Hi Ruben, Thanks for your reply, I appreciate that your willing to hear my thoughts on our ideal setup. Basically what we hope to end up with is a portable ca that is as light weight and unobtrusive as possible, which we can setup before a lecture starts.
It's worth noting that we are a relatively small institution and don't intend to be turning around 100's or 1000's of hours of video every year. As a result when I said we have a low budget what I mean is that we can't afford to kit out all of our teaching areas with static installations for something that probably won't be in constant use. It's likely that certain lecturers will want to be involved and want all of their modules to be recorded. This causes us a problem because the way our timetabling system works means we can't guarantee that they will be in the same teaching space from day to day (hence the portable requirement). Something that we would like to avoid happening is having trailing cables running through the classroom which is one of the reasons for thinking about using these cubes. The other reason is that they will take care of any transcoding of the video feeds, reducing the spec required for pc element of the capture agent. We plan to capture audio via Seennheiser ew 100-NEG radio mics which we already possess and the teaching pc through vga/dvi to hdmi converters connected to a cube broadcasting an rtp or udp stream back to the ca. I am also leaning towards using Gallicaster over the standard MCD spec. I do realise the these devices are fairly expensive at $1490 a go but I have to admit I'm having difficulty understanding your cost break down. You said in your message that Vigo are spending around €3000 per capture agent and later on "And still, all this stuff is roughly half as much the cost of a single Cube". A lot of this equipment we already possess so we don't need to start purchasing everything from scratch. Another thing to keep an eye on is whether or not using a cube will become redundant in about a year. I say this because in the 3rd quarter of last year the first wireless hd cameras were released but only to the south korean market, so I would expect to be seeing them in European/American market quite soon. If you have any better ideas that might fit our requirements I would be very grateful to hear them because we are new to Matterhorn and do appreciate comments/advice from seasoned users. Best Regards Steve -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Rubén Pérez Sent: 29 March 2012 21:47 To: Opencast Community Subject: Re: [Opencast] Teradek Cube Hello, Steve, I would really like to know what you have in mind, because I confess I don't understand all the details. You're saying that you have a low budget for equipment and thus you don't want to set up a fixed installation in the classrooms, but at the same time you are willing to spend almost $2000 in a single transceiver. I'm guessing that you'll still need a camera and a computer to send the video stream to. You still need to connect the teacher's pc to get the VGA feed, which I don't know how you want to accomplish, and also how you're going to get the audio feed. Are you installing cameras in every classroom, or are you using a mobile camera, too? What about the audio set up? I can tell you that we are spending ca. €3000 in Vigo to equip one classroom, and even though this is a high figure, it includes: - An i7-based computer, with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of HD in a RAID-1, for redundancy - Please note that this computer is highly over-sized for a simple capture unit, but we are using this computers at night as Matterhorn workers. We could easily use much cheaper i3 computers if we were to use them as capturers only. - The Epiphan VGA2PCI framegrabber - An HD Logitech c910 webcam - A Behringer sound board - A wearable Revolabs Solo microphone - A set of two fixed stereo microphones, to work as backup - An audio gate to control the microphone gain - A tactile screen - A VGA splitter - All the cables and adapters needed for the installation All that installed in the classroom in a non-obstructive way and ready to use. You can see that we are not installing the cheapest equipment and that we could do with less (less powerful computers, no microphone array at all, cheaper frame grabber and/or microphones...), so the price could be much lower than that. The screen is required because we use Galicaster as our reference capture agent, but you could spare the screen if you are using the official Matterhorn Capture Agents. And still, all this stuff is roughly half as much the cost of a single Cube. As an alternative, you could think of having a pre-installation for audio and video, so that all the cables are installed and conveniently "hidden" from the public, and you'd only have to plug the VGA, audio, etc. from some panel next to the teacher's desk. But, again, it depends largely on what is your intended setup, if there are fixed cameras in each classroom, etc. Re. the Galicaster, I'd like to say: 1. Olav, thanks for testing and using it. Making something useful for ourselves, but also for others, was our final goal, and seeing people is happy with it makes us proud. 2. You *can* manage Galicaster remotely via VNC. We currently manage all our Galicaster equipments in such a way. Configuring Ubuntu for providing a VNC signal without a physical screen attached may be a bit tricky, though, but it can be done and it works perfectly. 3. That RTP feature seems very interesting. If you want to share your developments or concerns regarding that, we are more than happy to hear them and even contribute to get those functionality on board! There is a mail list for Galicaster users [1] and you are welcome to subscribe and share your experiences. I'm willing to hear Stephen's comments on their "ideal" setup, because this kind of discussions are good for adopters to make better decisions re. their classroom equipment. Best regards Rubén 2012/3/27 Olav Bringedal <[email protected]> > On 2012-03-22 16:47, Dr Leslaw Zieleznik wrote: > >> 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. >> >> > I think this might be an interesting product for capturing a screen > together with an IP-camera. We UiB have looked into solutions where we > can depend less on a stationary PC in the class room, and rather have > a virtualised agent. > > We have seen that the Galicaster agent is much easier to configure for > rtp streams than the native MH agent. We are currently working with > two > scenarios: > > 1: have a device (either epiphan vgabroadcaster or the epiphan MCD) > capture the screen and stream it to rtp. It is here the Tcube can be a > replacement. An ip-camera does the same. Then a galicaster agent takes > these streams as an agent. The drawback here is that the output for > the galicaster is native, and without a pc in the room, no feedback is > provided for the lecturer. If galicaster had a web interface we would > probably go for that right away. > > 2. Get the MCD to work and accept the (less than optimal) quality of > the s-video input. We see that the firmware on the MCD is also quite > buggy, and are very unsure if it is production worthy. > > > 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 >> >> > -- > > Olav Bringedal > > Seksjon for integrasjon og applikasjonsutvikling IT-Avdelingen UIB > > ______________________________**_________________ > Community mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.opencastproject.**org/mailman/listinfo/community<http://l > ists.opencastproject.org/mailman/listinfo/community> > > > To unsubscribe please email > community-unsubscribe@**opencastproject.org<community-unsubscribe@open > castproject.org> ______________________________**_________________ > _______________________________________________ Community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.opencastproject.org/mailman/listinfo/community To unsubscribe please email [email protected] _______________________________________________
