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Track video usage on my website

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  • 17-09-2014 11:11am
    #1
    Anto212
    Registered Users Posts: 3 ✭


    Hi there...

    Im looking for a software / service that cant track a logged in user who watches a video.

    Essentially i want to be able to know when a user played the video and how long they viewed the video but lets say they paused the video and ten mins later played it again, i don't want the time it was pause to be included. I also want the ability to track where a user last left the video so lets say they closed out of the browser before they finished the video, when they returned the video would continue from where it left off.

    My reasons for this requirements is for regulation purposes where professionals need to undertake a number of hours cpd training in a year and part of the regulations is to be able to track them in the event of an audit from the cpd regulator. Currently we use and LMS however we were hoping to take a much simpler process to this

    Thanks


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    #2
    CreepingDeath
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,016 ✭✭✭CreepingDeath


    Maybe use the HTML 5 features to play a video.
    And when the user clicks the button to play/pause you send that event back to your server.

    HTML 5 Video Controls


  • Options
    #3
    counterpointaud
    Registered Users Posts: 403 ✭✭counterpointaud


    You could send playback position to the server, in order to not have to do this every second, maybe conceptually split the video into a number of chapters, and have it pause automatically after each chapter. Send confirmation that this point has been reached and require user to press play again (discourages them from leaving it play and just walking away).

    If they close the browser and return, have it start at the next uncompleted chapter (whatever position that is).

    Also, disable seek.


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    #4
    Talisman
    Registered Users Posts: 6,041 ✭✭✭Talisman


    Anto212 wrote: »
    Im looking for a software / service that cant track a logged in user who watches a video.
    I'm not aware of an out of the box solution to meet your requirements but you can develop your own login system with a simple video player and use Google Analytics to do the event tracking for your audit trail.

    Choose a video player for the project. Here's a list of the most feature complete players:
    FlowPlayer
    JW Player
    MediaElement.js
    Projeckktor
    Video.js

    For tracking you need to be able to identify the user for your reports but you cannot send personally identifiable information to Google Analytics as its prohibited in the privacy terms of service.
    You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track, collect or upload any data that personally identifies an individual (such as a name, email address or billing information), or other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Google.

    To get around the restriction you can send a unique user ID that is only known to your system. Generate a universally unique identifier (UUID) for each user and store it in the database. When the user logs in, the UUID should be retrieved and used as a custom variable when sending tracking events to GA.

    All that remains is to integrate GA with your chosen video player. Here are some links to get you started:
    FlowPlayer analytics
    JW Player integration with GA
    MediaElement.js GA code
    Projeckktor has a commercial plugin for tracking analytics which costs $125.
    Google Analytics plugin for video.js

    The Core Reporting API can be used to retrieve the data from GA for creating reports, using the UUID you can retrieve the events related to the individual user.

    For implementing features such as resuming video from a previous session you could record the key information (video identifier and timestamp) in a cookie and retrieve it the next time a video is selected. Using a cookie will mean that the data is only stored in the user's browser, alternatively you could create a web service and ping information to the server while the video is playing, similar to the GA event tracking. Persisting the data on the server will mean the video session could be resumed from another browser or device.


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