TERENA TF-MediaShowcase of Recording Systems Summary Report

Editors: Rui Ribeiro (FCCN)

Péter Szegedi (TERENA)

November 2012

Contributors

Vicente Goyanes (University of Vigo) Rubén Pérez (TELTEK Video Research) Jack Barokas (Tel Aviv University) Andy Zbinden and Markus Buerer (SWITCH) Adam Majoros (NIIF/Hungarnet) Paolo Vendruscolo (CINECA - InterUniversity Consortium) Gytis Cibulskis (Kaunas University of Technology) Jim Buchan and Andy Vallely (Cisco Systems Inc.)

Contact Details

Péter Szegedi TERENA Secretariat, Singel 468D, 1017 AW Amsterdam, The Netherlands Email: szegedi@terena.org

© TERENA 2012

All rights reserved.

Parts of this document may be freely copied, unaltered, provided that the original source is acknowledged and the copyright preserved.

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Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 3

Lecture Recording System ......................................................................................... 3

TF-Media Recording Contest 2012 ........................................................................... 4

TF-Media Recording Participants ............................................................................. 4

1 - Capturer Lecture Video Recording System Tel Aviv University (TAU), Israel .. 5

2 - SWITCHcast Video Management System SWITCH, Switzerland ....................... 9

3 – Videotorium NIIF, Hungary ............................................................................... 12

4 – L2L (Live to e-Learning) InternUniversity Consortium, CINECA, Italy ............ 14

5 – ViPS Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania ........................................... 17

6 - Cisco Lecture Vision Cisco Systems ................................................................... 20

7 - Opencast-Matterhorn-PuMuKit University of Vigo, Spain .............................. 24

Feature Table ............................................................................................................ 27

Appendix .................................................................................................................. 29

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Introduction During recent years, lecture recording has been the focus of many IT managers in the community of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and universities. The current systems, which have been around for more than 10 years, provide the tools to record, edit, enhance, publish and distribute audiovisual lecture content. The different technical features, functionality sets, and final possible outcomes have made it very difficult for IT managers to choose the right system to match their needs.

The TERENA Task Force on Media Production, Management, and Distribution (TF-Media) began focusing on lecture recording in 2009 during the first Media Management and Distribution Workshop. Since then, several measures have been taken by the task force participants to support the community in this respect. One of the last actions, proposed and worked out within the task force community close to the end of its first mandate (December 2011), was to organise the TF-Media Recording Contest that was held at the 2012 TERENA Networking Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The purpose of the TF-Media Recording Contest was to introduce various lecture recording systems to the TERENA community members (and beyond). The official Call for Participation document can be found in the Appendix. This report presents the set of lecture recording features considered to be most important for the community and provides comprehensive information about each system presented in the contest. The order in which the systems are presented here reflects the order in which they were registered to participate in the contest.

Lecture Recording System A lecture recording system consists of a set of tools to produce, manage and distribute lecture recordings to end users. In the particular use case, the lecture recording system records classes and provides the recordings to students, but it can also be used for a wide range of events such as conferences, meetings, workshops, etc. Usually, a lecture recording system works as follows:

Class Recording

• Video capture • Audio capture • Data capture

Content Enhancement

• Video editing • Metadata

Content Publishing

• Distribution server upload

• Metadata publishing

Content Distribution

• Metadata server • Video server • Video player

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TF-Media Recording Contest 2012 The aim of this open contest was to showcase the capabilities and features of the portable streaming/recording systems available in the TERENA community. Participants were expected to set up their own system complying with the requirements, stream/record a conference session, optionally do some video enhancement, and finally publish it at a public URL. The call was open to NRENs and universities while commercial entities could participate on an invitation basis. The maximum number of participants was limited to eight. The contest provided a particular challenge to the participants: they were not able to use their webcams as they were required to be situated outside the conference room and to comply with the signal formats and cable/connector types provided by the venue, namely:

• Power: 3x EU 220V/16A outlet per stage • Network: 1x RJ-45 Ethernet • Presentation signal: 1x VGA (D-SUB15 M) • Video signal: 1x RCA Analogue (PAL) • Audio signal: 1x XLR Analogue (LINE)

The contest website can be viewed at: http://www.terena.org/activities/media/rc/rc.html

Results of the audio-visual (AV) recordings can also be seen at https://tnc2012.terena.org/web/media/contest

Lecture recording stations situated outside the lecture room during the TF-Media Lecture Recording Systems Showcase at TNC2012

TF-Media Recording Participants A brief introduction to all the recording systems presented by the developers can be seen online at (Cisco WebEX): https://joinnow.webex.com/joinnow/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=MC&rID=48547812&rKey=4AF24ED7DC1B9A63

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1 - Capturer Lecture Video Recording System Tel Aviv University (TAU), Israel

System Description Capturer works on Microsoft based operating systems (XP, Win7). It integrates the video of the lecturer with his computer desktop activities (Video Graphics Array (VGA) signal) in real time and within the same frame. Events filmed using Capturer can be broadcast live, including both VGA and video signals. The recording output is a single video file, by default Microsoft Windows Media Video (WMV), but it can easily be converted to any other video format. The management interface enables watermarking of branding marks and a banner display at the bottom and/or side of the video. The bottom or side banner can be changed while the recording is ongoing. Capturer has been used at TAU for six years and in two other universities in Israel for a couple of years. TAU also provides lecture capture services for many European Union (EU) projects such as Nano2Life, NanoSkills, NanoEl and QNano. There also exists a special version of Capturer, which has been customised to enable a lecturer to simultaneously record his or her lecture and presentation using only a laptop. Features

• Real-time video enhancement by Capturer while recording and live webcasting (ability to change the lecturer's video contrast, colour intensity, brightness and sharpness).

• Large video frame 960x540 (high video rate, typically 20 FPS (frames per second) for the video and lecturer's screen capture).

• Supports various types of video inputs (Firewire, composite video, S-video, USB webcam and internal laptop webcam). Currently experimenting with high definition (HD) IP cameras.

• Machete software enables very efficient and fast video editing, including start and end point trimming, inserting and chaining video clips.

• Windows stream editor enables adding or replacing complete audio tracks. • FreeMake converts Capturer output to any video encoding codec formats. • The system uses TauWebcast open source JOOMLA as a Content Management System (CMS)

for distribution, metadata, and user access control based on the TAU Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

• The MOODLE Learning Management System (LMS) is in use for course recordings. • The JOOMLA CMS uses the YouTube Application Programming Interface (API) and

automatically uploads an instance of each video to the TAU branded YouTube channel, including its metadata.

• The video streaming servers are proprietary Windows Media Server and open source Red5 Flash Media Server.

• Some of the recordings are uploaded to the Matterhorn 1.3 installation and can be played back by the Matterhorn player with video Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which is used to scan materials and identify text on slide captures. Indexing is done by the Matterhorn video processing engine.

• For the basic configuration no hardware is needed for Capturer other than a video camera with Firewire output, laptop and tripod (very low cost).

• The recording equipment can be set up at the required location (typically a classroom or lecture hall) in less than five minutes.

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Screenshot

http://video.tau.ac.il/events/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2622:mujina&lang=en Overview The Capturer system is based on Windows Media Encoder. This is a freely downloadable media encoder developed by Microsoft which enables content developers to convert or capture both live and pre-recorded audio, video, and computer screen images to Windows Media formats for live and on-demand delivery. A Virtual Network Computing (VNC) client is used on the presenter’s laptop to capture the desktop screen. In case of no access to the presenter’s computer, an Epiphan box can be used to intercept the VGA signal. For ease of use, TAU has developed an application that manages the layout of the inputs on a dashboard. The captured video is then transcoded and uploaded manually to Video on Demand (VoD) services at will. At the end of the process one can stream the video and any metadata or extra features that are supported by the external VoD services. Lecture Recording

Video Capture Windows Media Encoder captures an area of the screen. Video captured using any freely available software.

Audio Capture Windows media encoder via sound board.

Data Capture Windows Media Encoder grabs an area of the screen. Video obtained from frame-grabber monitoring application, VNC client or any other application within the grabbing zone. Optionally, Epiphan (VGA2Ethernet) can be used to capture the VGA signal from the presenter’s computer.

Content editing

Video Editing The resulting video is a single stream and can therefore be edited by any available video editing software, many of which are free.

Metadata The resulting product is a single video. Metadata can be added during recording by placing information (logo, names) on the particular area of the screen that needs to be recorded. Metadata can be placed on the video asset itself, as Windows Videos supports some metadata tags.

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Content Publishing

Distribution Server Upload

The resulting video is a single stream and therefore any distribution solution can be used, whether hosted by the university, NREN or in the cloud.

Metadata publishing

No metadata publishing is included; it must be uploaded manually to each service.

Content Distribution

Metadata Server No metadata server is included. Metadata must be placed manually for each upload.

Video Server No video server is included. Users must provide their own infrastructure or use a video hosting service.

Video Player No video player is included. The solution relies on players provided by the infrastructure or video-hosting service.

User Experience Producer: Teachers may use Capturer in two different ways. It can either be easily controlled by the technical staff, or by the actual teacher who, once he or she understands how to employ the interface, will find it easy to use as it provides instantaneous feedback of what is being recorded. The producer ends up with a single video ready to use as soon as the recording stops. Technical Staff: When used by technical staff, the Capturer can exploit client tools like a remote desktop (VNC) to integrate with remote terminals. Experienced staff can produce very good compositions with little effort, resulting in a good layout for end users. Publisher: Since the video is a single stream, publishing it can be done using any video hosting provider (e.g. YouTube). The video can be uploaded in its original format or be transcoded. Hot Topics It is important to emphasise that Capturer is the recording module of TAU’s end-to-end academic courses and events. Capturer can easily be ingested into other end-to-end academic video recording solutions like Matterhorn, gaining the benefits of its sophisticated video processing features. TAU’s end-to-end recording / production workflow not only includes Capturer but also a Joomla-based CMS (developed by TAU).The CMS also automatically disseminates the recordings to YouTube including metadata. An increasing number of features are incorporated in Capturer with every release, as the software integrates continuously developing software produced by open source communities such as VideoLan (VLC). The course recordings are completely integrated within TAU databases for metadata and access rights management. Tools & Links

• Composition Tool o Tel Aviv University Composition Tool o http://video.tau.ac.il/events/index.php?lang=en

• Video Recorder o Windows Media Encoder o http://www.microsoft.com/nl-nl/download/details.aspx?id=848

• File Editor

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o Windows Media Editor o http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/movie-maker-get-started

• Matterhorn video processing engine at TAU o http://video.tau.ac.il/old/live-webcast/tnc2012/Matterhorn.html

Contact details Jack Barokas Educational Digital Media Applications Tel Aviv University Computing Division Email: JackB@tauex.tau.ac.il http://video.tau.ac.il/

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2 - SWITCHcast Video Management System SWITCH, Switzerland System Description This sophisticated video management system from SWITCH means that students no longer need complain about missed lectures. As for lecturers, it offers a unique opportunity to follow new approaches to teaching. Recording lectures on a multimedia basis with SWITCHcast entails little cost as the hardware and software, together with efficient support, are all provided by SWITCH. This ensures that the benefit for the students is all the greater: they can follow the virtual lecture online or as a download on their own personal iPod – as often and as long as they want to. Many of the larger universities in Berne, St. Gallen and Zurich are already successfully using SWITCHcast for their services. The recordings cannot be viewed by the public but are accessible primarily to those registered for a specific subject. Screenshot

https://cast.switch.ch/vod/channels/1gchvi0g7m

Overview The SWITCHcast platform is a full feature, self-contained solution that supports lecture recording workflow from the classroom to the playing device end-to-end. Its strong feature is the ability for any user to edit the content online and to create sub-clips as needed from the original media. (Since 2012, spectators are not restricted to watching but can also annotate the videos they see). The content is then made available via a secure environment protected by federated authentication and authorisation infrastructure (AAI). The content can be delivered in three main formats for streaming, desktop, and mobile devices. Apple laptops act as a recorder. The presenter’s screen is captured by Epiphan. All the signals can then be sent to the central server for post-production. The management interface is simple and self-explanatory. It gives the administrator control over the whole process.

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Lecture Recording

Video Capture Video, audio data and the lecture slides are recorded locally using the recorder software SWITCHcast Recorder 3 (10.7.x, 10.8.x)

Audio Capture Video, audio data and the lecture slides are recorded locally using the recorder software SWITCHcast Recorder 3 (10.7.x, 10.8.x)

Data Capture Video, audio data and the lecture slides are recorded locally using the recorder software SWITCHcast Recorder 3 (10.7.x, 10.8.x). Slides can be captured with the Epiphan frame grabber. You will need to install an additional driver.

Content Editing

Video Editing Online tool for video editing, cutting, etc.

Metadata Logos, etc. can be added during the post-production phase.

Content Publishing

Distribution Server Upload

Once the recording is complete, this data is transferred to a so-called channel in the SWITCHcast server. The producer can also transfer recordings made with his/her own software to the SWITCHcast server. To do this, he/she must observe the SWITCHcast video import formats.

Metadata publishing

The recordings can be stored in the channels. Channels have to be paid for and can be created via the SWITCHcast Server. SWITCHaai-authenticated end users (subsequently "owners") are authorised to create new open channels on the SWITCHcast server.

Content Distribution

• Metadata Server The layout of the clips and the desired media formats can be freely configured for each channel.

• Video Server After they have been transferred to the SWITCHcast server, the recordings can be reworked and cut using the SWITCH software.

• Video Player The clip may be disseminated in the following media formats: • Flash (streaming): standard format • QuickTime (downloadable): optional • Podcast (downloadable): optional

Hot Topics A lot of effort has been put in to ensure that the administrator of the tool is happy with the system (federated AAI, statistics, management, etc). If one is not satisfied with the default AAI settings, it is possible to use an API. An external validation entity can also be hooked up, or it can go through Moodle. Online video editing is easy to use. Tools & Link

• SWITCHcast platform o SWITCHcast Recorder 3 (10.7.x, 10.8.x) o http://www.switch.ch/cast/downloads/

• SWITCHcast service description o http://help.switch.ch/export/sites/help/cast/_files/DLB_SWITCHcast_en.pdf

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Contact details Markus Buerer SWITCH – SWITCHcast CH-8021 Zurich, Switzerland Email: cast-support@switch.ch http://www.switch.ch/cast/

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3 – Videotorium NIIF, Hungary

System Description Videotorium is a video/audio sharing portal created for the research and education community in Hungary. Videotorium provides professional presentation of video content recorded at higher education organisations, research institutions and public collections. Videotorium was launched in 2010 by the operator of the Hungarian research and education computer network infrastructure, NIIF. Videotorium is freely available for users of any NIIF member institution, but any not-for-profit research and education activity can also be supported. The purpose of Videotorium is to meet the special requirements of the higher education, research and public collections communities, which would otherwise be difficult to achieve using a general video sharing portal. Features

• Sharing of audio and video recordings without barriers on length and quality (up to HD), free and unlimited storage capacity.

• Uploading presentation slides to recordings. Upload your PowerPoint or OpenOffice presentation and synchronise slides to the recording of your speech.

• Organisational micro sites: present all recordings of your institution through an own Videotorium site with individual URL, design and news.

• Flexible metadata scheme meeting requirements of the scientific publication and providing effective retrievability.

• Sharing through community sites and embedding recordings in external web pages. • eduID federated authentication and authorisation (Shibboleth AAI). • Content aggregation with standards-based metadata exchange mechanisms (Open Archive

Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)). • Live streaming: broadcast your event to thousands of users through our high capacity

servers.

Screenshot

http://videotorium.hu/en/events/details/745,Lightning_Talks Overview A stand-alone Linux box is used for recording the video/audio signal only (HD recording card is included). An additional laptop grabs the presentation (no animated slides but static snapshots) via

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Epiphan and the metadata inclusions (manually). Streaming and recording happen in parallel at the Videotorium server. Special Flash Player is used for video playback (no HTML5 support at the moment). Signals are not combined during the whole process but only at the end (the Videotorium portal does the synchronisation with the slides). The Linux box can even work as a stand-alone video streamer/recorder with no user configuration needed. Except for a couple of components, Videotorium is open source.

Lecture Recording

Video Capture FFmpeg-based script runs on the Linux box. Blackmagic DeckLink Studio2 videocard is used.

Audio Capture Open software runs on the Linux box.

Data Capture Open software called Director grabs the slides, developed by NIIF.

Content Editing

Video Editing The resulting video is a single stream and can therefore be edited with any available video editing software, many of which are free of charge.

Metadata It is not possible to place a logo on the video grabbing zone. Metadata is not injected into the files, as they aren’t available for download from the site.

Content Publishing

Distribution Server Upload

Videotorium platform.

Metadata Publishing

Videotorium is an OAI-PMH aggregation point so it is available to publish metadata.

Content Distribution

Metadata Server No metadata server is included in the solution.

Video Server Wowza Media Server at Videotorium.

Video Player Special Flash Player is used for video playback (no HTML5 support at the moment). iPad application is also available.

Contact details Adam Majoros NIIF/Hungarnet Email: admin@videotorium.hu http://videotorium.hu

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4 – L2L (Live to e-Learning) InternUniversity Consortium, CINECA, Italy System Description The L2L service allows a semi-automatic transformation of live lectures into e-learning activities ready for publication and delivery through an e-learning platform. The service is designed to address the needs of a consortium of universities, balancing the requirements of each university and the need to contain costs. A single centralised Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, based on the open source platform MediaMosa, is used to handle all the multimedia content and metadata. A plug-in integrates the DAM system with the open source learning management system Moodle. The overall architecture is open and modular allowing both the deployment of different service models and the seamless re-use of the digital content in different contexts (e.g. e-learning platforms, web portals, WebTV). The three main components of the L2L service are the L2L Recorder, the DAM platform and the Moodle module. The L2L recorder is able to record and synchronise one audio source and two video sources such as screen capture of the teacher’s desktop, external video source, or output of an interactive whiteboard. The L2L station is based on a PC, with an audio/video capture card and a VGA2USB capture device. The L2L software is a MS Windows .NET application and the audio/video streams are encoded in high quality WMV format. The lecture capture process involves the following steps:

• Selection of the capture mode: the L2L client supports different recording types (audio only, teacher’s audio-video, screencast, teacher’s audio-video and a secondary video) in order to best suit the teacher’s needs.

• Insertion of attachments into the lesson. • Description of the lesson: title, abstract and tags. • Recording phase. • Quality control: the user is able to check the recording quality using a preview player. • Load to the repository: transparently to the user. • An upload management process schedules the upload in the repository where the ingestion

process takes place.

Thanks to a specific L2L MS Office 2007/2010 plug-in, it is possible to capture the change of presentation slides. The same plug-in includes the slide snapshots and an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file containing the slides’ texts in the L2L package. The L2L recorder supports offline recording in order to address common scenarios where the lectures take place in a room not connected to a network or when a teacher prefers to record a complete set of lectures before uploading these to the DAM. The DAM platform integrated into L2L is based on the MediaMosa platform. MediaMosa, a free and open source software, is used to build a web-service oriented media management and distribution platform, providing multimedia content delivery. A MediaMosa-based DAM platform offers its users the functionality for searching, playing, uploading and transcoding, as well as a fine granularity media access control system. MediaMosa implements the four main system functionalities - ingest, store, manage and publish – through a large set of REST API calls. The MediaMosa content model relies on assets and mediafiles: an asset is composed of a set of mediafiles (the original one and all the transcoded versions). This allows the same asset to be delivered using a number of different protocols and formats. The integration of the repository and the learning management system allows for the managing, publishing, and delivering of the L2L lessons. A Moodle interface to the DAM has been developed and, according to the Moodle paradigm, a module implementing a L2L Moodle e-learning activity has been realised. The L2L block enables authorised

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users (usually administrators and teachers) to interact with the MediaMosa repository, giving the ability to delete unwanted recordings and to modify recordings' ownership, title and details. The L2L module and block implement the communication flow with the repository using the REST API services. The module enables the teacher to define the learning activity within the course. The teacher can search a lecture by browsing through all the recordings stored in the repository (MediaMosa assets); role and profile based rules restrict the visibility of the assets to different users. According to the metadata associated with each lecture, the teacher can filter the search in the repository. The L2L module enables students to access the digital lessons. Screenshot

http://demo.cineca.it/mod/ltol/view_popup.php?id=113

Overview The L2L recorder is a Windows application that embeds a Windows Media Encoder. It is designed for an operator to synchronise the slides manually during presentation. The WMV is then uploaded to the server and streamed live, if required. At the end of the stream the tool allows the operator to edit and add some extra metadata. At the end the video is published on Moodle using a Flash applet. Lecture Recording

Video Capture The L2L station is based on a PC, with an audio/ video capture card, a VGA2USB capture device. The L2L software is a MS Windows .NET application and the audio/video streams are encoded in high quality WMV format.

Audio Capture The L2L software is a MS Windows .NET application and the audio/video streams are encoded in high quality WMV format.

Data Capture Thanks to a specific L2L MS Office 2007/2010 plug-in, it is possible to capture the presentation’s slide changes. The same plug-in includes the slide snapshots and an XML file containing the slides’ texts in the L2L package.

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Content Editing

Video Editing DAM system based on the open source platform MediaMosa.

Metadata DAM system based on the open source platform MediaMosa.

Content Publishing

Distribution Server Upload

DAM system based on the open source platform MediaMosa is used to handle all the multimedia content and metadata.

Metadata publishing

A plug-in integrates the DAM system with the open source learning management system Moodle.

Content Distribution

Metadata Server A MediaMosa-based DAM platform offers its users the functionality for searching, playing, uploading and transcoding, as well as a fine granularity media access control system.

Video Server A MediaMosa-based DAM platform offers its users the functionality for searching, playing, uploading and transcoding, as well as a fine granularity media access control system.

Video Player Adobe Flash Media Player, multiformat delivery and podcasting (not yet HTML5).

Hot Topics Integration with Moodle is an excellent feature of this tool. The L2L block enables authorised users (usually administrators and teachers) to interact with the MediaMosa repository, giving them the ability to delete unwanted recordings and to modify recordings' ownership, title and details. Tools & Links

• MediaMosa o http://www.mediamosa.org

• Moodle o http://moodle.org/

Contact details Paolo Vendruscolo CINECA - InterUniversity Consortium Email: p.vendruscolo@cineca.it http://www.cineca.it/en

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5 – ViPS Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania System Description ViPS is an in-house development of the Kaunas University of Technology. The third edition of this software was used during the TF-Media recording contest. It has a user-friendly interface allowing teachers to record lectures on their own using a simple webcam or external video source connected to the system via a video capture device. ViPS may be operated in two ways: a) by the teacher, b) by technical staff connected to the auditorium setup. To support these two scenarios simultaneously, two interfaces have been developed on the front end: the broadcaster’s interface and the presenter’s interface. In case of technical assistance, the presenter and the broadcaster instances can be initiated on separate computers. When the teacher handles the system alone, the two interfaces can run on the same computer. The ViPS portal is developed on top of the Drupal open source CMS. For video production, Red5 Media Server is primarily used and, optionally, Wowza Media Server. All the Flash video synchronisation functions are done by Red5 while Wowza is used for more reliable video streaming, although it may be replaced by Red5 once it has developed further. The system is designed in such a way that a special container has to be prepared for each recording where presentation slides can be uploaded in advance. Static slides can be presented through the presenter’s interface and automatically synchronised with the video. The presenter’s computer screen can also be broadcast as a separate high-resolution, low-frame-rate screen capture window. While the latter results in larger files this does allow for improved demonstration of dynamic information. During post-processing the video is transcoded to H.264 codec that is used in an HTML5 player, which is compatible with devices without Flash players, such as iPads. The system is based on open source components, but it is not provided as a complete open source package at the moment. The service is offered to all members of the Lithuanian Distance Education Network (LieDM). More than three thousand recordings have been made in two years, and the LieDM has more than 4500 registered users. Screenshot

https://vips.liedm.lt/live/2512/tnc2012/en

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Overview This is a Flash application with a server backend. This Flash application uploads the documents / presentations in advance to the server where it renders the slides. During the event, the Flash application connects to the video stream and the operator / presenter changes the slides. The video is then streamed to the server and unicast to the client machines that also run a Flash version of software. The video is automatically recorded on the server synchronised with the slides, ready to be reviewed instantly after the end of the presentation. Lecture Recording

Video Capture Flash application.

Audio Capture Flash application.

Data Capture The system is designed in a way that a special container has to be prepared for each recording in advance with the presentation slides uploaded. Screen capture is implemented with Java applet.

Content Editing

Video Editing Limited video editing features.

Metadata Pre-loaded slides, manual metadata addition.

Content Publishing

Distribution Server Upload

Drupal Content Management System.

Metadata publishing

Metadata can be exposed via OAI-PMH protocol.

Content Distribution

Metadata Server No metadata server is included; metadata must be entered manually for each record. Search is available on the system and goes through all recordings according to title, author or other metadata available.

Video Server Red5 Flash Media Server and optionally Wowza Media Server.

Video Player Flash player and HTML5 player with H.264 video.

Hot Topics ViPS allows the broadcasting of presentations and lectures to hundreds of participants, although it can also be used as an event collaboration tool, similar to web conferencing. The presenter can enable audio feedback from participants, while they can also be set as a speaker and talk to the others or ask questions of the presenter. ViPS also allows for the moderation of questions posted to the presenter in case there is an overwhelming number of participants and the presenter is not able to follow chat interaction. The system is in active development and integration with Moodle and several other systems is planned for the near future. Tools & Links

• Drupal Content Management System o http://drupal.org/

• Red5 Media Server o http://www.red5.org

• Wowza Media Server

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o http://www.wowza.com/ Contact details Gytis Cibulskis Kaunas University of Technology Email: gytis.cibulskis@ktu.lt https://vips.liedm.lt/en

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6 - Cisco Lecture Vision Cisco Systems System Description Cisco Lecture Vision is a lecture recording solution which takes its input from one or more Cisco video codecs. For the demo, the recording was accomplished using a Telepresence Content Server (TCS), which was located in a Cisco Data Centre, so very little equipment was needed in the lecture theatre venue. Typically the codec takes three inputs as follows: speaker audio, speaker video and the presentation video. The codec then combines these into an audio-video stream, which is passed to the TCS and recorded. During a live event, it is also possible for other codecs to join the call and view and interact with the event live. At the end of the recording session, the recorded video is passed to the Cisco Media Experience Engine where it is transcoded (for playback on various output devices) and processed by Pulse Analytics to identify an audio profile for each speaker and to produce a key word index based on the audio track content, matched against a pre-loaded vocabulary. The finished video, along with the speaker index and key word index, is then published on Cisco’s Show and Share video portal. It is further possible to manually add chapter markers if needed. Show and Share supports a variety of playback formats including full screen and the output can be viewed on mobile devices such as iPad or an android device. When viewing the recording, users can click on the key word index to jump to the point(s) in the video where the indexed word is spoken. Pulse Analytics is performed once the video has been recorded so there is a delay in time of approximately two times the length of the original video before it can be viewed. Screenshot

https://share.mxabu.com/vportal/VideoPlayer.jsp?ccsid=C-94cd5523-7f08-4c80-af52-241efe0c3384:1 Overview Equipment used on site to achieve the recording was a Cisco Tandberg C60, which established a H323/SIP connection to a TCS at the data centre in San Jose, United States (US). This central server then recorded the video stream session. The recording process began by requesting Cisco Tandberg C60 to call the TCS, which effectively required pressing one button. Once the recording call was ended, the server automatically enriched the content with metadata identifying the speakers, and transcribed the spoken words (speech-to-text). Everything was then indexed and published on a website through a Flash application.

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Here is a specific list of the actions needed to capture and publish the lecture:

1. Establish a Session Initiative Protocol (SIP) call to the TCS – use the remote call to select the call from the directory or call history, and press the green ‘call’ button to confirm.

2. At the end of the recording session – drop the call – press the red ‘end call’ button. 3. Wait for approximately 2x length of the recording. 4. Access the Show and Share server and match the names from the LDAP-based directory (one

off action) and optionally add chapter markers. 5. Video is now ready for end users to view.

Optionally Once the video has been encoded it is possible for the server to make a version available for download and further editing. This might include adding title screens at the start of each lecture, removing any dead space between lectures etc. If this is done, the edited version can then be reloaded to the Show and Share portal and published. The speaker names and key word index will be reproduced automatically without any manual intervention. A version of the TERENA lectures was edited in this way using iMovie on MacBook Pro. It is also possible to control the format of the final video by arranging the two video windows (speaker and presentation) as is considered most appropriate. Either the speaker or presentation video may be configured to take up the full screen, or both videos can be viewed simultaneously, with the presentation occupying most of the screen and the speaker appearing in the corner. It is also possible for the incoming live feeds to be re-broadcast to allow remote learners to watch the transmission. Where this is done, the remote learners may provide feedback using other communication methods such as Twitter. In cases where access to the live transmission needs to be extended to remote participants, this may be achieved by bringing additional VC end points into the call using a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) device. Here remote participants would be able to interact with the lecturer as the lesson proceeded. When many end points are included in this way, it is further recommended that remote sites interact on an invitation only basis to prevent too many interruptions to the lecture flow. Where services like Twitter are employed, remote attendees may discuss/question lecture content as the event proceeds without restriction. Once the lecture is recorded the system can be set up to automatically add watermarks, bumpers and trailers. These can be edited to provide information that is specific to the local circumstances. For example, a bumper might include information about the university where the recording was made, etc. In addition, the operator can manually add chapter markers to allow specific points in the running order to be accessed directly. The end product video can be viewed via a web browser that supports Flash. The Show and Share portal is an integral part of the workflow and this exposes the metadata added by Cisco Pulse Analytics. This metadata includes the lecturer voice profile and key word index. The lecturer voice profile is exposed in the form of colour coding on the video’s timeline, with a different colour for each speaker throughout the recording. The key word index is automatically produced based on a pre-defined vocabulary, which can be further customised to reflect the needs of specific subject matters. A lecture on a science subject like nuclear physics would clearly have different vocabulary requirements from a lecture on politics. It is also possible to have a stand-alone video format (such as .MP4) produced as part of the automated process, that can then be downloaded and edited offline. This would be useful when the

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video needs to be packaged on DVD for future offline viewing. If this is done all the Pulse Analytics Metadata is lost. Cisco has produced an app for the iPad which can be used to view the final product from Show and Share. This app currently has limited functionality and it is not possible to navigate by key words as is possible on the Show and Share full web interface. For the purposes of the TERENA TF-Media recording contest, the servers used to record and process the video were located in a Cisco data centre at its headquarters campus in San Jose, US. However, these servers may be located in any location that is most convenient, such as a university data centre on campus or, in the case of a shared facility, in a data centre attached to the NREN. It will typically take approximately the same length of time as the recorded video to transcode it into versions for viewing on a range of devices, and also to create the downloadable version. The quality can be set up to include standard and high definition versions. An additional recording-length time is needed to perform the Pulse Analytics. Thus for a one-hour recording, the video would be available for publishing two hours after recording has stopped. Lecture Recording

Video Capture Achieved using Cisco C series codec, Tandberg C60 end point or Cisco TP immersive system or software HD client such as Cisco Jabber Video. If the system is connected to an MCU, a complete videoconference with multiple participants can be recorded.

Audio Capture Integrated with video capture via the codec used.

Data Capture Takes digital video feed from the presentation computer and combines this with the speaker audio/video. The server keeps the two streams available so that the playback format can be configured as desired.

Content Editing

Video Editing The final product can be downloaded for manual editing using any available video editing suite. iMovie was used on this occasion.

Metadata The resulting product is a single video/audio stream, metadata in the form of key word index, and speaker index that is automatically added and accessible when published using the Show and Share video portal. Chapter markers were manually added.

Content Publishing

Distribution Server Upload

The resulting video is a single stream and any distribution solution can be used, whether hosted by the university, NREN or on the cloud.

Metadata Publishing

All metadata is automatically accessible via the Show and Share video portal. This includes speaker names (linked to their individual contributions on the timeline), key word index, chapter markers (manually added) as well as related discussions that are generated by end users after the event.

Content Distribution

Metadata Server Integrated with the Show and Share portal and automatically accessible.

Video Server Show and Share was used to view the end product.

Video Player Show and Share – additionally end users can download the MP4 or

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WMA version of the video and view it on any compatible video player application. Note that doing so will lose the connection with all metadata that is available in Show and Share.

User Experience Producer: The producer has to start and stop the recording process by dialling the codec into the TCS and then drop the call to end the recording session. The producer also manually adds chapter markers. Technical Staff: Not required. Viewer: Viewers access the finished product through the easy to use Show and Share video portal. Hot Topics The system can very easily be used by anyone by simply using a remote controller to call the server. Once the speakers’ names are added to the system, the voices are automatically recognised. The key words can also be indexed and searched. In a university setting, once the systems knows and recognises the voice of a particular speaker e.g. a teacher, these settings are saved and it is no longer necessary to reconfigure the system in case of a new recording.

Contact details Jim Buchan Cisco Systems Inc. Email: jabuchan@cisco.com https://share.mxabu.com/vportal/

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7 - Opencast-Matterhorn-PuMuKit University of Vigo, Spain System Description The solution presented integrates the following three tools: Matterhorn, Galicaster and PuMuKIT, and was adopted by the University of Vigo, Spain, for its campus of excellence Lecture Capture pilot project. The system provides a comprehensive set of technologies that allow any institution to produce, enrich, distribute and manage large amounts of media content in an automated way while allowing precise control of all the different stages in the process. The central part of the system is Matterhorn, a free open-source platform that supports the management of educational audio and video multi-stream content. It is, by itself, an end-to-end system that provides technologies for recording lectures, managing existing media, serving designated distribution channels, and providing user interfaces to engage students with educational videos. Galicaster is a capture agent compatible with Matterhorn. It was developed by Teltek Video Research for the University of Vigo, to cover some specific professors’ and technical staff needs, such as live in-room feedback and control of the recordings (using a tactile screen), the ability to browse and edit the metadata of the recordings present in the device, the possibility to schedule recordings to start automatically but also to start them on-the-spot, and much more. PuMuKIT (acronym of Kit for Multimedia Publishing) is a comprehensive media cataloguing system, developed at the University of Vigo but now adopted by other universities worldwide. It provides an elegant and customisable front end, as well as enhanced capability for cataloguing videos. PuMuKIT allowed the University of Vigo to reunite their legacy media content with the new multi-stream content generated by Matterhorn, in a single good-looking, institutional media portal. Screenshot

http://tv.campusdomar.es/serial/index/id/115 Overview The solution presented was based on the Matterhorn video processing and distribution software by the Opencast Project, and PuMuKit for video publishing. Galicaster, a recorder designed to be used directly by teachers in a classroom, was used on the capturing side.

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Lecture Recording

Video Capture Galicaster software running on Ubuntu Linux supports different capture devices, from low-end webcams to video capture cards with or without hardware compression, as long as they are compatible with the standard ‘video for Linux’. Supports a wide range of video formats. Full HD support.

Audio Capture Galicaster software runs on Ubuntu Linux. The sound may be obtained from the computer sound board (built into the motherboard or external), as well as from the video capture card if it has audio ports. Can handle audio in pulse-code modulation (PCM) or any compression format.

Data Capture Galicaster software running on Ubuntu Linux captures the screen via any frame-grabber card compatible with the ‘video for Linux’ standard.

Content Editing

Video Editing The video sources (consisting of at least two synchronised video files, one containing the video capture and other the data capture) are packed together with their metadata and generally ingested into Matterhorn automatically, where they are automatically transcoded and processed. Such processing includes automatic operations such as watermarking, rescaling and re-encoding the videos. Other custom operations can be defined. Matterhorn also features a basic trim tool to remove the undesired parts at the beginning and the end of the recording. Optionally, the video sources can be extracted and edited independently with any video editor, before being ingested into Matterhorn.

Metadata The metadata catalogues (in DublinCore format) are packed together and processed with the video sources. They can be edited before the recording (while it is scheduled, in both Matterhorn and Galicaster), during the recording (thanks to the Galicaster interface) and after the recording (with the administration console in Matterhorn). Matterhorn processes the videos to extract additional metadata, such as the technical characteristics of the videos, the time points where there is a slide change, the text contained in the slides, etc.

Content Publishing

Distribution Server Upload

Matterhorn automatically uploads the resulting videos to their own distribution server. PuMuKIT then imports those videos and their locations and they can be made available to the public as desired. PuMuKIT also features a special operation to merge the two streams side-by-side, brand and watermark the resulting video and upload it to YouTube Edu.

Metadata Publishing

Matterhorn publishes the metadata together with the videos. PuMuKIT fetches those data automatically, but they can also be edited by the operators. PuMuKIT can then publish the video metadata to portals like iTunesU and ARCA.

Content Distribution

Metadata Server PuMuKIT displays a rich set of metadata that catalogues the videos by presenter, location, subject, etc., allowing complex and specific searches.

Video Server PuMuKIT can manage different distribution channels, such as local download and streaming servers, as well as external servers like YouTube. The process is as simple as marking a checkbox, and it is independent of the actual implementation of the download server (Apache, lighttpd, nginx…) or streaming server (Wowza, Red5, FMS, etc.).

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Video Player Matterhorn includes a rich video player that displays both streams simultaneously, with additional ‘engage’ features, such as a slide navigation bar, automatic division of the video into segments according to the changes in the slides, ability to search in the slides’ text, etc.

User Experience Producer: Teachers can benefit from the live visual feedback of everything that is being recorded (even the audio levels) to adjust their position and speech, and the simple tactile interface allows them to pause the recording or mute the audio to remove parts of the class they do not wish to be recorded. They can also edit or add the video metadata on the spot. The recordings can also be set up to start and stop automatically, so that teachers do not have to remember to start the recording at the beginning of the class, and they can still control it (pause/mute/stop) as any manual recording. Technical Staff: Technical staff can use a portable version of the recorder (Galicaster) to record sporadic events such as conferences and conventions in rooms without fixed recording equipment. Operators can manage the recorders (Galicaster) in all the classrooms from their own desks, because the capturers are accessible via a VNC, and the processing system (Matterhorn) is operated with a web interface. They can schedule single classes or complete courses to be recorded automatically in a very easy way. Video processing and distribution (by Matterhorn) are completely automated. The specific processing steps are configurable, so that the specific formats and qualities are configured once at the beginning, and then are automatically applied to all the videos. Finally, PuMuKIT is an excellent publishing platform that allows the technical staff to add very rich cataloguing information (metadata), choose different publishing options (public, private, restricted environments), as well as configure very different publishing channels and platforms (own webTV, YouTube, iTunes, RSS feeds). It also provides a corporate webTV site, which can be easily styled to match the institution’s corporate image. Viewer: Viewers have a very rich experience because, apart from being able to watch the teacher and the presentation alongside each other in the player, they can resize and relocate each video according to their preferences, jump to a certain slide in the presentation and search the video for a certain word that appears in the presentation slides. Tools & Links:

• Opencast Matterhorn o http://www.opencast.org

• Galicaster o http://www.galicaster.org

• PuMuKit o http://code.google.com/p/pumukit/

Contact details Vicente Goyanes University of Vigo Email: vgoya@uvigo.es http://www.uvigo.es/

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Features Table  

Feature System 1 System 2 System 3 System 4 System 5 System 6 System 7 Recorder platform

Windows Mac OS Linux Windows Flash H.323 Codec Linux

Player technology

Not included but most of the popular players can be used

Adobe Flash, Quicktime Podcast

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash Adobe Flash, HTML5 Video

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash, HTML5 Video

Video ingest technology

Video screen capture of video and presentation composition

Firewire Video4Linux Windows Media Encoding

Adobe Flash Camera

Hardware Video4Linux

Maximum video screen resolution

960x540 (@ 20 FPS)

HD HD HD 640x480 HD HD

Presentation ingest technology

Frame grabber or VNC

Two video streams

Pre-rendered by director

Pre-rendered slides

Pre-rendered slides

Single video stream

Two video streams

Presentation content

Integrated with main video

Full video Presentation snapshots

Presentation snapshots

Presentation snapshots

Full video Full video

Content input format

Any application

Any application

Any application

Any application

Supported applications

Any application

Any application

Content output format

Single video stream

Two video streams

Video stream and slides snapshots

Video stream and slides

Video stream and slides snapshots or screen capture window

Single video stream

Two video streams

Publishing platform

Moodle, Joomla, Drupal

SWITCHcast Videotorium MediaMosa Drupal Content Management System

Cisco’s Show and Share

PuMuKit

Distribution platform

Windows Media Server, Flash Media Server

Flash Media Server

Wowza Media Server

Flash Media Server

Flash and Wowza Media Servers

Cisco’s Show and Share

Flash Media Server

Real-time editing capabilities

Graphical timeline

Graphical timeline

Command line

Possible Not possible Not possible Not possible

Integration paradigm

Set of tools Fully integrated

Fully integrated

Fully integrated

Fully integrated

Fully integrated

Fully integrated

Teacher technical skill for autonomous recording

Medium Low Low (for video only)

Medium Low Low Low

Technical support required

No No Depends Yes Depends No No

Live streaming Yes No Yes Yes Yes Limited Yes Authentication TAU LDAP AAI

Federation AAI Federation

Moodle Drupal Not provided AAI Federation

Branding Yes Yes Yes n/a n/a Yes Yes Source code and license model

Free SWITCH Various open-source components

Moodle plugin is open-source

Various open-source components

Cisco Open-source

Hardware requirements

PC Epiphan (opt.)

Mac Epiphan

Linux box Epiphan

PC with a video acquisition board Epiphan

1 or 2 PCs H.323 codec and monitor

PC, V4L2-compatible capture hardware

   

 

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Feature System 1 System 2 System 3 System 4 System 5 System 6 System 7 Estimated cost of the solution

2000 EUR 2000 EUR + per channel fee on SWITCHcast

1200 EUR for the Linux box + laptop (opt.)

3000-5000 EUR including hardware

n/a n/a n/a

Current system provider/ maintainer

Institution NREN NREN Institution Institution Commercial Institution

Usage 3 Universities 40 Universities

10+ conferences per year

Universities & 2 other institutions

Lithuanian Distance Education: 3000 recordings

n/a 60 hours per week Up to 10 rooms by 2012

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Appendix

TERENA Task Force on Applied Media in Teaching and Learning (TF-Media) organises a Recording Contest

at the TERENA Networking Conference (TNC) 2012 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

TERENA Networking Conference 2012TF-Media Recording Contest

Please send your proposal (one page summary including the !nal URL) to Peter Szegedi (TF-Media Secretary) by 13 April, 2012.

szegedi@terena.org

TERENA reserves the right to change the conditions of this contest or cancel it.

TRANS-EUROPEAN RESEARCH AND EDUCATION NETWORKING ASSOCIATION UPDATE 03 MAY 2011

TERENA SecretariatSingel 468 D, 1017 AW Amsterdam, The Netherlands

secretariat@terena.org www.terena.org

*Lightning Session at TNC2012 will be performed on Monday 21 May from 16:00-17:30.

**Video enhancement may include: video editing, adding metadata, publishing aids, transcoding, establishing rights of use, branding, watermarking, etc.

The aim of this open contest is to bring and showcase the capabilities and features of your portable streaming/ recording system. Participants are expected to set up their own system complying with the requirements below, stream/ record a conference session, optionally do some video enchancement and !nally publish it at a public URL.

WHAT YOU GET (PARTICIPANTS MUST COMPLY WITH THESE)

Content: 1.5 hour long conference session at TNC2012*

Presentations and the TERENA press kit can be downloaded in advance

Time: for set up and tear downSpace: 2m3, table, chairPower: 3x220Vx16A outlet per stage

(preferable in separate groups)Network: 1 RJ-45 EthernetPresentation signal: 1 VGA

(D-SUB15 M)Video signal: 1 RCA Analogue (PAL)Audio signal: 1 XLR Analogue (LINE)

WHAT YOU ARE EXPECTED TO DELIVER1. For the subscription: provide a one-page summary describing your system and work"ow (you might include the size, weight and estimated price of your solution, as well as its features such as formats used, metadata types, time to URL, etc) in advance.

2. At the venue: set up your portable system, do the streaming/recording, and tear down your system.

3. After the session: do the enhancementii of your recording and publish the result at your public URL.Participants are responsible for the transportation of their equipment to and from the conference.

THE EVALUATION CRITERIA AND PROCESSPlease note that the recording contest is a showcase of your solution rather than a real competition. TNC participants may look at your URL and vote on the look and feel of your results. TF-Media participants are going to take a closer look at your solution and results.

HOW TO PARTICIPATEThe call is open to NRENs, universities, and commercial entities can participate on an invitation-basis. The maximum number of participants is limited to eight. TF-Media task force leaders have the right to decide on the !nal list of participants. Registration to TNC is required (starting from 100 Euro per person per day), although the fee may be waived for students presenting posters and commercials sponsoring the event.