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Lecture Archiving

At the end of the lecture, do the following.

  1. The instructor must first kill of all his graphs in the Photohouse whiteboard on Netmeet. Give the savebrd script about ten seconds to process each whiteboard after saving one. Watch the Ewan terminal window to see when the file is saved. Please keep Photohouse itself running. Next the instructor should turn off his microphone. On Realpres, the instructor should kill Netscape, exit from Ewan, and then shut down the computer.

Next process the finished live lecture's audio/video stream.

  1. The TA should see that the chatbox is not in use then, STOP the streaming in vidcon producer PCs #1 and #2. (But first allow 30 seconds for any final video to reach the online students.) The lecture's video file will be put on the desktop of vidcon producer PC #1 as instructor_name.rm. Drag this file on the 'Drive C' icon: this will put it on disk C: of the Realprod PC in the computer lab 205.
  2. Return cameras to Home positions and turn them off (both switches).
  3. Turn projector power off.
  4. Turn classroom lights off, make sure that door is locked and alarm is set.

Now go to the Realprod PC in the lab and continue processing. Note that in the steps below, mmddyy stands for the date of the lecture as a six digit number, eg 083099.

  1. On the right upper corner of the Realprod desktop you will find the icons for the procedures to be followed in order of their occurrence
  2. Drag the file instructor_name.rm from the C drive onto the desktop and rename it mmddyy.rm.
  3. View mmddyy.rm to see how much you want to clip from the start of the lecture. Ordinarily, you want to clip the stuff before the splash screen, but keep the time at which the instructor loads the splash screen (when the drop-down box closes.) The time is seen in the bottom of the player; eg, 10:07 indicates ten minutes, seven seconds into the file. When done, kill the video window, do not minimize it.
  4. Double-click icon "cut.bat"
    1. In the window that opens, type "mmddyy m:ss" where m is the number of minutes which you want to clip from the start of the video and ss the number of seconds. (Note that the minutes and seconds are here separated by a colon.) OK. (Processing usually takes some time: in the mean time, you can double-click icon "EWAN" and log-in to your or the instructor's Unix account, then minimize the EWAN window. You can also already start the WS-FTP program and log in there to your or the instructor's Unix account.)
    2. When the cut.bat has completed the process without errors there are directions on the screen for your next step, (in case you forgot to bring these notes.) (If you forget these notes, just hit return on an empty box and cut.bat will tell you what parameters it wants. Then just rerun it.)
  5. Play the file mmddyy.cut and find the time, in minutes and seconds, that the instructor loads one particular 'reference' html lecture notes page. Ordinarily, this should be the splash page. But if you do not have the time it loaded on the video, select some other html page as reference. The desired time is when the instructor releases the drop-down list. Keep the video on pause at the loading time.
  6. If you didn't yet, double-click icon "Ewan" on the producer and log in to your or the instructor's Unix account. Then enter "events mmddyy"
    1. After hitting the Enter key when requested, you will be put in the pico editor to clean the course log file course.txt. Get rid of all the lines before the current date and the ones before the lecture started using the [control K] key. BUT MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT [CONTROL K] AWAY LINES OF HTML PAGES THAT WERE LOADED DURING THE LECTURE. (If you make a mess, exit the editor without saving and try the events command again.)
    2. Find the absolute seconds, (4th column, 8 digits long) at which the instructor loaded the 'reference' html page you selected earlier. Select this big number with the mouse, and 'copy' it using the Edit menu.
    3. Save the edited file ([control-X], y, [Enter])
    4. You will then be asked the absolute seconds (calibration seconds) for the reference html page. From the edit menu, paste the 8 digit number. You will then be asked for the corresponding hours, minutes, and seconds. Use the web page loading time from the paused video. (Hours will be zero). Note that hours, minutes and seconds must here be separated by commas, not colons. You will then be asked for the total length of the video. These are also shown on the paused video. Again separate hours (probably 0 or 1), minutes, and seconds by commas.
    The program will complain a bit about poor loading times. Make sure the program does not complain about your reference page! If all is well, the program will produce a file mmddyy.txt. If you make a mistake, you should ordinarily be able to rerun the entire events command. (But you may have to delete mmddyy.txt or a temporary file first.) (The worst that can happen is you deleting too many lines from the log file course.txt; don't do that or you will need to go over every second of the video and see what pages are loaded when.)
  7. If you didn't yet, double-click icon "WS-FTP" on the producer, select your account from the dropdown and log-in. You should see the newly created mmddyy.txt events file in the file list. If not, press the Refresh button.
    1. Transfer the mmddyy.txt events file to the C:\Windows\Desktop\ directory as an ASCII file. (If WS-FTP is on auto, it should select the right transfer type automatically.)
    2. Minimize the WS-FTP window
  8. Double-click the transfered events file mmddyy.txt on the producer. Check the file.
    1. All times in the events file must be increasing by at least 0.1 second from one to the next.
    2. The first time should be greater than zero.
    3. The last time should be within the lecture duration.
    4. You may want to load the first page (ordinarily the splash page) immediately. Do so by setting its loading time to 0:00:00:00.1
  9. Double-click icon "insert.bat"
    1. Enter mmddyy
    2. Note directions given upon completion
  10. View completed mmddyy.rm file by double-clicking it:
    1. Check that web page changes are synchronous: the web pages should start loading exactly when the instructor's drop down box closes after the instructor has selected the page. It is best to look in the mmddyy.txt for an arbitrary link, and then verify that this link is indeed loaded at the right time.
    Note: If you skip the check, the amount of work you will have to do to undo the addlec command is described here. It is recommended that you do not skip this check.
  11. Copy the finished mmddyy.rm , .txt, and .cut files to the RealServer PC. Just drop them onto the appropriate file folder.
  12. Restore the WS-FTP window
    1. Refresh the left window
    2. Copy the mmddyy.rm in BINARY to the directory on the right. Binary will again be selected automatically as long as 'Auto' is on.
  13. Delete the mmddyy.org file from Desktop.
  14. When both the Realserver and WS-FTP windows have the files transfered, move the mmddyy.cut, mmddyy.txt, and mmddyy.rm files to the archive. Jut drop them onto the appropriate file folder.
  15. In the Ewan window, execute "addlec mmddyy".
  16. Empty the Recycle Bin on the Producer PC.
  17. Close all windows.
  18. Put the sign back over the screen.
Note: If you made a mess, the way to undo the addlec command is here.

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