Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

Indiana University selects Matrox Monarch LCS and Kaltura for classroom lecture captures

Founded in 1820, Indiana University is a public institution with eight campuses statewide, students exceeding 114,000, more than 20,000 faculty and staff members, and over 600 classes. For the last five years, the university has used hardware and PC-based software lecture capture systems to cover these classes. The systems were proprietary, difficult to operate and maintain, expensive (hence not every room was equipped for lecture capture), did not have media management, and lacked the ability to allow other video content to be integrated into their environment.

Therefore, Indiana University decided to replace their lecture capture systems with a new solution. The university’s main goal was to have lecture capture in every classroom, while having a centralized video management system that was both flexible and scalable to keep up with future needs. They decided on Kaltura.

With the Kaltura video platform in place for the past three years, the next step was to find a compatible encoder to replace the previous hardware-based lecture capture systems. Typically, the university uses appliances for capturing lectures in large and complex classes (with 70 to 300 students) as well as auditoriums. Indiana University tested nine different solutions before choosing the Matrox Monarch LCS H.264 encoder.

By integrating Monarch LCS’s scheduling feature into the Kaltura video platform, interaction from the professor or operator is eliminated. The Monarch LCS-Kaltura integration ties them together in constant communication. Scheduled events are entered through the Kaltura MediaSpace user interface, either before or during a semester. These events can be changed, added, or removed at anytime, and the Monarch LCS picks the updates automatically from its end. At the scheduled event start/stop time, the Monarch LCS units automatically start or stop the operation.

The lectures’ in-room camera and the lecture content (for example, PowerPoint slides) are captured with the Monarch LCS in dual-isolated mode. This enables, through the Kaltura multi-stream player, several dynamic viewing options such as picture-in-picture and side-by-side during the playback of the material while maintaining synced audio and video.

After the lectures are recorded (either locally to an SD card or USB attached storage), the Monarch LCS transfers the files over the network to Kaltura, at a later suitable time, eliminating the risk of network congestion. An XML metadata file containing the video file names, length, professor’s name, and other information that is displayed on the web page where the video is hosted is also uploaded. Kaltura transcodes the videos to different formats and resolutions, and automatically publishes them onto the university’s Canvas learning management system (LMS) to be viewed by different devices (Apple, Android, PC, Mac etc.). Students review the lectures from Canvas.

Math, science, and economics courses were among the classrooms that were first equipped with Monarch LCS. Each classroom setup is a little different with up to nine video sources - document cameras, auto-tracking PTZ cameras, PowerPoints, Blu Ray player, DVD player, etc. - connected to a video switcher. The switcher provides HDMI input to the Monarch LCS encoder. Supporting material on a laptop is connected directly to the Monarch LCS’s second HDMI input. The professors use a Crestron or other controller on a lectern to select which video source they want, when they need it.

Kaltura Lecture Capture software is installed on computers for software-based lecture capture in other classrooms as well as faculty devices for recording preparatory materials in professors’ offices. Since common PCs can be used to deploy Kaltura Lecture Capture, it is a low-cost software solution for mass deployment in smaller-sized classes, in addition to the integration with the Monarch LSC appliances in the larger classrooms.

www.matrox.com

© 1999 - 2024 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories