Lecture capture - matterhorn

Just to clarify, a "lecture capture system" is a heck of a lot more than just a camtasia movie of someone's lecture.

Check out the Matterhorn web site at http://opencast.org/matterhorn/ and check out the tour and demo buttons.

In an normal setup, an instructor using a lecture capture enabled classroom just says "I want my lectures  which are taught at this time each week to be recorded".  From that point on, the lectures are automatically recorded, published, and integrated into Blackboard or other systems without the instructor having to lift a finger (through special building blocks or rss feeds). It includes separate recordings of the lecture and computer screen, automatic support for searching the lecture (through OCR done on the text on the computer screen), automatic generation of a table of contents for the video (break points when slides on the computer change for example), etc.

Check out the Matterhorn features page at http://opencast.org/matterhorn/features for an idea of how much it is different than just a camtasia recording.

And remember, Matterhorn is open-source.  You can download it at http://opencast.org/matterhorn/download

The trickiest part is setting up the lecture capture equipment, especially the software to record the computer screen image and process it.  It's also runs on Linux or OSX, so requires someone experienced with Linux to set it up along with experience in MySQL, etc. So the initial setup requires an experienced System Administrator and some money for the equipment, not normally something a lone instructor would do on his own.

On the other hand, to simplify things, last year a member of the project has set up a Matterhorn version 1.1 Virtual Machine based on an Ubuntu 10.10 server which takes care of most of the setup.  See http://opencast.3480289.n2.nabble.com/Matterhorn-1-1-VM-feel-free-to-test-td6070195.html

I personally haven't used Matterhorn. I do know it is still under development so has some rough edges here and there. But still may be useful to investigate.