Millisecond Forums

Experiment only worked for 7 out of 40 participants

https://forums.millisecond.com/Topic17649.aspx

By audiosophy - 11/6/2015

I have an experiment that (amongst other teething problems covered in other posts) I have now launched.

However, out of over 40 participants that got past the consent form, only 7 were able to get past a script (called soundcheck.iqx) which asks them to type out an audio recording (.mp3) of some spoken numbers. This condition is to check participants have access to speakers or headphones, before taking them through to the video manipulation.

Any idea why so few people are able to make it through?
By Dave - 11/8/2015

If you look at the error logs in your account

https://www.millisecond.com/myaccount/logs/errors.aspx?webscriptid=10680&webscriptname=facecatexist

it would seem you are misusing that mp3. The recurring error is

Unable to open file 'http://www.millisecond.com/myaccount/scripts/astell/facecatexist/audiocheck2.mp3'.
"http://www.millisecond.com/myaccount/scripts/astell/facecatexist/audiocheck2.mp3" is not a wav file.

In soundcheck.iqx, you have:

<sound audiocheck>
/ items = ("audiocheck2.mp3")
</sound>

The <sound> element is for use with uncompressed WAV files only. For any other (compressed / streaming) formats, the <video> element ought to be used as in

<video audiocheck>
/ items = ("audiocheck2.mp3")
</video>


By audiosophy - 11/8/2015

Ah.. I see. Yes it was confusing as the script works fine to put mp3s in the sound element if you are on a mac (which I am). It looks as though the 7 people who made it through must have been mac users too. 

Didn't think of the (lets face it somewhat counterintuitive) step of putting my mp3 in the video element! Thanks for the heads up on that one. I think I will just use the wav though as it's not that big. 

FYI I did do a little pilot today with around 20 people and was able to confirm that the PC users (seemingly across all browsers and operating systems) were only able to play the wav, whereas the mac systems could play both.