What is the HTML Instructure Class Inline Media Comment?

[CSHoagland]

I am working with a professor who has many pieces of media (audio and video files) embedded into her course using a unique method I've never seen before. These files are used in pages and quiz questions alike. The HTML for the content is something like:

<a id="media_comment_abcd" class="instructure_inline_media_comment audio_comment" href="/media_objects/abcd">this is a media comment</a>

These audio and video files don't show up in the file view of Canvas and there is no way to follow back the code to find an original file that is being linked to. They have also, most importantly, stopped working for students, though I can still access them with an admin view. I've figured out how to extract the media so that it be properly embedded (fun fact: just change the word "audio" above to "video" and it will produce a small download button that you can use to get the file). However, I'm still at a loss for:

1. how she made these in the first place, and
2. why they stopped working after years of not causing her any trouble.

Does anyone have any insight into these? I've tried searching for similar HTML code elsewhere and talking to our IT folks to no avail. 

[JeffCampbell]

Can you find the video files IN the Files menu? I'm curious if they did not transfer but the links did. I'm also wondering if they were static links back to another source that is not longer active or available.

[CSHoagland]

From what I can tell, the videos don't live in the files section of the active canvas course. The information in the HTML also isn't informative enough to trace back to another course, like you might get with an image that is linked from a different Canvas course... But you may be right. I can't think of many other things that it could be. 

[JeffCampbell]

That does create a conundrum. If the files were at some point housed in a canvas course's files, I'm curious why they did not transfer when the course was copied/exported to be used in another course. That is what should have happened, unless the course was copied in such a way that it only grabbed particular items. 

Unfortunately, without knowing where the original files are at, I think you are right that back tracing will be tough. Good thing you can pull them down from the admin view and it sounds like you are taking proper steps to ensure this does not happen again. I'd recommend Studio, or housing them somewhere like Google Drive or One Drive as both can be pulled and embedded. Another option that seems odd...make them private content on YouTube. I do not recall the specific options right now, but you can set them up as private, but accessible via a link. Then you can embed them into the course page from there without making them public. 

Out of curiousity to see what the professor did, could you share a single example of the actual code? Either on here or send me a DM. I'm wondering what it looks like myself since you said it was an unusual method. Make sure there is not any other code above or below that might relate to it as well.

[CSHoagland]

Yeah, here is an example in a screenshot! In some cases, I can tell that the links are pointing back to old courses, but it's not always evident (and unfortunately, I've been fixing these primarily in quiz questions, so I can't pull up old versions to find what the broken code looked like before...). However, in this one instance, I took a screenshot to talk to my IT folks. I was able to trace the original link in a 2024 course back to a 2017 version. When I followed the link back to the course it pointed to, it still had the same style of code (see image).

The course files in that 2017 section are very few, so it's easy to check by brute force and confirm that there isn't a matching audio file in this course either. 

[JeffCampbell · Accepted solution]

From what I can see, I'm going to guess the unique tagging found in this is likely automatically added due to how Instructure inserted media into content when users attempted to add media. This would likely explain why it looks different than what you are used to now. Thank you for sharing. I was curious to see it in relation to your comment about HOW they added the media to see if it was possibly hard coded that way or due to how Instructure handled things.

Since you traced it partially back to the 2017 course and could not find the file there, I suspected that the origins are an older course or some course that may have been wiped to increase available storage. Yet you mentioned being able to get them to work in the Admin view. I'd suggest submitting a Help Ticket to Instructure. Since it is working in the Admin view and not for students, either some bug was introduced in a result update or there has been a change in how files are accessed. If the former, they might be interested to hear about it.