[open] Taking videos from folder instead of file pool

wstacy

I am running the Win32 version of OpenSesame 2.9.6. Stimuli for the experiment are a large number of medium-high resolution 8-sec. video clips. I am using the VLC plug-in to run these files inside a loop, and their names are in the 'fname' variable on the loop page. The experiment runs fine when I put the clips in the file pool. But putting the clips in the file pool makes for a very large experiment file, and I would like to avoid that if possible.

Somewhere, there was a note that just putting the videos in the folder the experiment is run from. I tried that, and got an exception that said: "Error loading media file. Unsupported format?" I reduced the number of clips in the loop to 1 and tried putting the clip in a sub-folder called __pool__, and though that makes the file appear to show up in the file pool, I get the same error. I'm fairly sure it is finding the clip, though, because when I ask it to play a file that is completely missing, it gives me a different error message: "Video file 'Foo.wmv' was not found by video_player 'Video' (or no video file was specified).".

In short: the experiment plays the clip when it is actually inserted into the file pool, but not when it is simply in the folder or in a __pool__ subfolder.

I am a relative newbie to Open Sesame, and am probably doing something wrong. Can anyone suggest something for me to try?

Thank you.

sebastiaan

It sounds like you're doing everything correctly, and for me it works. One thing that comes to mind is that it may be a character-encoding issue. Do you have special characters (such as 'è') in your Windows username?

Does it work if you enter __pool__/[fname] in the video-file field of the media_player_vlc?

Cheers,
Sebastiaan

wstacy

Unfortunately, entering pool/[fname] in the video-file field of the media_player_vlc gives the same result: "Error loading media file. Unsupported format?".

For now, we are simply going to add the videos to the file pool so we can get on with the experiment. We will try to debug the problem at a later time.

Thank you so much for your willingness to help.