,
Frank

Dune · January 06, 2012, 11:29:38 AM

I only use Opera and occasionally IE, so any answer is up to the others.

Kevin F · January 06, 2012, 11:38:24 AM

Hi Frankl,

1 - Video Quality... is it easy to watch, is the quality and frame rate good?
Fine for me, nice and smooth.

2 - Audio.... is the narrator easy to understand?- yea again no problems but you could cut down the number of errmms!

Is the level of background noise acceptable? - didn't notice any!

3 - Content... is the speed of the "presentation" ok, or is it too fast, too much detail or not enough detail (for a beginner level tutorial)?

Speed is fine, but you really need a novice to answer this one.

4 - Streaming... is the content streaming fast enough to your location, so that you can watch the video without the player having to pause and load in the middle of the stream?

again this is o.k. for me.

Kevin.

cyphyr · January 06, 2012, 11:40:42 AM

Worked in Chrome fine for me (personally I don't get on with the browser but thats not important!)

1 - Video Quality... Frame rate is good, quality is ok, sometimes I loose track of the mouse pointer. (I have seen tutorials where there was a method to indicate the mouse pointer, contracting ripples was one)
2 - Audio.... Background noise and enunciation were fine.
3 - Content... for a beginner just right although as part of a tutorial series I would have expected by this stage the student should be familiar with the interface (lesson 1 maybe)
4 - Streaming... No issues

My only real issue was there were too many "umm's" and "err's" interrupting the flow of the presentation. This is the hardest to get right inho.
It's difficult to get an easy going, familiar friendly flow going with out a very tight script and its next to impossible to get a tight script with random seed values being generated.

A great start and this is (again imho) a much better way to teach Terragen that with pre-sets which although useful do not in them selves let the user know why the pre-set author chose that particular set of nodes in a particular way.

Video tutorials will allow the novice to see something of the mind of the artist.

Hope this helps and best of luck

Richard

FrankB · January 06, 2012, 11:47:46 AM

Thanks guys, that's good news to me, so far. Let's see what others have to say.

The errs, and uhms: honestly I had no script at all and no idea what I was going to show next, I just kept talking while I was doodling around so that I have a decent video for testing. I think the err's are more dense at the beginning and became a bit less later on when I got used to talking. Anyway, as soon as we're publishing a "serious" video, I'll make sure it has less errs and uhms

Regards,
Frank

freelancah · January 06, 2012, 12:06:48 PM

Hmm...The video loads..But nothing happens with the play button, stopping and clicking play again does nothing. This was on chrome
On Explorer I got a bunch of errors and no video visible??

Chrome is the latest version but not sure about explorer, since I dont really use it

Edit: I can rewind and go backwards to see what's happening but playing video is not working

FrankB · January 06, 2012, 12:47:50 PM

Quote from: freelancah on January 06, 2012, 12:06:48 PM
Hmm...The video loads..But nothing happens with the play button, stopping and clicking play again does nothing. This was on chrome
On Explorer I got a bunch of errors and no video visible??

Chrome is the latest version but not sure about explorer, since I dont really use it

Edit: I can rewind and go backwards to see what's happening but playing video is not working

Hi,

I wrote in my first post that it will not (yet) work with IE or FF. But Chrome and Safari should work (I've tested it here at home).
Could you retry with your chrome browser?

Thanks,
Frank

freelancah · January 06, 2012, 12:52:15 PM

Sorry Frank, I think I'm blind to red text

I tried again and it's still the same with chrome. Very odd, I dont think it's my internet because every other video streaming site works and I have had no issues with anything else..
Cant figure out why this is happening

FrankB · January 06, 2012, 12:59:23 PM

That's what I expected: stuff that works here doesn't mean it works there. But I'm grateful you told me that you can't get it to work. At least now I am aware that I cannot assume it works everywhere when people use Chrome.
I'll add support for some other browsers soon.

Anyone got this to work fine on Safari yet?

Thanks,
Frank

Franco-Jo · January 06, 2012, 01:06:22 PM

I'm watching it now in Safari with no problems. So far, so great - these are the kinds of tutorials I'd like to see much more of to act as an entry point.

In Chrome I got a "The video cannot be found. It may have been removed from the server. HTTP 404" error.

freelancah · January 06, 2012, 01:07:28 PM

I tried it on my server. Seems to work fine so I conclude it's something that's not up to date with my system.. Will have to check to see if I can see what it is
EDIT: server running chrome

FrankB · January 06, 2012, 01:49:14 PM

thanks again.

*** be advised that NWDA will now go down for maintenance and will hopefully return in a few hours ***

Regards,
Frank

Oshyan · January 06, 2012, 01:53:22 PM

Works fine for me in Chrome. Glad to see you are tackling these, there's a lot of interest as you know. And now we know what Frank sounds like!

Regarding technical matters, the AllVideos plugin for Joomla works very well cross-browser. It's Flash-based, but far more people are able to play Flash videos than HTML5, so even though it may be technically less desirable, practically speaking it makes more sense in my view.

- Oshyan