My university is a bit behind the times when it comes to recording lectures and seminars so I'm not getting much support on this as I had hoped for. I co-convene my departments PhD seminars and have taken on the task of recording the presentations myself. I have sufficient approval to begin recording and figure out what to do with the videos later. My department’s webmaster will take care of getting the files hosted once the logistics are figured out. The schools main concern is with quality control and performance rights. Right now I can only record members of my university and I can't make the videos public (available to those outside of the university). I have written consent forms and have received consent from presenters for next week and the week after. I'm in the process of getting approval and will need to draft a proposal with as much detail as possible. Preferable with details of what is being done in other universities. The issue is with how to make the videos publicly available without getting the university into legal trouble. I want them to be publicly available and the Information Management & Policy Services is resisting. If I can get approval from the head of my department and school their names will carry a lot of weight. I've viewed the equipment I can get from my university today and while it’s a bit old it will work fine. I will have a Panasonic HC-V700 1080p (50p) 3D Ready 1MOS Sensor, a tripod and a sennheiser ew100 g2 lapel mic. From looking at record times recording 1h23m will fill the 16GB 45MB/s SD card that comes with the camera. I’ve ordered a 32GB 90Mb/s memory card and usb3.0 card reader that will arrive tomorrow. I will need to use some kind of software to compress the video into something significantly smaller. I will likely host the files in a closed system in the school and link to them on the department page. This will keep them private while not having them too hard to find. It seems that this kind of thing hasn't really caught on yet in the UK as they are afraid of legal concerns with fair use and performance rights. Does anyone have any advice for this project? It would be even more helpful if anyone that has worked on a similar project could get in touch with me so that I can get an idea of what is going on in other universities.
I have no experience in this, so I don't know what's really available. Friends used to be able to view lectures online through a school portal, so maybe get in touch with your webmaster to see if there's any way to set something up? From personal experience, my university used a program called Blackboard, and I know a few other universities use Blackboard / Rosie / some sort of package. It's kind of like the equivalent to a CRM system for education. Through blackboard we were able to log in, make payments, check payments, enroll in courses, etc. Once the semester started, each course would have its own section open up, giving us access to content that the teacher would upload / make available to us. Maybe your university has a similar system and you can "upgrade" it to add the functionality you'd like?
My university used blackboard and I was advised by the Information Management & Policy Services to use blackboard. Using it would be simple but have many disadvantages as it would require a university login to view. Most students would never know about or watch them. Does nothing for increasing exposure of the presenters, department or university. Does nothing for anyone outside of the university. I would really like to find a way to make these publicly accessible. I was able to view lectures online in a previous university, this one is still working on the legal framework.
Handbrake is a handy tool for that part FWIW (I realise this is probably about the most trivial aspect of what you're trying to find out).
