DonMorris.com

Media Players in Drupal 7

Don — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:24:34 +0000

I was tempted to call this “The Sorry State of Media Players in Drupal 7,” but I’m perhaps being too harsh. I probably have different requirements that nobody else has, so that’s why none (as far as I’ve been able to find) work for one of my current projects.

The project involves converting to Drupal a site for an independent record label which licenses tracks for use in commercials, television shows and movies. As this was a straight conversion, I wasn’t going to be adding any additional functionality at this point; the primary reason for the conversion was to allow them to make updates themselves so that new tracks could be immediately found by directors and producers.

Toward the end of the project, though, the guys behind the label had produced a set of tracks suitable for movie trailers and they wanted to feature these separately from the others in a player. Previously tracks were either listed statically on artist and album pages or dynamically generated in search results and they would play natively in the browser. (This project brought those tracks into Drupal and displayed them as needed using Views.)

I was hoping that at some later time I could add a video player for playback of their placements (clips from commercials and television shows) and now I had a reason to better integrate audio and video into the site – and specifically with Drupal.

I started out by looking at a few HTML5 players and then downloading and installing Drupal modules that integrated those players. I had a few meager criteria when evaluating these modules/players:

The player needed to be HTML5-compliant, with Flash fallback as an option, rather than a strictly Flash player. I wanted the media to be available to as many browsers and devices as possible.
The player needed to support both video and audio. I wanted to have a similar look and feel between players and thus didn’t want two different players. And by “audio player” I mean a skin that does not include a viewer for video.
The module and/or player needed to support playlists.
The module needed Views integration. Specifically, a Views display style for the player and support for generating a playlist from a view.

Here’s what I found in the universe of Drupal 7 modules:

MediaElement

Uses the MediaElement.js player.
Has an audio player: YES
Has playlist support: NO
Has Views integration: NO

Projekktor

Uses the Projekktor player.
Has an audio player: NO
Has playlist support: YES
Has Views integration: YES

Using the player for audio could work if I used a poster in the viewer. However, the controller currently shows the filename of the media rather than its title and images aren’t being loaded from a Views relationship.

Video.js (HTML5 Video Player)

Uses the Video.js player.
Has an audio player: NO
Has playlist support: NO
Has Views integration: NO

This module’s documentation is pretty light.

MediaFront

Uses the Open Source Media Player
Has an audio player: YES
Has playlist support: YES
Has Views integration: YES

Documentation is spotty, but it’s currently being updated.

jPlayer

Uses the jPlayer player.
Has an audio player: YES
Has playlist support: UNKNOWN
Has Views integration: YES

There are some bugs that made it impossible to fully test.

JW Player

Uses JW Player.
Has an audio player: UNKNOWN
Has playlist support: NO
Has Views integration: NO

There is some work being done on playlist and Views integration.

SublimeVideo Player

Uses SublimeVideo.
Has an audio player: UNKNOWN
Has playlist support: NO
Has Views integration: NO

I’m not sure that any work is being done on this module.

Kaltura

Uses Kaltura.

Because the management interface for this doesn’t fit with the site’s theme, I didn’t even consider using the module.

Yahoo! Webplayer

Uses Yahoo! WebPlayer.
Has an audio player: YES
Has playlist support: NO
Has Views integration: NO

Video playback is limited to videos on Yahoo! Movies.

As you might gather from the list above, MediaFront is the only module that clearly met my requirements. And it’s very cool in that I can create custom templates and add additional information to a playlist, like a description of each track available on my client’s site.

Unfortunately I can’t use the player on the site, mostly because getting the audio player to work is still a hack at this point. Although you can define the player to only show the controller, doing so will also disable the playlist. Also with this setting, the volume slider is unusable.

I thought I might get around the playlist issue either by putting the player in a Views header and make the playlist the view content or by making the player the view content and putting the playlist in an attachment, but because the player to player feature is broken I can’t get the player to switch tracks when the playlist is clicked.

Okay, so how about making do with showing a poster image while the track is playing? No, that won’t work, because the poster image disappears while playing audio files.

In the end, it seems that I can’t use any of the available modules for this client and I’m going to have to outsource the player to SoundCloud. (There is a module for that service, but it isn’t designed with my purpose in mind.) It looks great, but each player must be created and populated manually using media that’s uploaded to a third party.

I’m still holding out hope that MediaFront will be ready when the client does the next site update, and I’m also looking at a couple modules that will provide some additional functionality:

Media HTML5 video (transcodes uploaded media into HTML5-ready versions)
Video (similar to Media HTML5 video, plus more)

PHP: a fractal of bad design

Don — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:51:01 +0000

Eevee, on Fuzzy Notepad:

PHP is an embarrassment, a blight upon my craft. It’s so broken, but so lauded by every empowered amateur who’s yet to learn anything else, as to be maddening. It has paltry few redeeming qualities and I would prefer to forget it exists at all.

I'm not qualified to comment, except to agree with more than one of his points.

Via Marco Arment

Mike Wallace (1918-2012)

Don — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:25:03 +0000

Mike Wallace will be remembered by me as the greatest reporter of my time.

Via John Gruber

.Mac Mail Servers

Don — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 03:16:02 +0000

Looks like the .Mac mail servers are going away: mail.mac.com is no longer working for me as an incoming mail server. I've had an @mac.com address since before it was the .Mac service, and I've steadfastly refused to use the @me.com address that came with the change to MobileMe.

Now that iCloud is the service de jour, Apple appears to be coaxing users into changing the settings for their longstanding accounts. If the service appears to be rejecting your password, try changing the incoming server to imap.mail.me.com. (smtp.mac.com still seems to be working as an outgoing server.)

Ames Supply

Don — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:33:53 +0000

I've been doing business with Ames Supply of Lisle (formerly of Downer's Grove), Illinois, for 20 years. No more. Unlike many decisions like this, it took only one lousy customer experience to bring me to this point—but it was a doozy.

(This actually took place some time ago, but I was reminded to write about it when I ordered additional tools from someone else yesterday.)

In July 2011 I placed an order to replace some tools that had been stolen. Ames immediately shipped most of the individual items on the order, but backordered the big items: a vacuum and a toolkit. When I ordered, all these items were showing available on their website; when I called, I was told the vacuum was a week-and-a-half out and the toolkit was backordered for two to three weeks.

Six weeks later I received the vacuum and case and a magnetic pickup that was also backordered. The toolkit, which was my primary need, was still backordered, and Ames could not give an ETA for its delivery. This was doubly frustrating, since I knew that—with the exception of their company-branded screwdrivers—all of those tools were off-the-shelf items from other companies.

I continued to make do while waiting for my tools, but by the end of 2011 I still had not received my toolkit. I made several telephone calls, but no further information was forthcoming from Ames. My phone message for the president was unanswered.

On January 7, 2011, I received a phone call from my sales rep (Betty), asking if I still wanted the order: "For some reason it kinda got stuck in the computer and never got shipped." What? But, yes, I still wanted the order. And, no, she couldn't tell me when the kit would be shipped.

The toolkit ended up being delivered the last week of February, minus two items that were shipped the first week of April—nearly nine months after I placed the order. But that wasn't the end of this fiasco.

Ames shipped me not the JIS screwdrivers that I ordered, but Phillips screwdrivers. When I called them on this they told me that the JIS drivers were no longer available. However, the Phillips drivers would "work just fine"—they checked with another one of their customers. Um, no they won't—and as a company that specializes in supporting the copier tech trade they should know that. Using a Phillips screwdriver on JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) screws, which are found on most office equipment manufactured in Japan, will greatly increase the incidence of cam out (stripping the screw head).

Like I said: a doozy.

SMB and Mac OS X Lion

Don — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:57:00 +0000

So I've got this Copystar CS-1820 MFP that I want to use to scan to a folder on my Mac network. I have two options: scan to FTP and scan to SMB. There are only two settings I need to worry about in the embedded Kyocera Command Center—Host Name and Path—so this shouldn't be to hard, right? Guess again.

First off, Lion no longer has an available Share files and folders using FTP option. To enable its hidden FTP server (which, contrary to many sites I found through Google, is present on the client version of Lion), you'll need to enter several terminal commands. Or just download Lion Tweaks (donation requested) to make it easy.

(Sharing Preferences, Lion)

(Sharing Preferences, Leopard)

Once you've done that, though, FTP access is smooth. You'll use the IP address of your Mac as the Host. (As far as I know, there's no way for your MFP to resolve a local hostname like "computer" or "computer.local".) And paths are straightforward for FTP: "Documents/Scans"—or whatever your path is, relative to your user directory—without the leading slash.

But SMB on Lion is more difficult. The short story (you can read some additional info here) is that Lion implements version 2 of SMB and drops support of version 1; many scan to folder implementations only support version 1. However, there's a solution: download and install SMBUp (donation requested).

There were several things I needed to change to get SMBUp working just right. First, I made sure that the server name in SMBUp (the Host Name for my copier's settings) matched my NetBIOS name -- I just removed the "_SMB" from the end of the default SMBUp server name. Next, I changed the default SMB port in my copier's Kyocera Command Center to 445 (I could also have changed the server's port to 139 in SMBUp).

Then I created a share in SMBUp by dragging in the folder I wanted to scan to. SMBUp created a share name ("SCANS") based on the folder's name ("Documents/Scans") and that's the name I used for the Path in the copier.

(SMB on a Leopard installation, using Mac OS X's standard implementation, was frustrating; I only managed to get a path to my user directory to work ("/Scans" or "Scans") and couldn't get anything else to work regardless of what combination of slashes or back slashes I used. But where a local hostname of "don" doesn't work as a Host Name on Lion, it does work on Leopard, although not "computer.local." Neither implementation of SMB will accept a computer name.)

For that share, I also enabled guest access, so I could scan to it without providing a login user and password. My version of Kyocera Command Center doesn't allow me to save those credentials with contacts and I didn't want to enter them every time.

(You can, of course, authorize specific users to access your shared folders. You'll do that in SMBUp as well. Both short names like "don" and long names like "Don Morris" seem to work for logins.)

Next I set the permissions to "Write only" for my scans folder. Since I'd allowed guest access, I wanted to make sure no one could view anything I'd scan if they were somehow able to gain remote access to my computer. Finally, I made the folder a shared folder.

Once I was done, scanning to a network folder from my copier was a snap!

Crash Plan

Don — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:36:22 +0000

I nearly freaked out today when—among the plethora of icons already in my menu bar—a new menu extra appeared. After all, I hadn't restarted my machine and (I thought) I hadn't installed any new software.

Fortunately, the icon was familiar and—after checking to be sure—I found that CrashPlan had updated itself overnight and a new feature was this menu item for controlling and monitoring backups.

I've been using CrashPlan for about a year-and-a-half, but I started too late: I lost data due to a faulty hard drive. I decided that would never happen again, so one facet of my new backup plan was purchasing a 3-year family online storage package from CrashPlan. Awesome package! 2-10 computers, unlimited storage, only $6 a month (for the four-year contract—I actually got in for $5 a month for three years). I backup four of our machines continuously now.

(I looked at Carbonite first, but they lost my business. I had a mostly complete, bootable backup of my system on another drive which I connected immediately, but Carbonite doesn't support external drives—and so I don't support them.)

I haven't had the need to restore any data since then, but I have no doubt I'll be able to recover after any loss. I seriously recommend you give CrashPlan a try before you lose data. You will lose data sometime (I get regular requests to re-download $7 Secrets after computer failures), so protect yourself now.

BTW, you can disable the CrashPlan menu extra if you like. And those items in my menu bar are, from left to right, CrashPlan, Hazel, TextExpander, Clips, Billings, Dropbox, Skitch, Alarms, and Tags—just a few 20+ that are up there.

Who Says Your Vote Doesn't Count?

Don — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:23:32 +0000

In our local runoff election for City Clerk, Cara and I changed our vote; instead of voting for the candidate we chose in the first election, we voted for the other—because the teachers' union was backing the former candidate. Preliminary results show that Gigi Hanna won by our two votes.

cPanel Password Syncing

Don — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:12:05 +0000

While making some server changes and resetting some passwords (making them more secure), I ran across an issue where I couldn't log into phpMyAdmin -- even though I was already logged into cPanel. I kept being asked to log in (instead of being logged in automatically) and my cPanel credentials wouldn't work; instead, I was forced to use a database user and password, which only gave me access to a subset of my databases.

Turns out that some passwords don't sync properly between services:

That is correct, though it's not just punctuation, but almost any "special character" that can trip phpMyAdmin up and cause you to be unable to login to phpMyAdmin from cPanel, and may also affect the operation of Fantastico. The password itself is still synced, it seems that phpMyAdmin just doesn't encapsulate the entire password properly; it incorrectly thinks some of the special characters should not be passed onto MySQL, causing the issue.

Tip of the day: use only alphanumeric characters for cPanel passwords.

The Unclickable Flash Settings Dialog

Don — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:29:39 +0000

Much as I despise Flash for its crushing memory requirements and its tendency to crash any system I have, I do need to have Flash Player installed to view videos at various times. Usually that's not a problem, since I also use ClickToPlugin to manage when and if Flash is loaded.

However, there's a bug in Flash Player which appears to go back to at least version 10 and which Adobe seems not to have fixed, even though the bug is quite widespread: the Adobe Flash Player Settings dialog which sometimes appears is unclickable. (This issue plagues not only OS X, but also Windows and Linux.) The dialog generally appears whenever Flash wants to gain access to your system in some manner -- for example, when the site you are visiting wants to use your camera or microphone or store data in local storage. Since the dialog is unclickable, it obscurs at least a portion of the Flash object and, for me, makes watching some videos impossible.

The workarounds often mentioned, which involve managing your Flash Player global settings (either using the Local Settings Manager for Flash 10.3+ or the Online Settings Manager), just aren't satisfactory. There is a better option which may just fix the problem completely for you (it did for me):

On Windows, delete these folders: %APPDATA%\Adobe\Flash Player and %APPDATA%\Macromedia\Flash Player.
On OS X, delete these folders: ~/Library/Caches/Adobe/Flash Player and ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player.

Thanks to Katie on the Adobe Forums for posting the answer.