Lecture Capture

[chris11256]

Morning All,

 

Does anyone have any recommendations for lecture capture? Next academic year SLT have the idea that we'll offer hybrid lectures, with speakers physically attending with students watching remotely(as we can't fit both year groups in our hall).

 

We do have Planet eStream, currently so I've got an eye on their lecture capture solution. However my concern is audio, I'm not much of an AV person so it is possible to capture the output from the wireless microphones we have(sorry if it sounds stupid)?

Edited May 18, 2021 by chris11256

[mavhc]

All your audio goes back to a mixing desk I assume, you'd just take another output from that into the computer. Is this live, or recording? Or both?

 

Do you want output from a presentation also captured?

 

What kind of lectures are they? What age groups?

[chris11256]

I think the desire is to have both live streaming & offer a recording afterwards. We do have a mixing desk, but I'm not too familiar with it, will take a look.

 

Yes we'd also need to capture the computer screen.

 

We're a sixth form, so years 12-13. The lectures vary each week, with a variety of external speakers invited. Last week we had the local mayor, next month we've got Philip Zimbardo. So it's really varied.

[mavhc]

So main question is how to get data from a camera (tripod+zoom), the audio mixing desk, and the laptop that's doing the presentation all to one place, that hopefully also has ethernet, for a computer to sit and process it all. OBS is the standard software to combine everything and can stream as well to various platforms.

 

And how to get hdmi in. Depends on the camera but you can get hdmi to usb devices for £10.

[dmason2]

we record lectures in teams, create a team for the classes and have the students and class teacher in the team. Record the meetings that way the team will automatically save the recordings in the team for the students to easily access

[SamanthaD]

We use Sonic Foundry's Mediasite. It's hardware based rather than placing extra demands on the teaching PC. Lots of functionality that you may or may not want to use. If you want to know more feel free to PM.

[SamanthaD]

Just seen this is probably a one off room rather than a site-wide type thing - if you want an easy, all in one box I'd have a look at the Extron SMP352 - Records and streams 2 sources easily with easy to configure PiP options. Worth a bit of time investigating!

[MichaelH]

Hi,

 

Not done anything more complex than a webcam into a pc / laptop before so this looks interesting.

 

Is this extron box able to 'mix' the audio and video from different sources?

[supportman]

The Planet Estream solution works well with the ceiling mic. Just make sure you get the modern cameras. We have an older one which doesn't work as well as the new ones. Edited July 1, 2021 by supportman

[slugshead]

OBS on a dedicated PC that's capable of higher bitrate encoding. Live stream to Youtube, enable DVR in youtube and you've got a recording there saved for you.

 

Blackmagic ATEM mini to capture multiple HDMI sources and feed them to OBS https://www.dv247.com/en_GB/GBP/Black-Magic-Design-ATEM-Mini/art-LIG0017193-000

 

Cameras all have to have HDMI out, HDMI to the ATEM mini from the laptop too.

 

Mix the main LR channels from mixing desk into another output (Like an aux or monitor) and put that into the Line in on the PC or the ATEM Mini

[SamanthaD]

Hi,

 

Not done anything more complex than a webcam into a pc / laptop before so this looks interesting.

 

Is this extron box able to 'mix' the audio and video from different sources?

If you look at the "Diagram" tab it shows you a plethora of ways you can connect all your sources etc to it, including audio. And yes it can switch audio and video (and do PiP), but doesn't do the fancy fades and wipes etc of a video mixer. The "Description" tab gives a good run down of the features.

[MichaelH]

Hi, thanks very much for your responses, given me a few things to think about. The diagrams show a SCM (Streaming Content Manager), extron shows this as 'retired'. Forgive my ignorance, but what would I use to then stream it on my network?

[SamanthaD]

Hi, thanks very much for your responses, given me a few things to think about. The diagrams show a SCM (Streaming Content Manager), extron shows this as 'retired'. Forgive my ignorance, but what would I use to then stream it on my network?

From what I can see SCM was just software that allowed you to download the recorded content? The encoder does all the work for the actual streaming. You can then watch via PC (VLC Player etc) or via a decoder box. The videos explain a lot as well.