Viewing Sawdust Sessions on a Mac

paulmcohen · Post by **paulmcohen** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 12:48 pm

Bruce wrote:Paul,
I wish I knew why it works for you. I have the final version 2.2.0.49. It still won't work for me.
Bruce

I think there are two thing, a plug-in and an application. I have the application, I think you have to pay for this one it came with my corporate PC.

tenbears · Post by **tenbears** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:28 pm

I can play the archives just fine with OsX10.5.1 and Flip4Mac 2.2.0.49. I can not currently play the video on the test page with any of three browsers, Safari, Firefox, or Camino. Don't have a current version of Opera. But then if there isn't a streaming file loaded for the page: http://www.shopsmithacademy.com/Test_Classroom_A.htm nothing is going to play in the table cell allocated for the video.

Lastly check System Preferences for Flip4Mac and make sure you have the appropriate items under Browser and Player selected

Archive video controls are cut off at the bottom due to the table cell vertical dimension being less than the overall frame height of the WMV file + WMV control strip.

All other options run on both the archive pages and the test page

paul heller · Post by **paul heller** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:22 pm

I tried the test page and it is working for me, exactly as tenbears describes. I have the same software versions as he does as well.

Paul

reible · Post by **reible** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:41 pm

Hi,

Just went to the test page to see what it looked like and the video is not there.......

error details appears in the menu when I left click....
properties show the location of the video off an E: drive.... that doesn't look right to me...

Anyway I snapped some screen captures of what I see on my non mac....

I think someone needs to get that page repaired so you can do some testing.

Ed

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:42 pm

I don't have a Mac so my comments may be meaningless. However, on the test page, the live classroom test video does not work for me either. The archived classroom works fine.

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:30 pm

The archived sessions are Flash media, a different beast altogether than Windows Media. It's like comparing apples and pc's.

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:46 pm

I just checked the test page on a pc at work. It works fine. Nick had said earlier that he had fixed the stream. If you haven't checked it recently, you might try it again now.

Nick · Post by **Nick** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:46 pm

Video link fixed -- again -- I hope.

Yes, the live streaming is done in Windows Media and the on-demand videos are delivered in Flash; we tell you that on the Test Page. There is something that we don't mention, however, and maybe we should. The test video is delivered to you from Shopsmith's server, while the live stream is delivered from a special streaming server in California. Their code, our streaming service tells us, works on both PC and Mac platforms -- they've tested it it, they swear on a stack of HTML manuals. Our server obviously doesn't provide the same Internet environment as their server, otherwise we could do the streaming here. My suggestion is that you might sign up for a class anywho and see if the live stream from California works for you.

With all good wishes,

paulmcohen · Post by **paulmcohen** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:00 pm

tenbears wrote: Archive video controls are cut off at the bottom due to the table cell vertical dimension being less than the overall frame height of the WMV file + WMV control strip.

This is annoying and could easily be fixed by Shopsmith, do you have the values that would work for MAC and PC?

Nick · Post by **Nick** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 2:50 pm

"This is annoying and could easily be fixed by Shopsmith..."

Be happy to let you show us how, Paul. The inline frame surrounding the video is set to a hard 300 x 400 pixels. The stream is encoded at 320 x 240. The tool bar with all the controls enabled is 48 pixels high. My calculator keeps returning an answer of 288 pixels high. Should be plenty of room in a 300-pixel-high frame.

In the reading I have done on Fip4Mac, I've found several threads in forums addressing size issues. It seems that Flip4Mac uses a different "pixel format" than Windows Media in its native (PC) environment. I haven't the slightest idea what that means, but this could be the root of the problem.

This is annoying and could be easily fixed by Flip4Mac...

With all good wishes,