Released - Moodle and MythTV (mythtranscode) Integration Module

[CyberNerd]

We have commissioned a Moodle plugin and released the source code under GPLv3.

 

The plugin is an activity module that integrates Mythtranscode (a plugin for MythTV) into moodle.

The basic premise is that Staff store/record programmes in MythTV. The recordings are encoded into HTML5 (webm and mp4) by mythtrancode. The files live on the MythTV server and the Moodle server mounts the partition (over iscsi, NFS). The MyhtTV database is searchable through the Moodle Plugin and then displayed in Moodle for staff and students once they are added to a course. Thus realising a TV service into Moodle.

The programmes display full screen on modern browsers - IOS, Android, Chrome,Firefox, Safari once staff have added them to their course.

 

The plugin is available on the Moodle plugins site:

https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_mythtranscode

 

This is an activity module for integration with MythTV and MythTranscode, allowing teachers to add television programmes to a course, and students to view them.

Installation instructions

Install Mythtranscode into MythTv. The MythTV/Mythtranscode can be on the same server as the moodle installation or the output directory can be mounted over NFS, iSCSI or SMB onto the moodle server

Configure MythTranscode to encode the output of MythTV to webm and h.264 formats

Clone or unzip this folder into the mod folder of your root moodle directory

Login to moodle and follow the onscreen instructions to install the plugin

Fill out the onscreen settings page. You'll probably need to change the database details (Host, Port, Username, Password, Database and Table), and the base path (the folder under which the video recordsings are stored), but the rest should be fine as default. If you're storing video in more than just WebM, you will also need to change the Video formats setting.

Add to a course as with any other activity module

Details

mod_form.php is the file called when a user adds an instance of the activity module. This contains a link to choose.php, which contains the code for esarching/listing recordings, and clicking on one takes the user to chosen.php where it's recorded in the session. When the user clicks on the instance of the activity module, this takes them to view.php, which uses access_file.php to proxy the video files (with authentication) from locally on the moodle server.

 

access_file.php sends the necessary headers to allow video plaback and downloading as if a normal file were being played, and also allows seeking-without-buffering capability if the browser supports it.

 

index.php just displays a message indicating this functionality is not available. Potentially, this would be something akin to allowing access to all recorings/all recordings added under the current course, but is not implemented in thsi version. However, moodle still requires the page for compatibility.

 

Videos cannot be searched or viewed without the user being logged in and a member of a course with Mythtranscode as an activity, or as a member with permissions to access a manual Mythtranscode activity instance.

 

Notes

Note, changing the columns shown (in the settings page) may need tweaks to the CSS (in styles.css, although you will need to reload the Moodle css by clicking 'Clear theme caches' in Site Administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme selector).

 

If required, download links can be disabled in the settings. Note that it will still be relatively easy to to download the video files though (simply by viewing the source of the HTML).

 

Licensed under GPLv3 or later (see The GNU General Public License v3.0 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)).

 

MythTranscode Documentation Mythtranscode - MythTV Official Wiki

 

Television icon dedicated to the public domain by chrisdesign of Open Clip Art Library under the CC0 1.0 Universal license.

 

This plugin contains potential privacy issues:

Ensure you have the legal licenses necessary to allow students to access recordings at home (in the UK, the ERA Plus license). To comply with this, you will likely need to limit access to moodle to within the country.

[Jamo]

This sounds really good!