For people who are having questions about lecture recordings, they should be up to date online on WebCT as of today (actually they have been up to date for a while). Lecture recordings are not hosted on RMstudents.com. For future reference, Jonathan Blackhall is in charge of Biochem and Ross Rozycki is in charge of Anatomy. Please contact either of us with questions about recordings for a specific course. We can be found in the NotesMail address book.
Just to clarify, currently the files are formatted in Windows Media Video (.wmv) format. I am currently advocating changing to a more compatible format (like Flash or Quicktime) but this is still in the discussion stage. This will not be be implemented before midterms. Mac users currently have the (limited) options of installing support for Windows Media or viewing the files in the METC. If anyone is using GNU/Linux, contact me for some free words of encouragement and instructions if you're having trouble.
Currently, METC computers are not set up to allow Windows Media Player Internet connections, so you will not be able to view lectures until you do the following: Open Windows Media Player. If necessary, click "Show Menu Bar" button in the top left corner (if the File menu isn't visible). Click "Tools" and then "Options". In the "Player" tab (first one) make sure the "Connect to the Internet (overrides other commands)" checkbox is checked. Click "Apply" and then "Ok". You should now be able to view the lectures by clicking on them in WebCT.
Please feel free to comment or ask questions using the "Comments" (below).
Comments
Mac users
Apparently there is an issue playing the recordings for Mac users playing the lectures with VLC player or Quicktime with Flip4Mac Windows Media Components installed. The following was my email response to someone about this issue:
I looked into this issue and apparently it's more widespread than we thought. Apparently, Flip4Mac doesn't support a certain audio type that we've used to encode the lectures (see the last response by CraigS). This means the only current option for Mac users is to install the actual Windows Media Player for Mac and not the Windows Media Components by Flip4Mac. I have heard from other Mac users that this does actually work. I hate that this is your only option at this point as a non-Windows user because I support people trying to be free of Windows. The audio also doesn't work on my laptop running GNU/Linux.
We're definitely going to remedy this problem for lectures after midterms (hopefully by moving to flash-based videos as opposed to wmv). Unfortunately, it's really not feasible to fix the problem this close to midterms. Each video has to be encoded (which takes from 30-60+ minutes per lecture). This is time that none of us who do the encoding has, since we're all students too. I can definitely understand your frustration as recording the lectures is supposed to make your life easier. This is still a very new system, and we're working on getting all the bugs out. You've found a significant one and like I said it will definitely be fixed post-midterm.
Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, thoughts, or suggestions. And again I apologize for making this process more difficult than it should be.