Flaky webcasts?!

 Sadly since Cito has moved on from working with the faculty a portion of web cast support has been passed onto yours truly. This is no biggy as luckily the web cast suite is a very intuitive set up so support issues are quite low my main task is helping the lectures to stay calm!

However it does seem that a number of students are having issues when using internet explorer that they keep on getting an error message and kicking them from the broadcast. This is an issue our end but in the mean time please follow this guide to bypass the problem.

The Steve Hodge 5 steps to happiness whilst viewing a web cast:
The cause of these issues are apparently down to issues with chat room feature, so the best solution is to simply bypass using the chat room and view the web cast directly in a media player.

1. If your on a windows based computer open "Windows Media Player" look for an icon similar to this:
   
2. If this is the first time you've opened Windows Media Player it'll take you through a load of setting up steps, do as they say or cancel it (doesn't make any difference to viewing the webcast). Once its all loaded up fully go to the file menu at the top, if this isn't viewable press the "alt" button on your keyboard. 
3. From the file menu select open  url:
   
4. This should bring up a pop up box like this:
   
   in this box the address you paste in is different depending upon where the broadcast is origin from:
   • Plymouth - Main campus: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/webcast2
   • Plymouth - PAHC: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/webcast1
   • Taunton: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/webcast4
   • Truro: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/webcast3
    
   
5. Click ok and it should start streaming your desired web cast.

If its about time your webcast is set to start and all your seeing is a screen simular to this:

Then try one of the other links as you might well be on the wrong channel. Its worth noting that you can try this out any time prior to your web cast being aired as the system will still return something, so worth checking to make sure it still works etc!