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.

The virtPresenter PowerPoint Listener

Introduction

In programming a listener is a tool that awaits events in order to take action. The PowerPoint listener waits for PowerPoint to communicate him if a slide is changed, an animation-effect is triggered or the presentation is finished. The listener takes the times on which the events are triggered in order to reconstruct the course of the presentation.

Use of the listener

Before the lecture one does not start PowerPoint itself, but a little program, where the presentation is chosen and further information for the upcoming lecture can be entered. When below the start button is activated the recording is started on the Video-Recording-Computer, the PowerPoint-Presentation is rehashed a little bit for the virtPresenter which is not conspicuous while the lecture, and of course PowerPoint is started.

If the presentation is started in PowerPoint the clocking begins. Every Event is logged and saved as an XML-file. As soon as the Presentation-Mode is closed a dialog appears and the contributor is asked, if he also wants to stop the recording.
During the presentation the PowerPoint-File is unnoticeably saved on a central FTP-Server. After the lecture the files with the fixed times and the metadata are copied on this server. If something goes wrong while the transmission a copy of the data remains on the notebook of the contributor.

Things to know for the Video-Recording

The real recording starts by running the Presentation-Mode in PowerPoint, even if the Video-Recording already started before. The part that has been recorded before is snipped out automatically in the post-production. However it is just possible to cut the recording exactly to the start of the presentation, when the recording is started a bit earlier. Otherwise a small period would be absent at the beginning, because the Recording-Technique needs some seconds start-up time.

Administrative

An Admin has to adjust the configuration of the listener prior to the use in the lectures. The required URLs of the servers and an explicit ID for the series of events must be entered. If the virtPresenter is used in combination with Stud.IP this ID should be the Seminar-ID from Stud.IP.

The technique