Video workarounds
I have an existing experiment built in OpenSesame. The experiment author wants to put this on the web. I realize that OSWeb doesn't support video directly, but I'm looking for some kind of workaround. I saw the slideshow suggestion, but I suspect that at least some of the videos I'm dealing with will be more than 1 second long. Can something be done using inline JavaScript?
The secondary (but most important) question: does JATOS support short videos (definitely less than 5s, probably less than 2s)? If so, and if I can't find a workaround for OSWeb/OpenSesame, I think I might give jspsyche a shot.
Comments
Are we talking about video playing or video recording?
And to answer the second question: JATOS supports file loading and uploading. Those files can be anything including videos.
We're talking about video playing. Specifically short video clips ~2 - 3 seconds. It plays once, then opens the response page.
I'm just trying to find out if Jatos can support video playback of that length or maybe even a bit more. If so, I can rewrite in jsPsych. Otherwise, I'll have to use a different platform, or possibly even write my own.
I'm a bit hesitant to give an definite answer. This question is in the OSWeb forum and I don't know much about OpenSesame/OSWeb. But I know about JATOS and from JATOS point of view it is no problem to deliver arbitrary files and in this JATOS is not different from any other web server: it does not care about what files you request, it might be an HTML file or a video file. So yes, a video file are possible. The other side is what happens in the browser when your JavaScript received the file and whether it is actually able to play the video. This is completely out of JATOS' hands and depends on whatever framework (OSWeb, jspsych, lab.js) or plain JavaScript you use. Just to show that it is possible we did an example study a while ago (libraries are likely outdated) that plays videos: https://github.com/JATOS/JATOS_examples/raw/master/examples/video_example_study.zip.
Thank you! From what poking around I have done, OSWeb currently doesn't support video. This is what I needed to know prior to proceeding with jsPsych with the intention of using JATOS. I'll go forward with that plan.
Hi @mithreal
Depending on whether you need sound with the videos and the length of the clips, you could use animated gifs. These work out of the box. Anything else is a bit more complicated indeed. OpenSesame draws all its stimuli on a HTML5 Canvas and you need to play a video in a HTML5 video element. Switching between these is not as seemless yet as we would like. There are options for playing video on Canvases as well, but we haven't really looked into these yet.
In any case, jsPsych might be a viable alternative for your requirements, as is lab.js.
Good luck