Modern Video Player — Overview


What it is

Modern Video Player (mod_modernvideoplayer) is a Moodle activity module for tracked video learning. Unlike a plain YouTube embed or an uploaded file, it is a controlled activity that validates who watched, how much they watched, and whether viewing was genuine — all server-side.

The Premium edition is a commercial superset of the free Community edition. It keeps every free feature and adds engagement analytics, protected delivery, cloud and provider sources, branded player skins, audit-ready exports, and standards integrations (xAPI/cmi5 and LTI 1.3).

{primary} Premium shares the same component name as the free edition (mod_modernvideoplayer), so you can upgrade in place. Every activity, file, progress record, completion, grade, caption, bookmark, report, and backup is preserved. See Installation & Upgrade.

Community vs Premium

Capability Community (free) Premium
Tracked HTML5 playback, completion & gradebook
Captions, transcript, chapters, resume, bookmarks
Integrity: seek enforcement, validated watched segments
Backup/restore, Privacy API, Moodle events
Direct URL, YouTube & Vimeo sources
S3 / Azure cloud storage via signed URLs
Signed URLs + dynamic learner watermarking
Engagement heatmap, retention curve & rewatch intensity
Cohort dashboard & multi-format audit export
Scheduled instructor digests
xAPI / cmi5 to an external LRS
LTI 1.3 publishing

Premium never paywalls core learning, accessibility, privacy, integrity, or backup/restore — those stay free.

How tracking works

The player reports progress to the server during playback (a "heartbeat"). The server merges and validates watched intervals, enforces seek and playback-rate limits, and records suspicious-event and integrity-failure counters. Completion and gradebook results are derived from these validated watched segments — not from client-side claims — so reports stand up to scrutiny.

Where to go next