Video on network

[john]

Ok, converting going well, we have got 6 departments signed up, and going to do a full school staff presentation in 2 weeks for them to be able to have a good look and decide if they want to join us, and purchase a box if needed.

 

I have just been playing with Ulead Video Studio 9 to be able to add the required ERA screens at the start of the programs, it used to take 3hrs to re-encode a video in Win Movie Maker, now takes about 30 seconds in VideoStudio, so I recomend that for doing that job.

 

Been e-mailing video producers like mad, Channel 4 refused for there none broadcasted stuff, Boulton-Harker are not really sure / clear on it, but pointed me to an auzzie storage system that is a similar idea to what we are doing already, but its confusing, and Videotech have not come back to me yet, and we did put if we did not hear by the end of next week we would assume that permission was granted, so its looking good so far. The BBC have not come back to me yet, but we have a feeling it may be a no but who knows!

 

Here is another little puzzle for you, but is very realated to this. I have made a intranet site for listing the videos and linking to them. but, and its a big but, you have to authenticate as a user on the terrastore, but your normal domain account won't authenticate on it as its not AD aware

(Buffalo have just launched an Active Directory aware version, and its also SATA based with more brains to it, and looks good, its a Terrastore PRO for those interested, but I have got this and they have not upgraded the standards firmware, so for now I am stuck without AD intergration).

 

Anyway, when I hot link to it, it just crashes or refuses to play the files as it cannot authenticate as the domain user thats logged on. Is there a way to write into my link the username and password needed to authenticate with the store? I am not worried if its visible as lots of people know the details as its a general laptop local username and password that we are using so its not as if I am worried about the security aspect of a clearly visible password, but I could do with being able to hot link to them as trying to educate people to do \\terastore\.... is not simple, as loads cannot manage to get the the image store by that method, any thoughts.

 

The intranet site is hosted on IIS6 with Frontpage 2002 extentions if that helps. I have tried with Media Services on Server 2003 and could not get that to authenticate and run via that as I thought I may be able to bodge something together with that, but no cigar as they say. Also it prefers local hard drives rather than networked drives.

 

So any ideas??

[mac_shinobi]

Not sure if this is of any use, but what about :

 

http://www.peej.co.uk/articles/http-auth-with-html-forms.html

[john]

I will have a look and try a play with it later on, I am not a HTML expert

[john]

Ok, to update again...

 

I have been putting ERA stuff on, I got a reply back from BECTA, it took 3 weeks, but I got one, they are talking to the big names on a high level as they have seen that Schools around the country are wanting to bin DVD, VHS, Slides, CDs, Tapes, MDs etc and are in talks about the copyright, I got the feeling that there may be another licence like the ERA to buy per year in the end covering like 99% of things, like ERA does and the CLA, but maybe with some exclusions. They asked me to keep them informed of my progress with contacting makers of tapes and I agreed to so long as they kept me informed at all stages of there investigations so were not going round in circles as if I am helping them, I expect something back. No reponse as yet, but who knows.

 

I am presenting to HOD's next week the entire system, the staff that have been trialing it with us have been very impressed at the ease of use of both the wifi / wired players / DVD player boxes we have as well as the intranet based webpage.

 

For the authentication issue I posted, I did it in the end by putting a mapped drive in the logon script with authentication as part of the script. The username and password for the videos is no secret, all the staff know it as its the same as the local user and password on the laptops so its not as if its highly secure, and all it does is allow read / execute access, so they cannot do any damage to them, so its fine that its "visible" (the scripts are run minimised etc so its not that easy to spot), but that solved the authentication issue I had, as they are now authenticated, and can connect via an intranet page I have made.

[Richie1972]

Having just found this thread and being interested in providing one central point for all staff to access recordings (whether cd, dvd or tv). I was wondering how much further you have got with this.

Having not delved into the whole broadcasting thing before i'm going to have to ask what is ERA (I'm presuming some sort of broadcasting licensing authority)?

If so, then do LEA's sign up or is it up to each school?

Is there some sort of online document or website where I can find out exactly what we are entitled to view/listen to/record/etc?

[john]

Richie, the ERA is basically a licence for Off Air Recording, it is normally arranged via the LEA, but they send a form out / letter to tell you that you are covered and that you must follow the rules and regs etc... (or thats what NYCC did). For info on the ERA see here - http://www.era.org.uk/

 

As for progress, I have not got much further as companies are very slow at responding, I am still recording away from our ERA stuff, but it looks like I need to get some video editing software to try and clean some of the stuff up and maybe try a better way of getting the video into the PC rather than a TV tuner as the image quality can be iffy on older stuff.

[spc-rocket]

Hi all,

 

We're also looking to do a somekind of a video library of the vhs and dvds that we have purchased. Almost all teaching staff have a laptop so it would be great if we could do a one big massive library and digitise the videos with some kind of hierachy per department/subject.

 

certainly some interesting comment on this topic and gives a good starting off point. I was wondering would something like real player server be good for this kind of thing? helix server?. This would be good for the bandwidth and also for the storage space as well? Just wondering if anyone has tried this.

 

By the way we have the buffalo tera station pro and have download the AD intregration firmware but its a bit flakey at the moment as its beta so hoping they would fix this.

 

Ashok.

[GrumbleDook]

The other thing to be careful of is staff showing any old video to students (Harry Potter, etc)

 

http://www.filmbank.co.uk/default.asp for details about PVS licences from FilmBank who have agreements with most distributors.

[john]

I am using the original Buffalo Terrastore (the one without AD integration) and basically store everthing on that in Mpg format, and that works really well. It plays well over the network, doesn't kill our systems. We use Windows Media Player to play them and it works fine. I have written an Intranet page for the job, each subject has a page, and then I hyperlink to the file using the \\TERRASTORE\MEDIA\ENGLISH\TVPROG.mpg

 

I have got security setup on the Terrastore so as part of my logon script, it maps a V drive (V for videos) and the script has authentication written into it so it will authenticate again the terrastores local permissions as its not AD aware (the original that is) and that solves any authentication problems and allows them to play from the intranet system. So thats how I do it, and it works.

 

I also use the Buffalo Link Theatre media players, well worth the money (about £200) Wifi and Wired so that makes life very simple and easy.

[sahmeepee]

Did someone mention that you *have* to make people sit through a copyright/license warning at the start of the video? Are you still putting those on the start of your videos and have you looked at a way to stop people skipping it? To me it's a pointless exercise as the kids don't even read the things they're asked to, but I know my management bods would be quite hot on "doing it right" legally-speaking.

 

Presumably the streaming method gives you more control over that aspect, but may rule out using some of your Buffalo gear.

[john]

Yup you do, afraid so, but mine only last 6 seconds so its good enough, and i havent made it none skipable, it just is so short it doesnt cause any problems. I think I can make it none-skippable using full video editing technologys, but TBH I want people using the system and then finalise those little annoying things later.

[pete]

@John / whoever

How many videos are you planning on converting? I've just done a quick straw poll of video numbers in 3 depts and have 260 already. I'm damned if I'm converting that many + other depts.

 

Has anyone had success with a "if you want a dvd / network version of $video, here's the kit...." approach?

[Richie1972]

We're likely to be going down that route - and there's definitely no way I'm having my IT tech staff doing hundreds of videos. We'll be getting depts to do their own - with training from us on how to do it

[plexer]

The PVS licence only allows you to show vhs or dvd stuff ripped to the network and screened is not covered.

 

Ben

[Richie1972]

So, in other words, any school that has a media server setup to provide centralised storage of files is breaking the law, even if they still have the original media and a PVS licence?

Seems stupid - especially given that vhs tape, CDs and DVDs have limited life and suffer wear and tear

[plexer]

Yup:

 

"Under the terms of the PVS Licence it is the licensees' responsibility to obtain physical copies of any films they wish to screen. They may obtain such copies on VHS video or DVD from legitimate retail or rental outlets."

 

The Film must be in VHS or DVD format.

 

There must be no cutting, editing or copying of the Film.

 

There must be no screenings on diffusion systems.

 

Not sure what a diffusion system would be but that may relate to distirbuted showing of the film.

 

Ben

[Richie1972]

Perhaps they need to update the wording of their licence.

Looks like a media server is going to be going on the back burner I reckon.

A shame, but nothing we can do about it.

[john]

There are loads of stuff out there, out of all our stuff that I have had so far loads of stuff is useable. Remember ERA covers many many things, EG BBC Bitesize purchased on VHS tape it was already shown on TV so you can say you got it that way etc you just need to think out of the box as it were.

[GrumbleDook]

I only mentioned PVS because it hadn't been mentioned already and there are a number of schools that allow staff to shove any dvd or video on in front of the kids.

 

Yes, you can't serve it across the network from a secondary encoded format (ie dvd ripped to mpeg) but it can be run from a network jukebox (played from the original media across the network) which was at one time a selling point for Avantis CD/DVD servers until people realised that it meant you *had to put the DVD in the DVD drive to watch it and not just have the image stored on the server* (hmm ... back to the white elephant thread)

[john]

Yup Tony's got it with those "lovely" CD / DVD Server thingys (thankfully I never had the joys of those things!) I think there may well be a licencing scheme on the way to allow you to do many things thats the impression I got from BECTA when I last had contact with them on this subject, so who knows

[contink]

Happuage USB2 TV card (elcheapo Insight offer of £35)

VCR / DVD Player (external boxes not internal stuff)

Connecting leads

Resurrecting this topic to get a bit more intel on the hardware setup as I'm a liddle unsure as to what exactly is required for a SCART setup.

 

I'm looking to translate a few videos from way back to DVD but would like the option to grab from a video/DVD with a SCART plug so can you give a few tips on what I'd need then.

 

Something tells me it's now quite the same USB2 card unit..

 

Any help appreciated because the audio video side of things is a bit of an untouched area for me.

 

Thanks

[john]

You want a VCR and a TV Card, input into TV card, record "TV" and away you go, thats it on its most simplest level. You can get a dedicated Capture Card which has more inputs, but I have not seen one that has a scart on it, its normally Composite, S-Video or RF out.

[john]

Ok to update, this method is still going, but its slow going so ive changed setup, got a decent Core2Duo PC with more ram and loads of storage. I use Ulead Video Studio for editing now, and also record directly to DVD using a DVD Recorder with built in Freeview, it also has a built in VCR so I can copy VHS to DVD so I can "digitise" videos easier and then bin the VCR and then just chuck the DVDs contents on the server very quickly.

[Andrew_C]

We’re trialling a system called Click View at the moment, and apart from a networking problem (one machine talks to the server, the one next to it won’t) it looks good. They sell it with a bunch of educational videos (Australian accents will provide a giggle for the kids).

 

I’ll report back when it is working properly.

[Sylv3r]

We’re trialling a system called Click View at the moment, and apart from a networking problem (one machine talks to the server, the one next to it won’t) it looks good. They sell it with a bunch of educational videos (Australian accents will provide a giggle for the kids).

 

I’ll report back when it is working properly.

 

We looked at that but decided it would be more cost effective if we created our own media streaming box. We use Windows Media Services as part of Windows 2003 server and created our own front end.

 

See below for screen shots.