The development of virtPresenter Software has stopped! We are concentrating our resources on Opencast Matterhorn Projekt here you can finde many experiences we made by deveolpint virtPresenter.


 

virtPresenter turns into Matterhorn!

The further develpment of the virtPresenter framework officially won't proceed. The reason for this decision is the participation of the developers in the community project opencast. There an extendent successor of the virtPresenter called Matterhorn will be developed. The Matterhorn-Product will include the following features:

  • Administrative tools for scheduling automated recordings, manually uploading files, managing metadata
  • Recommended capture agent hardware specifications
  • Integration with recording devices in the classroom for managing automated capture
  • Distribution to channels such as YouTube, iTunes, and supporting services to push content to campus course or content management system
  • Rich media user interface for learners to engage with content, including playback, content-based search, and captioning
  • Processing and encoding services that prepare and package the media files for distribution

Next to the University of Osnabrück following departments are involved into the project:

  • UC Berkeley
  • ETH Zürich
  • Cambridge University
  • Indiana University
  • Northwestern University
  • Jozef Stefan Institute
  • Open University of Catalonia
  • University of Copenhagen
  • University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • University of Saskatchewan
  • University of Toronto
  • University of Vigo

The first prototype is planned for January 2010.

Open Source Framework for lecture recording

The virtPresenter Framework is designed for automatic production of lecture recordings. It can be scaled easily and is available as open source software. The manual effort for technicians and support has been reduced on less than one-eighth of the recording-time. The output formats, that should be be produced, can be individually defined. Possible output formats are: Video and slides synchronously, Audio Podcast, Video Podcast and Enhanced Podcast.

For the synchronously presentation of videos and slides the advanced Flash technology has been used at an early stage and a player with wide functions has been developed with Flex 2. A special function is the full-text search in all of the slides of a lecture. For the streaming we rely on the Open Source solution Red5. This combination of technologies excels besides the small prime costs especially by their good performance with minor bandwidth and a smaller load on the client computer.

The interface to the AV-Content Management System lernfunk enables an easy administration and publication of the recordings in the different systems of an academy.

Modules of the virtPresenter Framework:

  • Recording-Computer on Linux-Basis (available as Live-CD)
  • Production Chain incl. Conversion-Server
  • Player
  • Plug-Ins for different systems such as Learning Management Systems