Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Wen Hao Chuang -
Number of replies: 17

Hi, all:

I'm kinda new to Moodle although I'm quite excited about this open-source platform. I'm currently volunteering at San Francisco State University as a developer and researcher. We are trying to develop some tools for moodle, and one thing that we are thinking about is to develop a add-on module to integrate streaming video with syncrhonized PPT (PowerPoint) files for online presentations. I did find there is another exciting project called "PowerPoint Flips" (see: http://powerpointflip.sourceforge.net/index.php) which seems to be exactly what we are trying to achieve, but the next step is to "integrate" this open source project with Moodle. The goal is that the instructor (or the course developer) only have to upload PPT and streaming video (.rm or quicktime movie) files to the Moodle server, and this add-on module will automatically generate SMIL files that could be used for a synchronized video presentation. Just curious whether there are anyone out there who are already doing this type of integration, and if so, what is your status right now? If anyone who are interested in helping out with this integration project, please also let me know. Thanks!

best regards,

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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Ray Lawrence -
I know anything about how to achieve your objectives, but I wondered whilst reading your post whether it might be be easier to use video and PPT converted to flash as Moodle already has a filter for this format.
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In reply to Ray Lawrence

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Wen Hao Chuang -
wow, thanks! We just set up a server and are still testing it. Could you please give me a direct link for the PPT -> Flash filter and its documentation? Also, could it do video/voice sync with the PowerPoint? Many thanks! smile
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In reply to Ray Lawrence

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Wen Hao Chuang -

Hi Ray, by the way, the main reason that we are a bit hesitate to do so (to use video and PPT converted to Flash instead of Quicktime) is because that we already invest our money and time on using Quicktime format (including Quicktime streaming server). We don't really want to invest another server and server software to switch to Flash format as all of our live and archive videos are in QT format (see: http://coursestream.sfsu.edu).

Plus, it seems that Flash MX in terms of streaming video/audio it might have some limitations. For example, someone mentioned in the old Flash 6.0 (Flash MX 1.0) it is bounced by the limitation of 15000 frames (10 minutes
of 25fps video and 20 minutes for 12.5 fps video), I'm not sure whether the new 7.0 version still have this limitation or not. According to the online document, the Flash communication server 1.5 is also limited to connection. Here is a quote from their online document:

The Personal Edition is a complete development and deployment package for websites and applications requiring less than 1 Megabit per second of peak bandwidth or 50 simultaneous connections. The Personal Edition is a complete development and deployment package for websites and applications requiring less than 1 Megabit per second of peak bandwidth or 50 simultaneous connections.

For more peak bandwidth or simultaneous connections, please purchase the Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX Professional Edition by clicking on the product on the right.

I would be interested to see some detailed comparison of using the newest versions of Flash MX, Quicktime, Microsoft Media, and Real Media for live and archive streaming video purposes, their pros and cons, and so on... Anyone?

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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Moodle also has a filter for Quicktime

by Michael Penney -
so it doesn't seem like an issue.

I'd say stick with QT, as you can stream either Real or QT (and wmv if MS ever decides to support proper mpeg4) and the command line version of the server is free,  x86 compliant, and OSS (sort ofsmile (Darwin Streaming Server) so folks who don't want to buy a Mac can still use it.

In any event, it's pretty easy to hack filter.php to support another video type (or any sort of embedded file).

As far as the comparison, the quality issues between the big streamers (QT/Real/WMV)are really moot, imo. Having beein involved in streaming since it became possible (what was that, QT4? Real 5?) the video/audio quality at bandwidth x  jumps of one vendor are always transitory.

The main advantage of Flash is the smaller size of the player,  the quality at a given bandwidth is presently lower than Qt and Real's mpeg4 (and due to the player size issue probably always will be),  but it is easier for folks on modem connections to download the flash player if they don't have it, by a factor of about 6 (1mb vs ~6mb).

However, if most (or even many) of your students are on modems, you probably don't want to use  any video at all, in which case a pure audio stream (and distribute the QT installer on CD to the class- you can get a free license from Apple for this)  is going to give you more quality at a better bandwidth, as Qt's streaming audio codecs are vastly superior to Flash's hoary  mp3.

IMO, flash makes the most sense as an http streaming/progressive video player (no special server required), due to it's ubiquity and size of the player, but when rtsp is called for, esp. in an educational setting-where you have a known client/student list and method of communicating with them other than via the streaming video page, ie they are not tranistory viewers who will leave if it doesn't work right away, QT is a better choice.
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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
I know very little about this question, but I agree with Ray that Moodle's new Flash plugin for streaming video may be of help. Also consider this... the presentation module in OpenOffice has a superior conversion to Flash-Web presentation export. Much better than the Powerpoint export to web that I tried on a recent MS Office version.  But the open source PPT Flip idea you mention sounds really cool.   I would definitely use it because my school is totally PPT oriented.
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Wen Hao Chuang -
Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking. I think most of the professors in our school are so used to use PowerPoint and they probably don't want to migrate to use Open Office. So for us instructional designers we will have to take this into consideration as we might be talking about converting tons of PPT files to Open Office format in order to convert to Flash for Moodle...
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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Andrea Bicciolo -

Hi Wen, We are strongly interested on such integration. We publish several production of this kind and we would be very interested to help in the integration not only from a technical point but also keeping into account problem arising from production, post-production and publishing .

Some samples we published from live lectures:

We also made some work using flash, for example: http://www.sibce.it/eventi/2002_11_15/convegno.html (lectures #3, #5 and #9)

At the present time the work we make are external from Moodle, usually we integrate them in Moodle as "resources".

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In reply to Andrea Bicciolo

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Wen Hao Chuang -

Dear Andrea:

Wow, nice work. I think you are a bit ahead of us. Here is what we have so far:

http://coursestream.sfsu.edu/

I wonder how you did the PowerPoint and the streaming video synchronization using Flash format, did you manually do the synchronization or using any special tools?? Many thanks!

I'm studying the moodle codes and structure right now and hopefully I could start to work on this add-on very soon.

best,

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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Andrea Bicciolo -

Hi Wen, thanks to taking time to see the synched presentation. The presentations you visited are synched during production, not post production. This is due to several needs some of wich are listed below and are all based on our experience made on several live presentation production:

  1. lecturers are often busy man. And very often they cannot or does not like to attend post production session where they tell to some techies when a slide should change. It is also at least impossible to obtain the lecturer to install a unknown software in their ultimate $$$$$ laptop in order to record slide changes.
  2. not always lectures are made via powerpoint. Sometimes there are used overhead projector with transparencies.
  3. lectures are usually live, and the actually presented slides may (and usually do) differ from the sequence they are listed in the powerpoint file. Sometime, lecturers uses huge ppt files from where they choose what slide to show.
  4. often the only way to get the presentation file from lecturers is at the end of the live lecture itself. Since lecturer are busy man, too often they forget to send you the powerpoint file by email (or they cannot send it since it is too big)
  5. power point may be a huge file. Since the presentation are run from local computer, people tends to enrich them with graphics, images and so on. We usually get powerpoint files for presentation from 8MB to 16MB, and sometimes we got files of 50MB. And if a slide is very big, the download time (especially on analog modem connections) may be longer than the time interval between two slide.
  6. flash swf format (at least for flash 6 aka mx, should check for version 7 if it still has the same limit  aka mx2004) should not be used for long video productions due to its limit of 15000 frames, wich lead to a 10 minutes 25fps video and 20 minutes for a 12.5 fps video
  7. user very often does not like or their privileges does not allow to install plugins (especially large plugin) other than the plugin most widely used (flash, windows media, acrobat, realmedia) plugins usually already present as default also in corporate institutions.

What we actually do is to work during production, aka when the lecture is made. Minimum  setup is 1 camera,  1 operator computer, 1 TV monitor (lights, wireless mic or whatever depending on budget. Highly recommended a suite of usb memory stick, flash memory, cd-r, floppy etc. to be sure to have the right medium to get the files!). Lecturer use its own (independent) computer  or overhead projections transparencies or wathever.

The operator computer is synched with the Time Code Record (TCR) of the camera (can easily be done manually since you are in the order of synching the second, not the frame), When the camera run, the same TCR is shown in the operator computer and when the lecturer change slide, the operator just hit "return" (in the operator computer) and the TCR is saved. Optionally the operator may add comment useful to identify the slide during post production. At the end of this process you have a comma separated text file with the TCR sequence of the slide. You can import this file in a spreadsheet, then copy and paste in a NLE product wich support the pasting of  media commands with supplied TCR. Now export your video as windows media, quick time, real media or whatever format support embedded URL flips commands with all synch done.

And for power point? Due to usual power point slide huge size, we prefer to export them as jpg (they could also be swf or pdf). Jpg export is an automated process from within power point. The jpg are then embedded into html files automatically created and numbered from the comma separated file generated during production. The only manual work is to delete the slides eventually not shown by lecturers, and for this work is usefull to have comments added to the TCRs.

The files you obtain in the way described are files that can be uploaded on any http server (also offline) and can be accessed by the most part of client with the most commonly installed plugin.
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In reply to Andrea Bicciolo

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Wen Hao Chuang -

Hi, Andrea:

You mentioned that "Lecturer use its own (independent) computer  or overhead projections transparencies or wathever.....The operator computer is synched with the Time Code Record (TCR) of the camera (can easily be done manually since you are in the order of synching the second, not the frame), When the camera run, the same TCR is shown in the operator computer and when the lecturer change slide, the operator just hit "return" (in the operator computer) and the TCR is saved. Optionally the operator may add comment useful to identify the slide during post production. At the end of this process you have a comma separated text file with the TCR sequence of the slide. You can import this file in a spreadsheet, then copy and paste in a NLE product wich support the pasting of  media commands with supplied TCR. Now export your video as windows media, quick time, real media or whatever format support embedded URL flips commands with all synch done..."

So in your case, I guess that the "operator" is probably a student helper who is not the Lecturer him/herself. Could you elaborate a little bit more about your hardware/software setting for the "operator computer" and the camera (I assume that you mean DV camcorder or a Web cam)? Also, how do you sync/connect these two devices so that the TCR (and when the operator hit the "Enter" key to advance to the next slide) can be recorded and these time code "marks" can be used for doing PPT syncing with the video later? Do you simply "compare" manually with the marks to do the sync job?  Also, in general, how many man-hours would be needed to produce a video archive for a 1-hour lecture? Many thanks! smile

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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Andrea Bicciolo -

Wen, our usual setup is a professional DVCAM recorder with 1 wireless mic and 1 line mic as backup, 1 laptop computer and 1 TV monitor. Yes, the computer operator is not the lecturer itself. Lecturer can show whatever they want with wathever system.

To let the operator computer be aware of  running TCR, we wrote a small program wich cope with this using computer internal timer: the only thing to rememebr is to start the computer TCR in sync with the camera TCR. We do it manually, just setting a small time offset (just few seconds) in the operator computer then starting the operator computer timer when the camer TCR reach the same time (just look at the tv monitor repeating the camera TCR!). We can do this since we does not need thight frame based sync but only second based sync: in this way we avoid complex and pricey hardware and usually we cope with an absolute error of about 5-15 frames, wich is far better than needed.

From here, the operator hit return when a slide is changed, thus creating a formatted text file, ready to be imported into a spreadsheet application wich looks like the following:

00:01:24:23,URL,h01_001.htm&&mainFrame,001,primo messaggio
00:01:36:22,URL,h01_002.htm&&mainFrame,002,secondo messaggio
00:01:43:21,URL,h01_003.htm&&mainFrame,003,terzo

As you can see, there is the TCR, the command type, the url name and target frame, the slide sequence and the optional comment. To complete the work, you need a NLE system which is able to import spreadsheet file. We use Sony Vegas 5 (you may remember Sonic Foundry Vegas...) wihch allow you to copy the above file from a spreadsheet and paste it directly into Vegas special command editor, wich transform each spreadsheet line into a nicely timeline distributed media command. Easy, is'n't it?

In this way, synching is really done during the lecture and the time needed is as long as the lecture itself, but avoiding post production time needs with the often unavailable lecturer.

Some additional man time can be needed if the lecturer skips some slides, but this is a very fast work, in about one hour you can usually cope with more than 4-5 hours of lectures.

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In reply to Andrea Bicciolo

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Wen Hao Chuang -

Oh, I just found a interesting shareware that might be able to do what we want to do:

http://www.pcworlddownload.com/business/presentation/PresenterSoft-MediaEasy.htm

PresenterSoft MediaEasy - Create multimedia presentations with powerpoint , video, music and flash.

It seems that this software can take regular PowerPoint (PPT) files and videos and then output with a flash (swf) file format with synchronization. It probably won't be able to do the "sync" automatically (therefore still require man power and time to "sync" it) but should be a reasonable solution.. for now.

Once the "sync-ed" streaming video with PPT have been converted into Flash (SWF), I assume that all you have to do is to upload to your Moodle site and put a link to it and ta-da-- you have a video presentation with PowerPoint.. am I correct?? Comments?

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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Andrea Bicciolo -

That's very interesting tool. Looks like MS producer but without MS producer limits (such as the download of a large office automation plugin and the windows-media-only support).

On the counterpart synching seems to be made in a pseudo linear-way fashion, and it may be time consuming. Also, who make the synch should be the lecturer himself or a people directly supported by the le lecturer.

In any case, good tool. Where do you read about swf export?

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In reply to Andrea Bicciolo

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Wen Hao Chuang -

Dear Andrea:

Any progress to integrate your streaming video site (Flash or Windows Media) with Moodle?? Just curious...

Ideally, I'm trying to think of a better way to reduce production man power and make it easier to integrate Moodle with streaming video server (we are using Quicktime streaming right now)... don't think we could throw in more money to buy a Flash communication server so might need to live with QT... any idea or discussion would be highly appreciated.

best,

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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Andrea Bicciolo -

Hi Wen, yes we made more tries and currently the solution we found to integrate in Moodle synched progressive download file is the use of Realmedia files instead of Windows media. They can be downloaded and synched also from a protected Moodle course area, something Windows media seems not to support until version 10. With Flash we had some success, but also some troubles we still wasn't able to isolate and fix. Read my (last) post here about how write redirector files for Moodle using RealMedia progressive download.

About the use of FlashComm server, why you would use it? If you need something synchronous it may be needed (such as multipoint live video/audio conferencing), but for progressive download (post-produced non-live on-demand) files it is not a requirement.  The sample at http://www.sibce.it/eventi/2002_11_15/convegno.html (lectures #3, #5 and #9) does not use FlashComm server at all but only progressive download.

About the reduction of manpower it would be nice. At the present time I does not have better idea on how to reduce production time or production staff:. the setup described in my previous posts allowed us to dramatically reduce post-production time and to post produce without the presence of anybody involved in the lecture, thus publishing on the internet in few hours after the lecture event.  If you have better ideas, let discuss about!

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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Enhance Moodle with streaming video and synchronized PPT

by Michael Penney -
Hi Wen, I think QTSS is a good choice as a default, since it is available free and on x86 (using darwin) and streams real as well.

It ought not to be hard to allow folks to choose another streaming format if they need to, maybe in a config screen?
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