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New VTBE "+" Attempts to Display Incompatible Media File Formats like PSD, TIFF and WMA Inline

Date Published: Nov 25,2020


CategoryPlanned First Fix Release:SaaS - v3900.12.0,Learn 9.1, 3900.12.0 Release; Product:Communication Tools,Content Management,Course Tools; Version:Learn 9.1, 3900.0.0,Learn 9.1, 3900.2.0,SaaS
Article No.: 000074958
Product:
Blackboard Learn
Release:
9.1;SaaS
Service Pack(s):
Learn 9.1, 3900.0.0, Learn 9.1, 3900.2.0, SaaS
Steps to Repeat:
Replication Note:
This issue can be replicated anywhere the New TinyMCE5 VTBE is found.  Any audio-visual media format which cannot be displayed by browsers can trigger the issue including but not limited to such as Photoshop (PSD,) Autodesk True View (DWG) TrueVision Targa (TGA) and Windows Media Audio (WMA)
  1. Log into Blackboard Learn as System Administrator
  2. Navigate to System Admin > Courses > Create Test Course
  3. Access the Course created in Step 2
  4. Go to Content Create an Assignment > Submit
  5. As a Student Preview user > Submit the Assignment
  6. Log in as an Instructor enrolled in Course
  7. Navigate to the Student's ungraded submission (Grade Center > Full Grade Center or via Needs Grading)
  8. Select the submission to be graded
  9. Enter a numeric score for the Student's submission
  10. Expand the Feedback to Learner area of the grading panel
  11. Place the cursor in the Feedback to Learner area of the grading panel
  12. Select Open the Full Content Editor icon 
  13. In the Feedback to Learner screen > Select Add Content > Select Insert Local Files
  14. At the Open dialogue box, locate and select a Photoshop PSD, or another type of media file not supported by browsers, file > Select Open
Expected Behavior:
Back at the Feedback to Learner screen, the PSD file appears in the text editor.  When a user selects Submit and then Submit at the Grade Assignment screen, the file is attached and accessible to the student in the form of a link, via the MyGrades tool.

Observed Behavior:
The media does not appear as a link or as a working inline embed. Exact symptoms vary depending on exact combination of browser and file format type, nothing at all may appear, a non-functioning "player" widget or a box with a errors or question marks displays where the file should be.

Symptoms:

Expected BehaviorObserved Behavior



Cause:

The system determines the MIME Type of the file.  For example: image/vnd.adobe.photoshop.  If the MIME type begins with "image/", "audio/" or "video/", the editor tries to display the media inline.

However, there have been many image, audio and video file formats created over the years and browsers can only display a few of them.


Information:

What format of Media should I use?
Common web image formats such as PNG, JPEG and GIF should display without issues.

However Audio and Video are more complex because many common audiovisual file formats are "containers" which can contain arbitrary encodings of data called 'codecs.'

"H.264" is a common example of a video codec. and ".mp4" is an example of a common container format. With common web formats of images: the specific "container" of the file is extremely strongly tied to a single data codec and does not vary.  So this issue does not in practice arise.  Correctly created ".jpeg" file "containers" always contain JPEG coded image data, for instance.  They never contain PNG coded image data.

Browsers may be able to support the "container" format: but not the "codec" inside. For an overview of this topic see KB № 000057505 Contemporary Media File Best Practices

Target Release:

Learn 9.1, 3900.13.0 Release SaaS - Fixed (v3900.13.0)

Patch Available:

No






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