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Screen sharing et al
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| Simon Lord 2005-04-07, 5:55 pm |
| First I'd like to say I am the proud owner of the FCS book from Brian
and friends. First impressions is that it's big, second is that on
pg23 we see Peldi in his cubicle, which is funny because I don't think
I've personally ever seen Peldi outside that cubicle.
In reading the first few pages and jumping on the web to read some FCS
2.0 *potential* features on Brian's site, I spotted some screen sharing
notes that explains MM's thoughts on not incorporating it into FCS.
And I, surprisingly, agreed and was satisfied with the answers.
It was in that moment that I remembered some discoveries we found while
trying to find a viable solution for our project. And while we do not
make use of the results below, it may be of some use to someone here.
Part of our research involved using Timbuktu to broadcast the screen we
wanted to share over to a PC master station where we could switch
on-the-fly to a number of other stations with various apps running.
Doing that reduces the amount of cluster on the current system while
ensuring that we get all the windows etc for that app by simply
switching to PC running that app rather than fidgeting locally which
viewers can see (and suffer). By switching I mean that Timbuktu can
connect and present (on your screen) the screens of multiple systems
locally on your screen.
Running above the Timbuktu area would be Camtasia. And even though
Camtasia can only broadcast to 800x600 leaving vast areas of the screen
unseen we had a solution for that as well. Or we thought we had....
On the Mac, Timbuktu offers a feature which is *unavailable* on the PC,
and that's realtime scaling of the shared screen. As you can see in
this screenshot:
http://www.karbonized.com/timbuk.jpg
.... that is a PC being shared to my Mac. The red arrow indicates the
button to press which causes the shared screen to scale down to
whatever dimension you want. The PC is running at 1280x1024 but as you
can see I have scaled it down to 640 and it is still presentable.
Unfortunately for us Camtasia is unavailable on the Mac, and SnapsPro X
doesn't have a webcam driver (yet).
Our current and best option is to write our own cam driver which we
will be looking into shortly. By *our*, I mean my client.
Sincerely,
Simon
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| Brian Lesser 2005-04-07, 5:55 pm |
| Hi Simon,
Sounds like you are starting to wonder if Peldi is a real person or just
a cubicle bot secretly controlled by Jonathan Gay. The best therapy for
this type of peldanoia is a ticket to Flash in the Can where you can
meet the bot, I mean him, or rather Peldi, in person. :-)
I've already written what I think about the Flash player, screen
sharing, and Macromedia's relationship with third party developers and
don't want to bore everyone by repeating myself. I'm sort of waiting for
Macromedia to say something about all this at some point down the road.
But it might be helpful to provide one example of why I want to see
screen sharing available to FlashCom developers. My university is
looking into streaming from the classroom solutions. (We already have
and enjoy using Breeze but it is not an appropriate tool in this case.)
We have some hybrid courses where we already do streaming from lecture
rooms as well as the usual events like special seminars and convocation.
But what we really want is a system that:
1. does not require paid staff to be present in the lecture hall
2. is affordable and therefore allows us to stream from multiple large
lecture halls at any time
3. camera panning and zooming can be easily controlled by a TA in the room
4. the professor does not have to make any special preparations. For
example simply using the document camera or powerpoint in the room as
normal.
5. students viewing the lecture live or on demand do not need to install
esoteric plugins. Things like Timbuktu are cool but I don't think they
help us here.
We recently looked at a proprietary encoding and streaming system that
makes use of Windows Media and high resolution VGA frame grabs to do
this. The system works very well. There are two options for deployment.
Wire each lecture hall back to a control room equipped with one or two
of these encoders or put an encoder in each room.
Unfortunately, the costs for us (for historical reasons we can't always
wire remote control cameras, VGA, and audio back to control rooms) of
putting a proprietary encoder in each room may be prohibitive. Worse the
system is pretty much a closed system. It does one thing well.
Instead of burning at least $20,000 per lecture hall I'd rather create a
more open, flexible, and interactive system, with about $5000 worth of
encoding equipment in a second PC in each room. I'm still evaluating
this but I think we will at least do a serious prototype this summer
before seeing if we want to dive in. What streaming technology will we
use? Screen capture quality is important. Despite the fact that we have
used Camtasia and FlashCom successfully at times, for this app it will
not cut it. Today I think the best streaming option for this app is
Windows media. It has superior live streaming capabilities and a good
screen capture codec. Maybe that will all change with FlashCom 2 or
there will be other ways of getting the job done. On my whiteboard there
is a really ugly drawing that shows a Windows media and a FlashCom
server accepting a feed from our self-made encoder box in each lecture
hall. We'll see how the picture evolves.
Yours truly,
-Brian
Simon Lord wrote:
> First I'd like to say I am the proud owner of the FCS book from Brian
> and friends. First impressions is that it's big, second is that on
> pg23 we see Peldi in his cubicle, which is funny because I don't think
> I've personally ever seen Peldi outside that cubicle.
>
> In reading the first few pages and jumping on the web to read some FCS
> 2.0 *potential* features on Brian's site, I spotted some screen
> sharing notes that explains MM's thoughts on not incorporating it into
> FCS. And I, surprisingly, agreed and was satisfied with the answers.
>
> It was in that moment that I remembered some discoveries we found
> while trying to find a viable solution for our project. And while we
> do not make use of the results below, it may be of some use to someone
> here.
>
> Part of our research involved using Timbuktu to broadcast the screen
> we wanted to share over to a PC master station where we could switch
> on-the-fly to a number of other stations with various apps running.
> Doing that reduces the amount of cluster on the current system while
> ensuring that we get all the windows etc for that app by simply
> switching to PC running that app rather than fidgeting locally which
> viewers can see (and suffer). By switching I mean that Timbuktu can
> connect and present (on your screen) the screens of multiple systems
> locally on your screen.
>
> Running above the Timbuktu area would be Camtasia. And even though
> Camtasia can only broadcast to 800x600 leaving vast areas of the
> screen unseen we had a solution for that as well. Or we thought we
> had....
>
> On the Mac, Timbuktu offers a feature which is *unavailable* on the
> PC, and that's realtime scaling of the shared screen. As you can see
> in this screenshot:
>
> http://www.karbonized.com/timbuk.jpg
>
> ... that is a PC being shared to my Mac. The red arrow indicates the
> button to press which causes the shared screen to scale down to
> whatever dimension you want. The PC is running at 1280x1024 but as you
> can see I have scaled it down to 640 and it is still presentable.
> Unfortunately for us Camtasia is unavailable on the Mac, and SnapsPro
> X doesn't have a webcam driver (yet).
>
> Our current and best option is to write our own cam driver which we
> will be looking into shortly. By *our*, I mean my client.
>
> Sincerely,
> Simon
>
>
> =-----------------------------------------------------------
> Supported by Fig Leaf Software - http://www.figleaf.com
> =-----------------------------------------------------------
>
> To change your subscription options or search the archive:
> http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcomm
=-----------------------------------------------------------
Supported by Fig Leaf Software - http://www.figleaf.com
=-----------------------------------------------------------
To change your subscription options or search the archive:
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| |
| me-cLWcZqnLNuvQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org 2005-04-07, 5:56 pm |
| Brian,
I heard that TechSmith are providing SDK for developing customized softwa=
re and
I am sure in their SDK you can control the quality and size of screen cap=
ture.
I dont think that I should suggest a guru like you but still I guess this=
can
help you in your university scenario as you described in your previous ma=
il.
regards,
Ashvin Savani - Arckid
Team Macromedia Member
Freelance Developer
Quoting Brian Lesser <blesser-6s6ziW1YCwCw5LPnMra/2Q@public.gmane.org>:
> Hi Simon,
> Sounds like you are starting to wonder if Peldi is a real person or jus=
t
> a cubicle bot secretly controlled by Jonathan Gay. The best therapy for
> this type of peldanoia is a ticket to Flash in the Can where you can
> meet the bot, I mean him, or rather Peldi, in person. :-)
>
> I've already written what I think about the Flash player, screen
> sharing, and Macromedia's relationship with third party developers and
> don't want to bore everyone by repeating myself. I'm sort of waiting fo=
r
> Macromedia to say something about all this at some point down the road.
> But it might be helpful to provide one example of why I want to see
> screen sharing available to FlashCom developers. My university is
> looking into streaming from the classroom solutions. (We already have
> and enjoy using Breeze but it is not an appropriate tool in this case.)
> We have some hybrid courses where we already do streaming from lecture
> rooms as well as the usual events like special seminars and convocation=
..
> But what we really want is a system that:
>
> 1. does not require paid staff to be present in the lecture hall
> 2. is affordable and therefore allows us to stream from multiple large
> lecture halls at any time
> 3. camera panning and zooming can be easily controlled by a TA in the r=
oom
> 4. the professor does not have to make any special preparations. For
> example simply using the document camera or powerpoint in the room as
> normal.
> 5. students viewing the lecture live or on demand do not need to instal=
l
> esoteric plugins. Things like Timbuktu are cool but I don't think they
> help us here.
>
> We recently looked at a proprietary encoding and streaming system that
> makes use of Windows Media and high resolution VGA frame grabs to do
> this. The system works very well. There are two options for deployment.
> Wire each lecture hall back to a control room equipped with one or two
> of these encoders or put an encoder in each room.
>
> Unfortunately, the costs for us (for historical reasons we can't always
> wire remote control cameras, VGA, and audio back to control rooms) of
> putting a proprietary encoder in each room may be prohibitive. Worse th=
e
> system is pretty much a closed system. It does one thing well.
>
> Instead of burning at least $20,000 per lecture hall I'd rather create =
a
> more open, flexible, and interactive system, with about $5000 worth of
> encoding equipment in a second PC in each room. I'm still evaluating
> this but I think we will at least do a serious prototype this summer
> before seeing if we want to dive in. What streaming technology will we
> use? Screen capture quality is important. Despite the fact that we have
> used Camtasia and FlashCom successfully at times, for this app it will
> not cut it. Today I think the best streaming option for this app is
> Windows media. It has superior live streaming capabilities and a good
> screen capture codec. Maybe that will all change with FlashCom 2 or
> there will be other ways of getting the job done. On my whiteboard ther=
e
> is a really ugly drawing that shows a Windows media and a FlashCom
> server accepting a feed from our self-made encoder box in each lecture
> hall. We'll see how the picture evolves.
>
> Yours truly,
> -Brian
>
>
>
> Simon Lord wrote:
>
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>
>
>
> =3D-----------------------------------------------------------
> Supported by Fig Leaf Software - http://www.figleaf.com
> =3D-----------------------------------------------------------
>
> To change your subscription options or search the archive:
> http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcomm
>
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To change your subscription options or search the archive:
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| |
| Brian Lesser 2005-04-07, 5:56 pm |
| Thanks Ashvin,
No worries. I know about Techsmith's SDK. Infact there are lots of ways
to do what we want outside FlashCom each with different
cost/quality/performance trade offs. But, who knows, maybe one day
we'll use a FlashCom C++ or Java SDK to encode and stream a VGA video
feed from all our lecture halls...
Cheers,
-Brian
me-cLWcZqnLNuvQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org wrote:
[vbcol=seagreen]
>Brian,
>
>I heard that TechSmith are providing SDK for developing customized software and
>I am sure in their SDK you can control the quality and size of screen capture.
>
>I dont think that I should suggest a guru like you but still I guess this can
>help you in your university scenario as you described in your previous mail.
>
>regards,
>
>Ashvin Savani - Arckid
>Team Macromedia Member
>Freelance Developer
>
>Quoting Brian Lesser <blesser-6s6ziW1YCwCw5LPnMra/2Q@public.gmane.org>:
>
>
>
=-----------------------------------------------------------
Supported by Fig Leaf Software - http://www.figleaf.com
=-----------------------------------------------------------
To change your subscription options or search the archive:
http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcomm
| |
| me-cLWcZqnLNuvQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org 2005-04-07, 5:56 pm |
| Brian,
Yeah we all are waiting for FCS2!
God and Peldi knows more about it!
regards,
Arckid
Quoting Brian Lesser <blesser-6s6ziW1YCwCw5LPnMra/2Q@public.gmane.org>:
> Thanks Ashvin,
> No worries. I know about Techsmith's SDK. Infact there are lots of ways
> to do what we want outside FlashCom each with different
> cost/quality/performance trade offs. But, who knows, maybe one day
> we'll use a FlashCom C++ or Java SDK to encode and stream a VGA video
> feed from all our lecture halls...
> Cheers,
> -Brian
>
>
> me-cLWcZqnLNuvQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org wrote:
>
tware[vbcol=seagreen]
> and
> capture.
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> can
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>
>
> =3D-----------------------------------------------------------
> Supported by Fig Leaf Software - http://www.figleaf.com
> =3D-----------------------------------------------------------
>
> To change your subscription options or search the archive:
> http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcomm
>
----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
=3D-----------------------------------------------------------
Supported by Fig Leaf Software - http://www.figleaf.com
=3D-----------------------------------------------------------
To change your subscription options or search the archive:
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