CREW

Gas Street Works are filming the CREW project (VRE2 Programme) today.

CREW code and documentation is being archived on Google Code under a BSD license: http://code.google.com/p/crew/

CREW being used at the UoM HS research meeting 10th March 2009

Items:

• Far left Meik Poschen is adding live annotation; comments and slide captions on his iPhone (VPN connection to the wi-fi system)
• Left laptop is connected by a cable to the front computer recording the projected video stream – ppt and mouse movements etc. Controlled by Andrew Rowley.
• This laptop is also connected to the wireless mic (silver and black boxes on top of each other). This records the audio. The speaker is on the front desk and captures sound from a wide range of angles.
• Camera on tripod is also connected to the left laptop and is recording the video view of the speaker. Only one camera is being used in this case.
• My laptop, a slow Dell, on the right is just annotating the event – and is using a simple wi-fi connection. The screen shows the simple and easy to use (large buttons) interface lauchable from any browser, for audience live annotation.
• Live annotation is also being recorded from the left laptop – also wi-fi connected.

The complete setup took about 20-25 mins to fix and test for this single camera system. Also, this version of the CREW kit is relatively portable as shown by Meik Poschen – who can hold it easily in one hand (even one finger) – laptops separate but there was room in the rucksack.

There was minimal interference with the host, speaker or audience – and hopefully all the extra information results in useful research-connections. And slightly quicker to pack away.

Demonstrations:

CREW and myExperiment are sharing a demonstration slot at the JISC Conference 2009 – Edinburgh EICC Tuesday 24th March.

11:10am-11:30am CREW Demonstration; stand 4 – Tuesday 24th March 2008

There will be pre-setup time and available for discussion from 9:30am.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/jiscconference09

The new version with semantic based facet searching and harvesting tools was shown.

This image shows the setup showing all components in a connected – if not necessarily tidy – manner.

CREW and other AG  (VRE projects) were presented as part of the JISC Roadshow in London

Workshop title From motion capture to ancient manuscripts: using complex digital resources across disciplines, Given within the talk “Reasons and Experience for Needing Visualizations of Complex Remote Data Sources”, Martin Turner, University of Manchester Friday 30th January 2009. This involved also a series of visualization steering methods and example case studies from experiences at the University of Manchester and the vizNET (JISC) initiative.

Workshop abstract was “Researchers from all parts of the campus are long-used to collecting, structuring and presenting their data in databases, spreadsheets, webpages etc, using a range of widely available and generic tools. In recent years, however, advances in digitization technologies have led to the creation of much more complex data objects.”

Topics did include a discussion on meta-data and its essential use and search, but no final solutions were given. One point was the concept of providence and also how to change meta-data – lots of food for thought.

PS should be available as a video recorded session – without the question and answer sessions.

CREW and PAG – along with RACE, e-Dance and other Access Grid projects were demonstrated at the JISC Roadshow. Advanced Tools and Technologies for Collaborative Research 6 November 2008.

To demonstrate the multi-use the screenshot shows a small shuttle PC – the AGSC portable unit – running IOCOM, PAG as well as CREW on a single system.

For multi-core units the CPU loading of Flash was no problem.

Crew was demonstrated at the All Hands Meeting held in Edinburgh, September 2008.

This was a live demonstration but some screen shots are recorded here (click on any thumbnail to see a full screenshot).

1: Initial view showing list of events recorded in this environment.

2. After selecting the Research Methods Festival event the next screen shows the sessions available including headings/times/dates etc.

3. After selecting a particular session we can see the list of talks that occurred during that session.

4. Specifying a particular talk then gives information regarding that talk including the abstract, and of course a link to the video recording.

5. Screenshots of playing back the talk including multiple video streams and importantly a timelime for annotation events and slide changes etc.

Shown is the timeline that automatically creates events on major changes from the pc screen, as well as user inputted annotation recorded on a simple web form at the time of the recording.

6. Of course you can search for a speaker or event across all items

7. and find out where the event is/will be or was.

Important point is that all the data including the annotation is as automated as possible.

Aside: as a point of interest these screen-shots were never used as the live demonstration worked fine – as they all should Prior to the demonstration there was a keynote speaker, and using the conference wi-fi I ran through the demo to myself and captured a few key points – which explains the resolution as it was on my small laptop; the wifi also explains the buffering – but was very usable.

Saturday 20th Sep was Software Freedom Day (http://softwarefreedomday.org/) and the Manchester and Manchester Free Software hosted an open event at the Marbella cafe (http://manchester.fsuk.org/blog/).

The two servers for CREW and PAG were demonstrated through their all free system. Photo was taken by Lucy Bridges from MFS and shows the CREW annotated conference streaming system.

For the last four days we have been recording the “What Is?” sessions at the Research Methods Festival in Oxford.  The software has been working well, and the new H.261AS codec is certainly reducing the amount of disk space used (as well as keeping the quality good).

Some notes regarding the recording of sessions:

• Participants of less technical conferences tend not to bring their laptops into the sessions.  This means that we can’t rely on the Web-based annotation system to gather live annotations.  It may be useful to have digital pens (as are being used in other VRE-2 projects) to get people’s notes.  We will have to experiment and see if these can be used in this way.
• Most speakers are stressed enough having to do their presentations without having to learn to use our air mouse.  As a result, most choose not to.  Some use laser pointers, and so we may want to investigate the addition of a laser pointer detection system – see for example http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/iit-publications-iti/docs/NRC-48283.pdf.
• We may want to (assuming infinite funds) obtain an automatic microphone mixer.  This would avoid the need to adjust the sound levels during the recording.  One can be obtained for about £100 more than the one we did buy.  Without this, the sound levels must be adjusted at the start of each speaker, and also at the start of each question.
• The speaker sometimes moves.  This cannot be predicted, so we either have to have a wide angle shot or move the camera throughout the presentation.  Both of these result in poorer quality video.  We may also therefore want to obtain motorized tripod heads such as these: http://trackercam.com/TCamWeb/motorpod.htm.  Along with the associated software, these can be used to track the speaker automatically (and therefore smoothly).  We would need to test how this works.
• The handheld microphone requires someone available to pass it around.  Someone else is needed to adjust the sound levels, and a third person to move the cameras.  This could be reduced by a) Having an automatic mixer as above;  b) using motorized tripod heads to track the microphone movement; c) having additional microphones dotted around the presentation room (this would depend on the size).

For remote recording and annotation without the internet – you need a Kit. This is the first version 1 of the CREW-Kit as used at the Eurographics UK Chapter conference (TP.CG’08 – Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics 2008) http://www.eguk.org.uk/TPCG08/index.html

The kit contains everything you need (excluding electricity) to record and annotate a presentation. It is also designed to be portable or at least luggable in a couple of rucksacks.

The event was the 26th annual conference for Eurographics UK and CREW recorded two of the keynote presentations.