EventIDE stores stimulus materials compressed inside of the main experiment file. When an experiment is loaded, the materials get unzipped into a temporal folder for a run-time use. This model, albeit convenient in many cases,  becomes too slows, when you use large video files as stimulus materials. Eventually, that such files need to be copied every time, as an experiment is opened, which can lead to annoying waiting times.

To solve this problem, we have introduce a new feature of the material library: the capacity to load links to local video files instead of the actual files. These links behave as old video material items, except that the videos are not stored inside of an experiment. Accordingly, if you copy your experiment to another computer, you have to also copy the linked videos to a ‘same-name’ folder on the new computer.

To load the video links into the material library, use the new button on the Library ribbon tab: 

Once a video link is loaded, it appears in the material library panel, as an item with the link icon on the right:

EventIDE automatically checks whether a linked files is present and paint the icon in red (second item), if the file is missing or moved. In this case you can reset the video link to a new file (or, to the same file in a different folder) with the ‘Update materials’ command. If the icon is green, you can navigate to the location of the linked file on a computer by clicking on the link icon.

Note that the new feature works only for video materials, although we plan to extend it to other material types in the future. If you decide to apply the video links to old experiments, you have to do quite  a work there (updating would not work in this case):

1) delete the embedded video material items from the library and clear lists in the video player elements.

2) add new video links and assign them to your video player elements in the same order, as before.

With the new video link feature, you would never experience size-related problems, even if you want to show an full-length HD movie to your participants.