Ytplayer not working?
From: Tim
Country: US
Sent: 18Dec2016
Subject: ytplayer not working
Question:
When an incremental YouTube video card is in the learning queue, it no longer starts automatically. The Start and Stop times are listed correctly. None of the buttons (Mark,Resume,Start,Test,Stop, etc) work, and they all give javascript errors with "Object doesn't support property or method..." In every case when going to the Line and column in the YouTubeVideo.htm file there is a reference to that property of the ytplayer object, so this appears to be a problem with ytplayer. I tried changing the version of ytplayer from 3 to 2, but that did not seem to change anything. Currently I am stuck playing the video, then trying to skip forward to the "start" time listed. I can't make new extracts, though, which makes it rather useless for incremental video. I am using Supermemo 17, and I really like this feature and would appreciate help in making it work again. Thanks!
Answer:
Answer update
See: YouTube in SuperMemo stopped working
Old answer
Please accept an apology. We are working on it. Google has changed YouTube API. When we tried to rewrite incremental video script, we hit a snag: there is a bug when loading the player from a local file. We have logged a number of bug reports and questions and hope to hear from Google at some point. For temporary consolation we are rewriting the script for use with Vimeo, which uses the same IFrame technology and does not have similar issues. If Google does not fix the bug, or claims "broken compatibility", e.g. for security reasons, it may take longer to look for different solutions that would make sure user collections can resume with no or with minimum intervention.
You can vote the bug up at Google.
We tried to rely on an idea that if you "freeze" your PC in time, without updates, you should be able to use SuperMemo for many years in older Windows. However, employing a live API from the net, we exposed users to the possibility of broken functionality.
Currently, SuperMemo can be frozen in time except for its reliance on the Internet and associated technologies that can result in a new bug showing up at any minute.
See also:
workarounds
- if you manually type in Start and Stop times, Alt+X for extracts still works (you cannot get those numbers from the player directly though)
- resume time typed manually at Mark will also be retained (you cannot set it directly from the player though)
- play in the video itself works (as you have discovered)
In that sense, incremental video can still be used, esp. if you spend more time watching than extracting.
Alternatively, you can reduce the priority of videos or reschedule them for later in hope of having the script fixed by that time.