This probably belongs in another forum...

We have Sakai running (an online course management package). Users must always log in, as the course tracks their work. Our client wants to add a video component to the course. We can handle hosting flash, real, wmv, or mov - whichever makes this process easier.
We do our own hosting - I am not really a web developer type although I have put together a few pages here and there for home businesses.

How can we track how long a specific user stays on a page? I'm thinking that a user views a video that is four minutes long, and that info is stored on a simple spreadsheet or something. From there, our client can hop on that spreadsheet and see that Johnny Q. Buttlover watched the video on Math 101 for four minutes. (or was at least on that page for four minutes).

If this is not a reasonable request, are there any ways to do this directly within flash, mov, wmv, or real videos?

Thanks in advance.

There is nothing that is totally reliable simply because HTTP is a disconnected protocol, which means that once a page is sent to the browser there is no further communication between the server and client. So a viewer could leave the site after 2 seconds and you could not tell.
With server side code you can monitor when a viewer moves on to another page on the same site but you do not know if or when they left the site or closed the browser.

Using a combination of javascript and server side code (AJAX) it is possible to monitor certain events on the client browsers and store these event times in a database logging system.

However; this is the HTML forum and there is absolutely no possible way it can be accomplished using mark up code.

Thanks for the clear response. Now I know something new about HTML. Doesn't sound like it will cut it.

Is doing this via AJAX fairly straightforward, such as "install X software on server, copy Y code on video page, etc?" -or is it something that requires manually writing?

You will either have to write it yourself, or use third party services such as Google Analytics.

Flash may have some capabilities to help with this. It can communicate with the client and server. Somebody clever with actionscript could probably figure this out. Especially considering the streaming capabilities.

You could also have some creative solutions.
One example, Video is in parts, only part one is accessible from a link, part 2,3 have to be clicked at the end of part one.

there are a few things, the easiest that I can think of is something like liveperson, shows you the length of time on page, if the ip has returned in the last 30 days, allows you to interact with the person on the site, I know it's a sales booster for products and services. Looking at your site I could probably offer some pointers on where to implement it if you'd like...

I use sitemeter.com. Its free and you just put a snippet of code at the bottom of your page. It give you lots of great stats - my favorite is the "who's on now" with realtime info. Of course it tells you how long a visitor was on your page but there are some limitations so it is not 100% reliable but still very helpful.