Is it possible to pause a video?

[psyexps]

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding the video playback function on MediaLab during an experiment.

Is it possible to allow participants to play, pause and view the timestamp of a video that is being presented to them? My experiment requires them to pause the video at certain time points (around 10 instances of their choice) and complete thought listings at those time points. In other words is it possible to actually have basic play, pause and time elapsed functionality on video stimuli as opposed to just having a screen with automated playback? If this is not possible on MediaLab, can I perhaps accomplish this through Direct RT?

I would really appreciate it if someone can help me out! Thank you!

[jarvis24]

I wish this were as easy as the title of the thread! Because yes, it is possible to pause a video and resume play, esp using something as simple as video embedded within an HTML item. Your questions is quite a bit trickier though since you want to go to an independent item in the questionnaire and *then* return to that same spot in the video.

There is no built in function for something like this. I tried to think of a way to do this using an HTML or Executable item to present the video and write the RT to a responses.xls file (via ML's Advanced Features). That way, you could go on to a thought listing item and then go back to the video and use the previous RT stored in responses.xls to figure out where in the video to restart. Nice in theory but I'm not sure how you would pass the starting time to the HTML item--maybe as a variable in the URL. HTML programming is not my expertise though. That's my initial thought anyways.

Then, of course, there is always the option of creating a custom item in MediaLab. I'm sure you could accomplish this through that approach. And now that I think about it, that may not be a bad idea. If you look at some of the custom multi-blank samples that come with MediaLab, you might think of a way to simply add an embedded video to one of those samples--but ensuring that you allow for user control of the video (you can find many many samples of HTML code for doing that on the internet). If it were me, I think I would head that way.

Hope that helps in lieu of an answer like, "oh, yeah, just see page 45 in the manual!" If you *do* come up with something please let us know--would *LOVE* to see it in action.

Blair

[ARLAb]

Hi Blair

I have a similar question (I posted it elsewhere on this site).

is there a way to set Direct RT to pause a video every 30 seconds and allow them to answer a few questions in-between?

I'd really appreciate your help.
Thanks so much

-Jessica