JISC Digital Media Blog Archive
October 2008

Camtasia Relay

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Monday 27 October 2008 at 12:57pm
Tags: e-learning | screen capture | video

At the other end of the spectrum from Steve’s post on a lightweight, open source screen recorder, but also of interest to those needing live screen capture with additional audio and video, is a new product from TechSmith - Camtasia Relay. Designed for educational institutions wanting to record lectures, including presentations, video and sound recording, Camtasia Relay sits on a dedicated Win2003 server and routes recordings taken in lecture venues across site directly to Blackboard via the network.

From our first impressions, Camasia Relay looks to offer a much more streamlined workflow for academics wanting to provide live-capture course materials in a variety of file sizes and formats via their VLE, but without the legwork of manually saving, editing, compressing, delivering etc. Blackboard course profiles and filetype preferences can all be stored along with the user’s other network LDAP preferences, and applied automatically to content as it is uploaded.

The new recorder front-end which will accompany the server software, and which allows up to a licensed number of simultaneous recordings over the whole site, is also PC and Mac compatible, allowing greater freedom in choosing presentation and other software tools (especially pleasing as I write this post on a Mac Pro !). We hope to see Camtasia Recorder’s trademark ease of use preserved, and its capabilities enhanced with new features.

TASI will have an evaluation system up and running soon, to see whether all these promises are fulfilled !

Free, open source screen capture program

Posted by Steve Hull on Wednesday 15 October 2008 at 1:35pm
Tags: e-learning | open source | screen capture | teaching

There’s a nice little open source screen capture program available on the web for Windows users.  CamStudio will record whatever happens on all or part of your screen, but there are a few nice extras as well.

Images are captured into an AVI file, but if you wish it will simultaneously produce an SWF version. You can record and play back the recording at different rates; you could, for example, play something back at 5 times the speed you recorded it at and impress the viewers with your speedy typing.

Various screen annotations can be created before or during the recording in a variety of shapes and sizes.  You can choose to have CamStudio record a different cursor shape from the one you are using or even get it to add a highlight behind the cursor to make it more visible.  Best of all, there’s an ‘autopan’ feature which causes CamStudio to follow the cursor around on the screen.

There are a number of audio and video options which I haven’t been able to test out, including some facility for video annotation.  That said, there are lots of interesting and useful features and a pleasantly simple interface.  It would be worthwhile as a purchase: as a free download it’s tremendous.

TASI launches free online tutorial

Posted by Dave Kilbey on Tuesday 14 October 2008 at 11:19am
Tags: news

Internet for Image Searching is a new, free-to-use online tutorial to assist staff and students within the education sphere in locating images for use in both teaching and learning.

Internet for Image Searching is a new, free-to-use online tutorial to assist staff and students within the education sphere in locating images for use in both teaching and learning.

The emphasis of the tutorial is on finding copyright cleared images which are available free; facilitating quick, hassle-free access to a vast range of online photographs and other visual resources.

Sharon Waller from the HEA/JISC Collaboration commented on the new tutorial saying:

“This tutorial is an excellent resource for anyone needing to know more about where and how to find images online.  The fact that it concentrates on copyright cleared images will make it even more valuable for busy learning and teaching professionals, researchers and students alike.  It will also serve to inspire confidence in those needing to use images from the web in their work.”

Sol Picciotto, Professor of Law at Lancaster University gave the tutorial the following review:

“Congratulations on this tutorial. It’s really excellent, very well set out, and the information on copyright is presented clearly and accurately.  It really fills a gap, and does so extremely well.”

This tutorial has been created by TASI - the JISC Advisory Service for digital media and Intute.  The tutorial was funded and supported by the Higher Education Academy / JISC Collaboration Initiative.

We’ve got you surrounded

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Monday 13 October 2008 at 3:34pm
Tags: microphones | surround sound

As 5.1 surround sound finally enters the mainstream, with the ready availability of affordable consumer systems, the need for the ability to record audio in three dimensions has become pressing. Surround sound can lend an atmosphere to a recording where mere stereo (or, god forbid, mono) will struggle. However, surround recording has thus-far been an esoteric and technically (not to mention financially) challenging business.

In this highly specialised field, Soundfield microphones have become the de facto standard for recording music and sporting events in multiple (and simultaneous) surround and stereo formats. They are used by the BBC and many major broadcasters, and now a Soundfield microphone is almost within reach of the semi-pro recordist, with the release of the keenly anticipated  ‘budget’ SPS200 in Sept 2008 

Unlike the traditional Soundfield range, which are all accompanied by rackmounting matrix decoder units, the SPS200 uses the computer to derive its various output configurations (5.1, 7.1, M/S stereo etc) from its tetrahedral capsule array (pictured) within a host software DAW such as Pro-Tools.

A key benefit of the Soundfield range is their near-perfect mono/stereo compatibility, once the surround signals are ’folded’ down by the decoding process. This is one of the main reasons cited by the BBC for the replacement of sections of their necessarily complex microphone arrays at the Proms in 2008 with a single Soundfield and decoder, as their listeners use a wide range of mono, stereo and surround formats, all of whom need support. They also now incorporate a Soundfield into their mic array at the Centre Court at Wimbledon - one of their earliest proofing grounds for surround recording.

TASI team audio hope very much to get the chance to evaluate an SPS200 soon, and we will share our findings here !

Soundfield SPS200

Soundfield tetrahedral capsule

Smush it up

Posted by Antony Theobald on Thursday 09 October 2008 at 4:51pm
Tags: copyright | image editing | metadata | software

The developers of a potentially useful new online tool for optimising images have hastily withdrawn one of the main ‘image crushing’ features it launched with.

The developers of a potentially useful new online tool for optimising images have hastily withdrawn one of the main ‘image crushing’ features it launched with.

Smush.it allows users to upload images, enter image URLs or use a Firefox extension to act on any online image. The tool quickly recompresses and/or reformats images “without changing their look or visual quality” and claims it can significantly reduce the size of bloated web pages.

The tool uses a number of existing open source algorithms to create the smaller file sizes. When Yahoo Developer Network announced it last week, one of the main features was that it could automatically strip metadata from JPEG files. This feature has now been temporarily withdrawn in light of some concern over the ease with which copyright information could be removed from an image’s IPTC fields.

Thankfully the developers, Stoyan Stefanov and Nicole Sullivan, are working on new ways to minimise file sizes without removing copyright information. Some would argue that none of the metadata should be removed.

Pro Tools 8

Posted by Joel Eaton on Monday 06 October 2008 at 3:23pm
Tags: audio editing | pro tools

Digidesign have offered a sneak preview of their latest audio production system, Pro Tools 8, a sharp response to Apples latest offering, Logic Studio.

With a sleeker GUI, and more bundled musical software, Digidesign appear to be stepping up to the challenge of providing an all in one music creation and post-production package.

Having previously stuck to its audio recording basis while competitors tapped in on the home production market, Pro Tools 8 is Digidesign's direct attempt to exploit the need of the home studio producer for a system complete for programming, recording, editing, mixing, mastering and post-production.

Digidesign are finally (albeit very slowly) letting go of their exclusive hold on Pro-Tools hardware. Further third party support for interfaces and controllers has been announced for the M-Powered version of Pro Tools 8, welcome progress, and good news for the critics.

There appears to be some nice new editing features, including a lock region to timeline function, a helpful tool for avoiding accidents, and an advanced automation layout. For the LE and M-Powered versions, the maximum number of channels has been increased to 48, and a new feature, Elastic Pitch, is introduced, which allows you to effortlessly manipulate or correct the pitch of any audio region in real time, right inside the Edit window.

There is a wealth of new instruments, including soft synths, a drum machine and 20 new effects. Also included is 8Gb of royalty-free audio loops in an obvious attempt to win over the more production orientated consumer.

There is a brief mention of new surround mixing capabilities (finally!), which is massively overdue and what promises to be a better MIDI editor, which has previously let Pro-Tools down.

Whether or not the new look interface will put off loyal users from upgrading straight away remains to be seen, as does the success of the attempt to lure home producers back to Pro-Tools (the cost will certainly play an important part in this). But it seems that Pro-Tools has finally caught onto where the music making industry is going, I only hope that by improving it's previous flaws and changing the interface it hasn't lost it's simplicity and ease of use which previously set it apart.

Although there's no mention of a release date yet, further details and a demo video of Pro-Tools 8 in action can be found here. Watch this space for a full product review in the near future.