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Thread: Pair and play audio clips for different buttons

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
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    3,328

    Pair and play audio clips for different buttons

    [edited from support email]
    I need to run a study in which on a single screen I need to show a photo and two audio clips. I’d like the participants to be able to click audio buttons to play the different sounds. I understand that you can have background sound, but what about just single audio clips with buttons to play? I’ve also read that you can play “sound files,” but where is that located on your interface? I’ve only seen “sound items,” but that doesn’t allow for a scale response simultaneously. If MediaLab 2004 is capable of having controllable audio, please let me know and also how to include it in the questionnaire files, I’d greatly appreciate it.

    [a related post edited from support email]

    I'm about to conduct an experiment where participants will judge short wav-files (both fill in the blank and multiple responses). My problem is that I would like to allow the participants to listen to the sound file as many times as necessary to reach a decision.
    For example, if I include the sound files as backsounds, is there an easy way to let the participants play the sound repeated times? The "go back" button is not really appropriate for this, because then they would have to judge the previous sound once again. So I would appreciate if there was a way to get something like a "play stimulus again" button?
    Last edited by jarvis24; 04-15-2008 at 01:53 PM.

  2. #2
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    Take a look at the sample I've attached. It shows you how you can use HTML instead of traditional response options to attain CATI style response options. In this case, you can click on the different options and hear a sound file play. The different html files can be edited in a text editor to specify the audio file names.

    Let me know if you have any trouble with it.
    Attached Files Attached Files

  3. #3
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    [edit from support email]
    We're designing a study in which we want to display a photo like the one attached, and have two of the letters that label the guys in the photo (e.g., "B" and "C") be links that, when clicked, play a very short .wav file. And we would like to be able to display this audio-linked-photo with a question below it, e.g., "How much status does person B have?"
    I know some html but not java, and have been stymied in trying to figure out how to display it--do we make an html file for the background image, containing the image and the audio clicks? If so, do we have to use the kind of javascript in the ClickAudio files we received from empirisoft?
    Basically, any help you can offer would be *greatly* appreciated. Thanks!

  4. #4
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    Take a look at this revision. This zip file contains an html file that shows your picture of the four guys. It contains rectangle "regions" that, when clicked, cause an associated sound to play (I just happened to have these sopund files handy, the sound quality is pretty bad but you'll get the point).

    Anyways, you could create a scale response item in MediaLab "How much status does guy B have" and use the HTML file as a background. For example, in the background field, you could enter:

    clickguys.htm (t.1,l.5)

    Let me know if that helps.
    Attached Files Attached Files

  5. #5

    Does this work equally for ML 2004?

    Thanks, Blair--I've tried a similar approach using buttons to play the sound. The problem I've had is in running it through ML. I add the html file as a "background" file in the questionnaire, but it does not display (I get a file not found error message) when I try to run the questionnaire in ML2004. Is my version too old to do this? (Crossing my fingers that it's not...!)

    Oh, and in other news--first, I think the Java functions may be commented out in the version posted, and second, I can't seem to get the regions to click and play--is it me/my browser (Firefox 2.0.0.8 running on XP) or the file maybe...?
    Last edited by overbeck; 10-25-2007 at 02:03 AM. Reason: adding note about the ClickGuys file

  6. #6
    Join Date
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    Using v2004 shouldn't be a problem for this kind of application. MediaLab uses the Internet Explorer browser engine so try opening it in IE rather than FireFox. If MediaLab can't find the html file, the quickest solution is to check where MediaLab thinks the file is supposed to be. You can do this by right clicking on the HTML part of your item. Select properties and then look at the address field. You may have to right-click on it and drag the mouse over the address text to see all of it if it's long. Then verify that the path given matches the actual location of the file.

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