Experiences in Personal Lecture Video Capture

The ability of lecture videos to capture the different modalities of a class interaction make them a good review tool. Multimedia capable devices are ubiquitous among contemporary students. Many lecturers are leveraging this popularity by distributing videos of lectures. They depend on the university to provide the video capture infrastructure. Some universities use trained videographers. Though they produce excellent videos, these efforts are expensive. Several research projects automate the video capture. However, these research prototypes are not readily deployable because of organizational constraints. Rather than waiting for the university to provide the necessary infrastructure, we show that instructors can personally capture the lecture videos using off-the-shelf components. Consumer grade high definition cameras and powerful personal computers allow instructor captured lecture videos to be as effective as the ones captured by the university. However, instructors will need to spend their own time on the various steps of the video capture workflow. They are also untrained in media capture; the capture mechanisms must be simple. Based on our experience in capturing lecture videos over three and a half years, we describe the technical challenges encountered in this endeavor. For instructors who accept the educational value of distributing lecture videos, we show that the effort required to capture and process the videos was modest. However, most existing campus storage and distribution options are unsuitable for the resource demands imposed by video distribution. We describe the strengths of several viable distribution alternatives. The instructors should work with the campus information technology personnel and design a distribution mechanism that considers the network location of the students.