Desktop Conferencing

Here are a few tips about recording presentations using MegaMeeting… hopefully these hints and tips can help you through the set up if you choose to give it a go!

We want to record a PowerPoint Presentation by a remotely based tutor on one of our Distance Learning programmes. He was due to speak at a residential event but can’t make it, so we plan to record his presentation in advance. As he doesn’t have access to screen capture software such as Camtasia, we decided to record his presentation via the ShareMyDesktop feature in MegaMeeting. This way we can record the presentation given via MegaMeeting, using Camtasia on a University PC.

Another option would be for the tutor to download a trial version of Camtasia and record the presentation himself, but he would need to be confident in using the software and saving the file correctly to return it to you.

We’ve tested the recording in advance of this, and after several attempts (and lots of fun and games!) came up with the following tips:

What equipment do I need?

• The person recording the meeting needs Camtasia on their PC. You will also need to feed the audio cable from the line out socket to the line in socket on the back of your PC.
• The person presenting will need a webcam (if you want to capture them on video) and a headset with a microphone.

Getting started

• The person recording the presentation should act as the Host of the meeting. First log in to MegaMeeting as a Host at https://bath.megameeting.com/. Follow the Meeting creation wizard using default settings, apart from choosing ‘Auto-accept attendees‘. Enter the email address of the person who will be presenting – this sends them an email with a link to join your meeting
• Once the presenter has joined the meeting, you should test out the connection by speaking to each other through MegaMeeting. Make sure you are receiving audio (you’ll need to hold the Transmit button or Lock transmission). Be sure that your microphone isn’t on mute on the computer’s volume panel or on your webcam control panel (which might default to Microphone Mute)!
• Once you are happy that you can see and hear each other via MegaMeeting then you can begin…

Setting up the meeting

• Once the presenter has joined the meeting, the host needs to give the presenter permission to use ShowMyDesktop. Go to Host Options > User Rights. Select the User Name, choose ShowMyDesktop and set as ‘On‘ from the drop down list
• The first time the presenter selects ShowMyDesktop they will need to download the software, then leave and rejoin the meeting… the host needs to reset their permission to ShowMyDesktop once they rejoin the meeting

Recording

• The Host needs to set up Camtasia to capture the screen whilst the presenter presents.
• Open Camtasia Studio (we are using version 5) and click on Make a Recording. Click on Audio Options and choose the correct Audio Options to pick up the sound (you see the sound bar picking up the sound when you have the settings correct). Click Select Area to Record and select your entire screen. You are now ready to record. Click Record to begin
• In the MegaMeeting browser window, click on Full Screen on the top tool bar.

Starting the presentation

• The person presenting can now click on Show My Desktop, sticking with the Entire Screen option for What to Show.
• For the host, a message appears saying ‘A presentation is about to begin’. At this point the host can hear audio from the presenter, but the presenter can no longer see the video feed or hear the audio from the host.
• The presenter can now open and run through their PowerPoint presentation. The host can capture the screen and audio via Camtasia. Once the presentation is finished you can stop the recording, and save your Camtasia recording. The presenter can Stop the Show My Desktop feature so you can speak to each other again
• Once the Show My Desktop feature is disabled, you’ll need to hold down the Transmit button or Lock button to speak again

Trouble?

• If you lose audio, you will need to exit MegaMeeting and re-enter… don’t forget to give the presenter permission to Show My Desktop once they re-enter the meeting

This is a common question from staff. Their need is they’d like a megameeting room where their students could arrange to meet up to discuss work, or socialise, however, the staff members concern is they’ll need to be involved. However, the answer is no. You can set a room up (with a unique name), and forward the room name to your students (or add to a news forum on your Moodle course). Your students simply need to go to bath.megameeting.com, click on guest, type the name of the meeting in the box, click yes, then they are in. This will shift the emphasis towards the student being able to take responsibility for organising their own conferences.

The following is an outcome of a recent conversation with Sian Coxhall in the School for Health.

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We used megameeting for a poster presentation for 2nd year Healthcare Information
Governance students.  We had a staff member based in Bath acting as the host of the
meeting.

It was decided that the Bath host would upload and share the posters with the other
students to reduce the technical demands on the students – however this is something that
the students could have done themselves. One powerpoint slide per poster.

We started with a technical test (to make sure everyone was online and could hear each
other) then an explanation of the ground rules and how the meeting would run.

The meeting ran by the “host” making each poster available in turn and the student then
giving a 5 minute presentation on it.  There were then approximately 5 minutes of
questions.  The Host chaired the meeting to make sure everyone didn’t try to speak at
once, by going around the attendees in turn to ask if they have any questions.

This worked well and following the first meetings the students commented that they
thought the meeting was well managed.

The second meeting went equally well, but there were some problems with sound for some
students – I think this was just due to their computer set up.  But these did not spoil
the meeting.  The meeting did feel slightly rushed with 4 participants and 3 tutors so I
think it would have been better to stick to a maximum of 3 per hour.  Again the students
stated they enjoyed the meeting and that they found it worthwhile.

We then used megameeting for a presentation for a student in Singapore. This worked, but
there were issues with sound – the student couldn’t hear us at the end of the meeting,
and the host in Bath displayed the student’s slides and moved them on, but there was a
delay for the student seeing them, which meant the presentation did not run smoothly.Â
This may have been due to the student’s Internet connection speed.

Staff awareness on megameeting is like buses, nothing for ages and then lots back to back. I’ve covered 4 individuals. Two from English Language Centre about assessing people over distance for language skills, one from Biology about supporting the development of a pan-European research community, and one from International Development on the use within a CPD / Distance Learning course.

Yesterday, I set up a MegaMeeting session for Geraldine’s e-moderating group and was the technical help desk. I got a call from one of the would-be participants – a lady in the Department of Chemistry – who was trying to work through the setup wizard, without success. I couldn’t solve her problem on the spot, so as a pragmatic solution she came to my desk to join in the session. I now know more about potential technical solutions, so here’s a description of her problem and possible ways forward. (Geraldine has kindly mentioned she’ll contact someone in Chemistry who might be able to help with this.)

The user’s local storage settings for Flash Player were set too low, said a warning box. See the first screenshot on this wiki page:

http://wiki.megameeting.com/index.php?title=Local_storage_settings

The page also details 3 solutions to try one after the other:

[1] Increase local storage settings using the slider – this didn’t work.

[2] Creating the desktop folder – untested so far.

[3] Allowing permissions – again, untested so far.

The fact that users don’t have admin rights for their PCs may be the reason why solution [1] didn’t work, and why IT admin assistance may be required to test solutions [2] and/or [3].

Whatever works, it would be great for the answer to be posted here so that we know what to do in case this happens with another user.

Elluminate is a proprietary desktop conferencing system, and one which the Open University have recently rolled out across the instution for learning and teaching purposes. A presentation about this was given to the sigma-SW group meeting here at Bath last week.

You can, for free, create a room in Elluminate and invite up to 2 others, through

www.elluminate.com/vroom/

Well, it is done, we ran 4 coffee break sessions using Megameeting, on a range of topics. The attendance was OK – I think we averaged about 2 staff members per session. On the slight negative side, we still hadn’t managed to consistently record the sessions. This is a big shame as the plan was to deliver the session, record it, and stream this into the eLPF Moodle Course, the e-learning web site, and (if appropriate the individual service blog). So it can be re-used all over the place

A tip I’d suggest based on the last session is to include in the set up instructions information on how to ensure the powerpoint is displayed to fit the viewers screen.

Anyway, I’m very interested in capturing peoples ideas about how to improve these sessions, in terms of management, effectiveness etc.,

The current process should be … book the software, book a room (in calendar, and on megameeting), people reserve places via ASD, send invite a few days before the session, deliver the session (live), upload and supporting material in the eLPF Moodle Course, create a discussion board space for further discussion, email thanks to those who attended.

So people … how was it for you? What might we improve? Please leave comments …

I managed to capture video and audio simultaneously this morning during Nitin’s coffee break session. He presented using MegaMeeting and I recorded using Camtasia (version 6 on my PC), with the audio settings changed like this:

In the recording panel, access the dropdown list to the right of the audio icon and select options.

 

 

Update 28 May 09 | In a meeting this morning, Dom mentioned that he tried using this method and it didn’t work… So if you hope to use this method for a high-stakes session, please test it beforehand, and please leave comments if it fails to work. Equally, I’d be interested to hear if it does work.

Last Wednesday saw the second of our Megameeting-delivered ‘Coffee Break’ sessions.

The subject matter was very interesting once again – ‘How can I use Moodle for Diagnostic Assessment’ by Kevin Renfrew (for further info on this topic, see the case study at: http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/casestudies/2009/01/21/using-the-moodle-quiz-for-diagnostic-assessment/). Its nice as a behind-the-scenes developer to see another example of Moodle’s potential being realised so effectively at Bath.

Technically, things were adequate for participants – the sound could have been better (which was most likely down to microphone issues in this instance). The format of the meeting seemed to work well, with participants asking some questions via text chat afterwards and a supporting Moodle resource being created for further discussion.

Unfortunately we had problems with recording of the session – Camtasia on the host machine was unable to capture sound and the deskshare application provided by MegaMeeting, installed on a participant laptop suffered very poor sound quality.

These issues may have occured for a number of reasons and are unlikely to have been due to the MegaMeeting application itself (especially in the latter case). We did discover and try to solve these an hour or so before the session started but had to admit defeat due to running out of time (although because of the subject matter, this recording was being made as a test and for the speakers reference anyway rather than for public dissemination).

There are a number of things I’ll be looking at to try and solve these issues including going through the computers configuration again when there isn’t a session about to start. Some problems such as poor audio quality were likely due to poor microphone quality and/or audio hardware. This is a known issue and we’ll be looking at the possibility of USB microphones which are relatively cheap and generally resolve those issues (on this occasion we were using an analogue external mic, which was an improvement over that particular laptops internal one but probably still not optimum…).

The additional degradation in audio recording quality may be down to the type/specification of machines we were attempting to record on. I’ll be trying it with ‘full spec’ av laptops for recording and broadcasting, the latter with a high quality microphone and if the results are ok, will work back from there. I am surprised by the difference in what I could hear through my headphones ‘live’ and the quality through the same headphones on the same machine when playing the recording, so maybe there are some configuration tweaks that would help (although the live quality wasn’t great, so this probably won’t prove to be a complete solution if successful).

This ties in with looking at our meeting room setup for audio/video-conferencing in general. Common issues I’ve encountered when doing AV broadcast/conferencing in the past include things like acoustics and residual building noise (due to people and things like heating systems etc. making noise/causing electrical interference). Lisa mentioned that in a previous incarnation of the meeting room (it use to be larger and used as a studio) there were some issues with electrical noise. There are then the hardware issues such as quality of equipment and positioning of speakers/microphones to look at (to avoid/minimise feedback and pickup of background noise). We’re also using the laptop’s integral webcam which is pretty good quality, but attaching an external one would make our lives easier when re-positioning rather than dragging the laptop and its assortment of cables around the table.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be creating a list of setup tips, plus a suggested hardware list to scrape together if we’re able…

I ran the session today. From my perspective I thought it went well. Outside of the e-learning team, there were 2 people, and one that couldn’t access it for technical reasons. There seems to be an issue with the image used on machines in the Library. They are looking into it.

I tried to give the session an obvious exit point. In particular to encourage them to visit the eLPF for more info, such as links, accessing the files and continue the dialogue within the e-learning practitioners Forum. I set up a coffee break area, a forum and some links (including to the presentation). Unfortunately, the camtasia recording didn’t work as the audio must have conflicted with the audio on Megameeting. So it is a silent movie I’ll need to think why, and canvas the team … Dom, any ideas?

The approach was the same as outlined in an earlier post by me. It would be really useful if people modified the post and the page (coffee break) as they try the approach. Lots of opportunity to share experiences and build a consensus.

I did encourage them all to turn off their video links.

This is our first try at this type of staff development session. We’ve another three in planned. It is very much an iterative process, so the questions I’d like the participants to answer are;

• How did they find it as a learning activity?
• Was it too short or too long?
• How might it be improved?