How are uploads stored?

[Mark Cooper]

Hi, 

I'm finishing up a new MediaThread installation at the University of South Carolina. Likely, instructors will want to upload content specific to their classes (in addition to using the bookmarklet). I want to make sure these materials land in same directory as the database (or a subdirectory thereof).  I am finding it difficult to know whether this happens by default, and, if not, how it might be accomplished. This is a newly set up Ubuntu server. 

Thanks in advance for an assistance you can offer. 

Mark 

[MrEnoch]

Hi Mark,

I'm not sure if I understood your question correctly, but Mediathread is not intended to be a solution for image/video management.  We have an integration point that allows you to direct your users to another tool which you can use to upload images or videos (here at columbia we have a local video hosting solution, but others have used kaltura or mediacore).  

Generally speaking, the idea behind mediathread is to work with multimedia assets hosted in another repository - do your instructors have access to anything like that?  Solutions vary for images and videos, and depending on access control requirements, but google drive, dropbox, flickr, youtube and vimeo are all good solutions too.

hope that helps,

/Jonah

[Mark Cooper]

Thanks, Jonah. You've understood what I'm asking. On another install to which I have access, I see on the course screen under "import into collection" a link for "upload from computer"  (this doesn't work, which makes sense given your description below). I don't see this link at all in my instance (running the development server). We don't have kaltura or mediacore, but there are some other local hosting options, depending on how fancy it needs to be. (If I don't need to bring in metadata, can't I just point flowplayer at an .m4v sitting on shared volume to which the instructors have access?) Anyway, in exploring the possibilities, I'm interested to know how this integration point is configured. Thanks again, Mark 

[MrEnoch]

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than simply pointing flowplayer at an m4v file.  The file needs to be served by a streaming server in order for seeking to work. If the clips are small and/or you have a very fast connection, clipping will appear to work since once the whole file is downloaded flowplayer can seek to an arbitrary timecode. However, you really want to have the files streamed so that you can seek beyond the point you have downloaded.

Kaltura could work, as well as a number of other options. There are some open source h264 streaming servers, including plugins for apache and nginx, but I'm not sure if you have access to those. I need to double check which one our central IT folks provide.  Locking down the video and authenticating in order to access it is another can of worms.  If there is any way you can just post stuff to youtube or vimeo, (maybe unlisted or w/ a password) that might be the simplest option.

This is the section of the admin where you can enable the upload _button_ for admins, faculty or students.  However, you would still need to rig the button up to use the service you need. 

This is the button I am talking about:

And, if you pay close attention to the url bar in the guest sandbox we set you up with on our site, you will see that the upload form actually comes from another application:

We have even done some custom work so that when the video completes uploading it automatically appears back in the course, however this would likely involve some coding.

Do you want me to send you links to the relevant parts of the code?  It's not necessarily a ton of coding, or the most complex, but it would be more involved than simply installing mediathread out of the box.

So, the integration point is not currently configurable through the web, but requires a bit of custom coding.  For sure, an area of the tool we would like to streamline and improve.