Leslaw, Thanks for your thoughts they're much appreciated. I realise the cost of such a solution is higher than the other options but there are reasons for this exploration.
1. We don't have a large enough budget to kit out all of our teaching rooms with capture devices. 2. Due to the way our rooms are scheduled there is no way of being able to ensure that all the lectures for a particular module will be held in the same location, and this isn't likely to change in the future. 3. We already have one of the cubes & capable laptops so would only need to purchase one more. I definitely agree that dropped connections are a concern and the recordings unfortunately aren't kept on the device. However we can record the presenter feed onto the camreas tape/ssd storage and in most cases screen capture the presentation feed straight off the desktop at very low framerates for backups. It's also worth noting that the devices can create their own adhoc networks so we won't need to rely on our core infrastructure. I suppose another question I hadn't considered is how does the capture agent get scheduled i.e. doe's the core tell it to start when the time comes or tell it when to start once the schedule has been confirmed? Anyhow, we haven't committed ourselves to anything at this point just looking into various options. Once again thank you for your input it's always good to hear advice from people who have tried similar approaches. All the best Steve -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dr Leslaw Zieleznik Sent: 22 March 2012 15:47 To: Opencast Community Subject: Re: [Opencast] Teradek Cube Steve, This is an interesting concept, but: 1. in my opinion the cost just for the transmitter is quite high ($1690-$1990) 2. you still need to run some wire between the camera/microphone and the device 3. the question is where you will keep your recordings? on the decoder/receiver which will add another $1600-$1900 to the cost 4. will you have access to recordings on the receiver, such that in a case of lost connection with the core (or missed transmission) this can be recovered. In my only few months experience with the MH system, the best solution is to have an autonomous capture device, permanently placed in the lecture room. And so in the case of any problem, recordings can always be uploaded at any time 'by hand' to the core. You would probably be better of if you design a laptop based capture device, but then there is unavoidable hazard when moving laptop around and making every single time connections to the network and to video/audio devices. We did use such idea in the past with MiniMac based Podcast Capture portable device, which we found very unpractical. Anyway, an interesting concept and I wonder what other peoples will say? Best, Leslaw On Mar 22, 2012, at 2:43 PM, Stephen Spencer wrote: > Thanks Leslaw, > > That seems like quite an interesting service that I've not been aware of, > I'll keep it in mind. I'm not quite sure if it'll meet our needs though. What > I'm hoping to achieve is essentially to create a laptop based capture agent > that can be moved between rooms. One of the problems we have identified is > that if we were to use either the reference spec capture agent or offerings > like the Epiphan device it would have a large impact on the learning space. > The problem is mainly to do with the size of the device making them not very > portable, wires trailing across the room creating trip hazards and not to > mention the effect this could have on students concentration. So I was > thinking along the lines of using Teradek devices because these would remove > the need for wires and take care of transcoding the video streams into h264 > (the most cpu intensive job that the capture device does). In theory all the > capture agent then has to do (give or take) is dump the traffic from the > network streams into a file, package it and send it off to the Matterhorn > core. > > Regards > Steve > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dr Leslaw > Zieleznik > Sent: 22 March 2012 12:48 > To: Opencast Community > Subject: Re: [Opencast] Teradek Cube > > > Hi Stephen, > > This is probably not what you need, but there is a way of free streaming from > mobile devices. > Please have a look: > > http://bambuser.com > > Best, > Leslaw > > > On Mar 22, 2012, at 12:05 PM, Stephen Spencer wrote: > >> Dear Community, >> >> Does anybody have any experience of configuring a capture device to use a >> Teradek Cube as a video input? Iâ•˙ve been looking for example gstreamer >> pipelines to do this but have so far been unsuccessful. This is an area we >> are very interested in as our environment calls for a solution that is >> mobile but not intrusive and we think this could work very nicely. If anyone >> is able to help out or even point us in a different direction I would be >> very grateful. >> >> Thanks in advance >> >> Stephen Spencer >> eLearning Developer/Technologist >> Harper Adams University College >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Community mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.opencastproject.org/mailman/listinfo/community >> >> >> To unsubscribe please email >> [email protected] >> _______________________________________________ > _______________________________________________ Community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.opencastproject.org/mailman/listinfo/community To unsubscribe please email [email protected] _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.opencastproject.org/mailman/listinfo/community To unsubscribe please email [email protected] _______________________________________________
