I'm creating an experiment where participants watch a musicvideo and have to answers questions about it afterwards. So far, so good. The only problem I am encountering is that inquisit is not able to open video-files, or any other media-files for that matter. I tried the "welcome"-experiment, but that one has the same problem as my own experiment. The problem is not the file it is in (a file in my documents), because I made another file on the C-disk, and there I encountered the same problem. 

But what could be the problem here?

/Els

Probably this is due to a missing video codec (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_codec). First thing to check is whether the respective video files can be played with Windows Media Player -- even if this works though, there might be a certain DirectShow filter missing (which is what Inquisit relies on as far as I knwo). Second thing is to find out what codec you need and install it on the machine. I usually simply install a codec pack called K-Lite (available via http://www.codecguide.com) on my systems which enables playback of most video / audio formats.

Let me know how this turns out.

~Dave

The video did play in mediaplayer, and it still doesn't work after installing the codec. Quite annoying. I might try the experiment out on another computer (because maybe it is something my EEEpc does or doesn't do), but my first possibility to do that is thursday, probably.

/Els

Make sure you find and install a DirectShow codec (or filter as they're sometimes called) for the video file.

Best of luck!

~Dave

I rechecked the "welcome"-file again, and for some reason inquisit can't open any  other files. No video, no sound, no pictures. Quite strange (but it does mean it's probably not a lack of codec).

/Els

That sounds quite odd. Perhaps there's an issue with Windows User Permissions? Maybe move the files to your 'My Documents' folder and run from there? In any case, please keep us posted about the outcome of this. It might help others if they run into similar problems.

~Dave

It may be a permissions problem, although if you can open the media files in another program, then you have sufficient permissions to open them with Inquisit.

Are you running the experiment with the web or desktop version? What error message do you get? Are the media files actually located where the script thinks they are?

-Sean

At this moment I use the trial-period of 30 days, of which I suppose it's the desktop version. I get this error-message:

/items: Unable to open file 'C:\Documents and Settings\faery\Mijn documenten\Universiteit\Internship\Music Videos\monkey.mwv'.

And this shows that the program knows where the file is, because it is exactly where it should be.

/Els

Hmmmm. I'm thinking this must be a codec problem. Try installing the K-Lite Codec Full Pack from here:

http://ftp.isu.edu.tw/pub/Windows/softking/soft/en/k/klcodec500f.exe

When you run the installer, be sure to select all of the DirectShow codecs as these are the ones used by Inquisit. 

-Sean 

Already tried that, but installed it again and made sure I had all the Directshow filters, and still no luck. Tomorrow i might be able to try it on another computer, and I hope that solves it, because the only other explanation is that my laptop is the problem.

/Els

Maybe there's a general DirectX issue with your EeePC. Can you run DirectX Diagnostics (in Inquisit select Tools -> DirectX Diagnostics...) and post the results here? That might point us in the right direction.

Best,

~Dave

Results are: "Geen problemen gevonden."

Or in Enlish: "no problems are found". Or do you need the list of all the DirectX files?

/Els

Wow -- that was kinda quick. Have you run all the tests on the different tabs? There should also be an option to save all test results to a text file. If you can attach this, that might provide some insights.

The quickness was just accidental ;)

Added the test results.

/Els

The file says you haven't actually run any tests:

DDraw Test Result: Not run

D3D7 Test Result: Not run

D3D8 Test Result: Not run

D3D9 Test Result: Not run

Can you run these please and then re-post the results? There are controls to run these tests on the 'Display' tab of the DirectX Diagnostics tool.

Also, the graphics driver seems to be a bit outdated:

Driver Date/Size: 12/19/2007

You might want to check if there's a more recent version available from asus.com.

I installed a new driver, but that did not do anything (or at least, did not have the desired result). I did the other tests too (sorry, really missed that the first time I looked), but everything seemed to go fine.

My apologies for keeping you busy for so long!

/Els

Hmm -- all of this looks okay as far as I can tell. I'm really starting to run out of ideas. Are there any other peculiar aspects about your system? Like a dual-monitor setup, special theming software (e.g. WindowBlinds) or something like screen rotation utilities (EeeRotate, etc.)? Maybe some remote administration software like VNC? Anything else that might hook into / interfere with the display system?

Last week I also tried running the experiment on a different computer, and I had exactly the same problem. I re-checked my code and there seems to be nothing wrong there (but I added it for reference, maybe you see something I don't see). Also, the "welcome" experiment from Inquisit does not work either: I cannot open any of the external files like sound-files, pictures or videos.

/Els

Oh, this is gonna be awful... Notice somethin'?

<video namevideo1>
/ items = ("monkey.mwv")
/ playthrough = false
/ position = (50%, 50%)
</video>

(Hint: Windows Media Video)

~Dave

That's really odd... I've tried your script and it works fine. Could you maybe upload the movie you are using so we can test it? I used a .avi files which worked, but I don't have a .mwv file. Maybe that's the problem. So you could try to convert the .mwv file into a .avi file.

On a side note:
In block video2, you should use displayvideo2 instead of displayvideo3. And since it's a dutch script, I would say you would want 'zeer dominant/onderdanig' instead of 'zeUr dominant/onderdanig' in rating 1 through 3 ;) 

@ Dave:
It could be the extension, but a quick google search showed me that .mwv is also a file extension. But yeah, trying a more general used file extension might help... although it's strange that other media files don't work either...

It's the file from the 'Overview Demo' Inquisit sample (http://www.millisecond.com/download/samples/v3/Welcome/welcome.zip) -- and that's definitely a *.wmv file, Ivor.

Ah, okay. But it's still possible that she made her own file of course, which could be a .mwv. That's why I asked her to upload her file (if it's indeed a .mwv file) so we can check if it works. Although, changing the file extension to .wmv if it is the monkey.wmv from the Welcome script would help =P

@Ivor: yeah, you're right about that, I though I had changed those typo's already, but apparently I hadn't :S

@Dave: *ahum* quite stupid indeed. File does work now. That still does not explain while the inquisit-welcome file did not work as well.

/Els

Make sure you unpack 'welcome.zip' to a folder before running the script. Trying to run a script directly from a *.zip file (i.e. without unpacking first) will result in such errors.