Alternative to Epiphan and other VGA/DVI Video Capture Cards

[Burhan Loqueman]

I am new to OpenCast (and indeed Linux). The standard hardware setup for OpenCast Capture Agents indicates a requirement for a video input for the presenter, presentation/screen and audio tracks. Is it possible to bypass the requirement for a VGA/DVI screen grabber dongle by using some form of streaming software on the presenter's PC (assuming it was a fixed PC), for instance VLC, and configuring the CA to treat this stream as the 'screen' or 'presentation' track?

Although I can see the hardware independent benefits of the Epiphan VGA2USB or DVI2USB, a software only solution would be cheaper...

Is it possible for instance also to capture the screen of the presenter PC using separate software and then add this later as the 'screen/presentation' track inside the OpenCast portal?

Finally, are there any plans for an automated Windows capture client which allows for audio, webcam and screen capture of remote Windows PCs independently of a capture agent? This would seem to me to be a way to greatly increase the uptake of OpenCast for the low-end market where perhaps just a laptop, webcam and mic are available to the tutor?

Perfection would be an app to allow upload of audio/video from mobile devices...! And the moon on a stick.

 

[Greg Logan]

Hi Burhan,

To be clear, what you are looking at is what we call the 'reference capture agent'.  This agent used a piece of Java code that is no longer maintained, and indeed has been removed from the codebase.  It's still available, but if you don't already have it working I would suggest some other options: Galicaster, PyCA, or TheRec (Windows only afaik).  In terms of inputs, the reference CA has a set of default inputs, but they are by no means required.  There are several institutions that have more inputs, or fewer inputs, or just different inputs.  What is going to fit into your classroom environment is going to very much depend on the environment however :)

It sounds to me like you have a camera in place in the room, along with a room mic, and you also want to capture the presenter's screen.  Is the machine that's doing the capturing also the one the presenter uses?  If so, then setting that machine up to also capture its screen is probably your best bet.  If the presenter is bringing in their own machine you will likely need capture hardware, or at the very least complete administrative access to their machine!

Re: Capturing separately and adding a stream later.  It's possible, but ugly.  You will have to retract the existing media, and republish.  This will change the URLs of the media.  It's generally a better idea to do it all at once.

Re: Automated windows capture client.  I think TheRec will more or less do this, although it won't capture a remote machine.  It will, however, capture the local machine, and it's free :)

Re: mobile apps, we're not there yet.  Contributions welcome!

HTH,

G

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[Lars Kiesow]

Hi Burhan,
it's Opencast, not OpenCast ;-P
For your question, please find some answers below:

On Wed, 16 Dec 2015 05:37:36 -0800 (PST)
Burhan Loqueman <burhanl...@gapps.suffolk.ac.uk> wrote:

> Although I can see the hardware independent benefits of the Epiphan
> VGA2USB or DVI2USB, a software only solution would be cheaper...

If you talk about the USB video grabbers, I would definitely not
recomment using the VGA2USB anymore. They are definitely outdated. If
talking about USB hardware, I would currently recomment the Epiphan
AV.io or the device from hdmi2usb3.com which are also a lot chaeper.

Recording network streams should not be a big problem, severyl people
are already doing that. We use pyCA as capture agent to handle these
streams.

> Is it possible for instance also to capture the screen of the
> presenter PC using separate software and then add this later as the
> 'screen/presentation' track inside the OpenCast portal?

I do not think there is a way that does not include a hack ;)

> Finally, are there any plans for an automated Windows capture client

TheRec is a Windows based capture agent. It does not support scheduled
recordings, however. Though it is planned for the future. If you are
looking for this, make sure to grab the 4.x version from elan-ev.de and
not the old 3.x version.

> Perfection would be an app to allow upload of audio/video from mobile
> devices...!

Actually, I once created a proof-of-concept:
https://github.com/lkiesow/andCA

> And the moon on a stick.

You could try to 3d-print that...

Best regards,
Lars

[Burhan Loqueman]

thank you for the info!

[Burhan Loqueman]

thank you for the info!

[Hans Erasmus]

Hi Burhan

What you want to do with regards to a network stream capture from the presenter PC is definitely possible.  Currently we are using IP-cameras to capture a RTP feed and use that as a source in the capture agent (we have Galicaster running on some Lenovo i3s. This works brilliantly. Although, just one think to take note of, VLC usually has some buffer settings for streaming, so in the event that you try to capture a rtsp or whatever feed from VLC, make sure you play with the various settings. We saw that with the IP cameras, if network traffic gets congested, you might have a situation where the device will buffer 10 or seconds worth of feed, and this can cause some wonky images.  So just a side note.

Regards

Hans

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