E-mail this pageThe MediaFileThingy program has been officially retired, but a few copies remain out there on campus, so this documentation remains.
If you're a member of the faculty or staff at Plattsburgh State and are interested in posting materials to Plattsburgh's streaming media server, you'll be pleased to know that MediaFileThingy gave way to the new, more capable Son of MediaFileThingy program. Please see that section of this site for details.
For those of you interested in the archival documentation on the older version, please read on.
The MediaFileThingy program is a small custom-made program for moving your media files from a campus computer to the college's Windows Media Server , and for creating templates that will appropriately display a windows media file encoded with markers (for indexing) and/or commands (TEXT or URL) for captioning or slide-shows.
The Instructional Technology MediaFileThingy program is designed to provide a simple mechanism for moving media files to the streaming media server, and for creating the basic web-pages and ASX redirector files that are required for linking to those media files. These processes were quite cumbersome in the past, but no longer, thanks to the handy-dandy, ever-friendly tool Plattsburgh's faculty and staff can get just by sending a small request note to peter.friesen@plattsburgh.edu .
Here's how it works: when a campus computer, logged on to the college's PSU domain, runs the MediaFileThingy program, the splash screen (above) appears just long enough to become irritating, and then a view of two file systems is presented in a window marked "Step 1":
The folders and files on the left represent the user's own hard drive; the files on the right show the files that are in the user's Media Server folder. (The program will unceremoniously halt if a folder has not already been created for the user on the Media Server--see your IT coordinator if this should happen.) A couple of clearly labeled buttons allow the user to move a local file to the server, move a file from the server to a local drive, or delete a file on the server or on the local drive. Once the media file has been moved to the server, clicking on the Next Step button introduces the web page template options.
A representation will appear on the right side of the screen offering a thumbnail view of what the end-result of each given template is destined to be.
The options themselves are as follows:
- Single Windows Media file in a Standalone Player - creates just an ASX redirector file linking to the media file.
- Single Windows Media file embedded in a Web Page - creates an ASX redirector file and an HTML page with an embedded player.
- Playlist in a Standalone Player - allows for the selection of multiple media files, and creates the ASX redirector file.
- Playlist embedded in a Web Page - allows for the selection of multiple media files, creates an ASX redirector file, and a linked, embedded player.
- In-Stream Closed Captioning - creates an ASX file and an HTML page containing an embedded player and the script required to process TEXT commands embedded in the media file.
- Out-of-Stream Closed Captioning - creates an ASX file and an HTML page containing an embedded player and the script required to process TEXT commands contained in an external SAMI file.
- Slide Show (Single Windows Media File) - creates an ASX file and an HTML page containing an embedded player and the script required to process URL commands embedded in the media file.
- Slide Show w/In-Stream Captioning (Single Windows Media File) - creates an ASX file and an HTML page containing an embedded player and the script required to process both URL and TEXT commands embedded in the media file.
Once a template has been selected, click on the Next button to introduce the screen marked Step 3 :
In this screen, you are required to fill in the field marked New ASX Name (not a path--just a filename) for the ASX file the program is to create--use no spaces. You are also required to provide a Show Title (this may contain spaces), and a Description (which should be adequate to convey what the purpose of the media file is).
You are also required to enter a filename in the Existing Media field--clicking on the Select File button opens a view of your file area on the media server:
Once you have clicked on the file you'd like to use, click on the Use This File button: the file name will be transferred to the Existing Media field.
The other options on this screen allow you to over-ride the specific information that's encoded in the file itself: you can specify a clip title, authorship, copyright ownership, and a URL which users may visit for additional information.
Finally, you can also check a box to specify that the IT banner and icon images should be included in the display, and that the banner, if clicked on, should lead to a specific URL (Banner href ).
If you're using any of the templates that create a "Standalone Player," your next step will be to click on the Finish button.
If you're using a template that creates an HTML file, your next step will be to click on the Next button to invoke the screen marked Step 3: Choose Your Player Settings.
In this window, you have a variety of amusing checkboxes to put checkmarks in (or take checkmarks out of). The default options will look a little like the illustration below, with your ASX filename and HTML filename supplied in place of "Untitled.xxx":
You can manually set the width and height of the media player, or you can put a checkmark into the "Autosize for Audio" or "Autosize for Video" fields: these latter fields create a media player that's as compact as it can be for the media in question. (If you use an autosize options, make sure that your selection is appropriate for the media you are hoping to show: if you select "Autosize for Audio" when working with a video file, your web page will show the player controls but not the video....)
The Display Properties options allow you to show the user as many controls as you'd like. For purposes of creating as accessible a file as possible, you should have a checkmark in every Display Properties field (including the Captioning field and the Go To Bar , where appropriate: some templates do not support the Captioning option, and this option really only makes sense if you have used the Advanced Script Indexer or the On-Demand Producer to tag your media file with captions using the TEXT command. The GoToBar reads markers that have been inserted into the media file to create a drop-down table of contents for the file: again, you will have had to have previously added these position markers using the Advanced Script Indexer or the On-Demand Producer ).
In the User Permissions fields, you should have a checkmark in each field; in the fields beneath the Other Properties heading, you can pick and choose which options you'd like your player to have, but you should avoid using the AutoStart option: pages that have AutoStart enabled are less accessible than those on which the player's operation remains in the control of the user.
Your final option on this screen is to specify a value for the field marked Set Return link to this URL : if this value is supplied, a link back to your specified page will be included on the HTML page that contains the media player.
Once you've completed this page, you can click the Finish button to complete the operation, or you can click the Back button to make changes to previous page settings.
Clicking the Finish button has the effect of generating all HTML/ASX files associated with the template and subsequently providing a summary of the results:
From this final screen, you can perform the following actions:
- click on the View Results button to have a look at the output created by MediaFileThingy ;
- click on the View ASX Source button to have a look at the source of the ASX redirector file;
- click on View HTML Source to have a look at the HTML code on the newly-created HTML page;
- click on the Open Output Directory button to open the folder containing the new ASX and/or HTML file(s).
- click on Begin a New Task to create new ASX/HTML file(s); or
- click on Close to shut down the program.
The most useful course of action would be to click on the View Results button to check out the results of your settings and, if all is in order, to copy the resulting ASX and/or HTML file(s) from your hard drive to your web site. If things aren't quite right, click the Begin a New Task button and give it another try using different settings.
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Tech Note: The MediaFileThingy
program is built from a base of code ("TaskWizard Sample") provided by Microsoft as part of a now-discontinued Windows Media Services SDK. Since all that the code does is assemble configuration strings and assemble some web pages, it's not particularly difficult to build a utility that does something similar: you've just got to piece together a couple of models for what you'd like the web pages to look like and which configuration options you'd like to include.