IT:panopto

Panopto

Panopto is currently set to record lectures given in in the Pippard theatre, against a schedule administered by John Conway (who you should contact if there are changes to that schedule). The following are various tips/experiences which may prove useful. Please add to them.--Rzepa 10:09, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Panopto Viewer file

This contains the highest resolution for all the captured components and can be downloaded as a compressed ZIP file for offline viewing. It requires the Silverlight plugin to be installed in the viewing browser and weighs in at around 200-250 Mbytes per lecture. This format is not suited for downloading to mobile devices. The layout is not customisable.

This format can also be streamed on demand, and the link to do so can be inserted into Blackboard. To do so, click on the triangle to start viewing, and copy its URL from the browser window. It will look something like http://panopto.imperial.ac.uk/Panopto/Pages/Viewer/Default.aspx?id=99bf2f78-e22a-4c43-a96c-524f9066a422 Remember that that this will require the 200-250 Mbyte download for each viewing.

The Video podcast file

The standard default settings for the recording produce a Video podcast file, which is a format combining both the lecture slides and audio track. There are two options for how to express this format;

1. Hover the mouse cursor over the share icon for your recordings and click on the Outputs tab.
2. Under video podcast a pull down menu allows you to select whether to:
   • Display only the slides as the visuals (+ full audio track), or
   • Both slides AND the camera output of the speaker, which is available in several layout options. The default is picture-in-picture, where the camera output is inset on the bottom-right corner.

The camera output captures most of the lectern in the Pippard + the speaker (if they do not wander away from the lectern). There are however a number of issues with this format. These include

1. The size of the inset is quite small, and its inclusion only really makes sense if the video (camera) capture quality is set to High. The default is Low which is inadequate.
2. Inclusion of the camera stream means that you will have to set the frame rate (fps) to be > 15 fps for a realistic animation (see below).
3. You will need to design the layout of your slides to leave a square gap in the bottom right corner (which can be difficult to design in).
4. These factors then conspire to produce relatively large file sizes for the output file (> 200 Mbytes for about 50 minutes of lecture recording).
5. You should have some consideration for the data-bandwidth required of your recording. Especially on small mobile devices (phones), these data plans can cost a lot of money.

On balance therefore, the best option is probably Secondary video only (the recording will contain only the slides and the audio, which to be fair is what carries all of the lecture content) coupled with High quality. You can set the recording to to these values prior to the lecture. If you change the settings after the lecture, it will take about 10 minutes to re-encode. These settings also produce a file in .mp4 format. The aspect ratio of this file is 640 by 480 pixels, which is the minimum resolution required to display reasonable sized text in the slides. A file with these properties emerges with a size of 200-250 Mbytes per lecture, which could be regarded as too large for convenient download for those without an un-metered high bandwidth data connection.

Optimising the video podcast file

There is a fair bit of tweaking that can be done to improve the default Panopto recording.

1. Download Handbrake. This is an excellent free video encoding program, available for all platforms.
2. Download the Video podcast file from your Panopto page as per above. The file name will resemble Term 2 Lectures (O4_5) on 1_25_2013 (Fri)_default_16a4ffc1.mp4.
3. Start up Handbrake and Source this downloaded file
4. Specify the output device as an iPad (other options are also available, right).
5. There are two settings to consider tweaking:
   1. If you have inset the video from the camera (picture-in-picture), then set the framerate to 15fps (leaving the full framerate will significantly increase the size of the file).
   2. If you have preset secondary-video only, then the only real motion that needs capturing are the slide changes. An FPS rate of 5 (the minimum) or 10 is perfectly adequate for this, and it really helps to reduce the output file size.
   3. If you have preset secondary-video only, you can also change the Video quality to constant quality. RF = 40 (the default is normally 20).
6. Add this selection to the queue and press start. Handbrake is very well optimised to take advantage of multiple-processors, and an encoding only takes 1-2 minutes. The size of the output file reduces from ~200-250 down to 50-60 Mbytes, a valuable saving compared to the default Panopto sizes. It will be in .m4v format.

Rebroadcastng the video podcast file

With access to a significantly smaller video podcast file, how might one make it available for viewing. Here I describe one which does not use Blackboard, but instead makes use of the (free) iTunesU service. This is optimised for delivery to mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads (the current version of Blackboard does not provide a service to mobile devices). To make use of this service, proceed as follows

1. Connect to iTunesU using the link above. If you have an iTunes account with Apple, log in using it (there are no implications regarding any credit/debit card associated with this ID). Or, create an account for this purpose using the link provided by Apple.
2. Then, create new course.