L2L (Live to e-Learning)
a lecture capture and delivery service based on MediaMosa. Presentation by Matteo Bertazzo from CINECA InterUniversity Consortium at the MediaMosa Community day, November 25, 2010

1. L2L (Live to e-Learning)
a lecture capture and delivery service
based on Mediamosa
Bridging physical and virtual classrooms using an integrated
lecture capture and delivery service
Matteo Bertazzo - CINECA InterUniversity Consortium
Mediamosa Community Day, Utrecht, November 2010

2. L2L
the L2L service performs a
semi-automatic transformation of live
lectures into e-learning activities ready for
the publication and delivery through an e-
Learning platform
Main objectives
Productivity
“e-learning lessons-hours” / “man-hours to produce them”
Lesson’s “Time-To-Market”
low latency for publication
Modularity of the service and investments
let’s start now with a flexible service and a plug-in model
Content reuse by multiple services
a L2L lesson (or part of it) delivered or used by WebTV or DTT,
web portals, other services

3. The context
Cineca is a non profit Consortium, made up of 43
Italian universities, the The National Institute
of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics -
OGS, the CNR (National Research Council), and
the Ministry of Education, University and
Research (MIUR)
 founded in 1967
 350+ employees
 acts like a trait-d'union between
the academic world, the sphere of
pure research and the world of
industry and Public
Administration
 supercomputing center, currently
#70 in top500.org list (currently SP6
and BG/P, BG/Q in 2012)

4. Main Activities &
Resources
Activities Resources
 Design & management of computing HPC Systems: High Performance Computing
infrastructure platforms for technical and scientific
 High Performance Computing & computing
Scientific Visualization
IT Systems: "Mission Critical" platforms
 Data Center outsourcing
 e-Learning and multimedia services used to host the IT services offered by
 LMS (Moodle, BB): integration, CINECA
management, customization of Data Storage environment: a high-end
large-scale platforms (ASP Storage Area Network connected via fiber
model) channel and serving all the computing
 3D Virtual environment based on systems
SL/Opensimulator Graphics and Virtual Reality: a collection of
 EU Projects instruments and expertise for scientific
 e-Learning consulting visualization
 Streaming services Multi videoconference and Access Grid
 and now… Lecture recording (AGnode): point of access to advanced
and delivery services
systems of multivideoconference
 Information System design,
development & analysis
 Network management
 Multimedia Communications
 DataWareHouse Services
 Portals design and development
 Digital Libraries

5. Lecture Capture
“Lecture capture is an umbrella term
describing any technology that allows
instructors to record what happens in their
classrooms and make it available digitally”
(EDUCAUSE:
“7 things you should know about… Lecture Capture”)
Different solutions
commercial, open source, in-house devs
Different usage scenarios
fully-automated, DIY, recording studio, …
Different adoption paths
top-down, bottom-up
Different access control to recordings
auth/authz, OER, e-learning platforms

7. TF-Media –
Media Management and Distribution
www.terena.org/tf-media

8. Mapping service
components
L2L RECORDER MEDIAMOSA – MOODLE L2L PLAYER
INTEGRATION
RECORDING STORE - MNGMT DELIVERY
Recorder
Player
Recorder

9. Specific inputs/reqs vs.
consortium approach
 5 universities (2 distance learning)
 L2L service designed to match specific
requirements and the consortium nature:
 rationalizing resources
 putting in place “economies of scale”
 supporting different service models
 sharing new functionalities
 Modular and extensible service
 The DAM (Mediamosa) plays a key role
implementing the service model

10. DAM
integration scenarios
Management
L2L
Recorder
WebTV
Back-office
Transcoding
Metadata
Students Digital Media
e-Learning Asset
Delivery Storage
Services - Management WebTV
L2L module
OAI-PMH
Portal
Teacher -
Lesson Mngmt Publishing

11. L2L service
components
MEDIAMOSA – MOODLE
L2L RECORDER L2L PLAYER
INTEGRATION
RECORDING DELIVERY
STORE - MNGMT
Multiple Univs Adobe Flash Media
Unique centralized
On-line|Off-line Multiple Moodles Player
DAM
Different usage scenarios (CINECA ASP or Multiformat delivery and
(CINECA ASP)
Univs in-house) podcasting
IN Podcasting
TE Recorder
GR
AT Mosaic
ED Modules
UPLOAD Player
D
I
Y UNIV-A
-- (CINECA)
RE
MO
TE
DEPOSIT Modules UNIV-B
(In-house)
Recorder HTML5
O PLY
F (not yet)
F
-
LI
NE Recorder BB

12. L2L –
Architecture
 Designed following the SOA model used by Mediamosa
 REST interactions
WebDav
FTP Mediamosa DAM Moodle LMS
Upload
L2L L2L Ingester Moodle
module MD HTTP Block
Recorder
Rest
HTTP Rest Moodle Module
HTTP Transcoding Server L2L Player
Rest
SHll Server
Streaming
protocols
Other Services Download Server Streaming Servers
Speech‐to‐text NFS QT RN
Concept FS
Mapper WM FM
 Ingester module in order to
 support L2L lessons’ structure
 unpack and ingest L2L packages coming form stations
 plug-in additional services (internal | external services using)

13. L2L –
recording station
 L2L station: we provide our univs. with HW and SW
 L2L Full: designed to be integrated in a lecture hall – classroom with
A/V facilities (PC, video capture card, PTZ Camera, VGA2USB adapter,
Mic, secondary 7” display) + L2L Recorder SW
 L2L Light: laptop (i5+ class CPU) + Mic + WebCam + L2L Recorder
SW
 Functionalities
 Performs the Recording (up to 2 video sources)
 Supports the recording description
 automatically: retrieves user profile, Moodle platforms, Moodle
courses using an optional SAML auth (Shib) and WSs;
 manually: title, description, tags
 Performs Sync and MD/Content extraction from MS PPT
presentations (titles, text, JPEGs for thumbs, slide change events)
 Scheduled/On-demand upload to the DAM using FTP/WebDAV
 Features
 5 recording modes (A, A+Scr, AV, AV+Scr, AV+Ext)
 Supports off-line recording
 HQ (1Mbps each video) recording in MS WM format
 XML descriptors (technical MD, descriptive MD, structural MD, sync
MD)
 Content packaging (custom)

14. L2L Recorder -
workflow
OP
TI
ON
AL

15. L2L and Mediamosa
 production environment based on a cluster installation of the 1.7
version
 No source code mods
 External development (ingester module) and REST interface integration
 MM Functionalities in L2L:
 Mngmt: assets creation, MD mngmt, collections (faculties),…
 Analysis/Transcodig: mediafiles analysis, transcoding profiles for
FLV-x264-mp3/Ogg-theora-vorbis/MP4-x264-aac conversions
 Multi-format delivery services: web publication (emb., pod.) and
streaming (existing streaming farm for QT, WM, Flash and RM)
 Storing all lessons’ files (videos, XML, JPEGs, Attachemnts, PPTs, …)
in MM

16. L2L Lesson
representation
 L2L lessons are composed by L2L Recorder
multiple heterogeneous and related
component
 Compound vs. Aggregated L2L
 Initial L2L version was based on a Package
“compound” approach:
 1 L2L Lesson = 1 asset
 Multiple mediafiles (Videos, Inges-on
XMLs, JPGs, …) Module
 Current L2L lessons’
representation (parent->children
aggregation):
L2L Lesson
 extended DC MD schema in
order to define relationships Main
Asset
between MM assets
(parenting)
Asset Asset Asset Asset Asset
 New ingestin module
 New Moodle integration API
WM Original Concepts
 Looking for MM2 for better ways to: Mediafile XML
 Define relationships (RDF?)
 Describe and share content FLV transc.
Mediafile
XML Desc
Mediafile
JPEG
Slide
representation with other apps

17. L2L and DAM –
functional schema
Producers Editors Audience
L2L Portals Uploads WebApps Modules WebTV Portals e-Learning
Manage Publish
Ingest
Streaming
Analyze View Access Streaming
Transcode
Workflow Metadata Download
Metatag
WebPub
External services
Still
Store
Assets Assets Assets Assets
Mediafiles Mediafiles Mediafiles Mediafiles

18. L2L –
Moodle module
 A standard Moodle module (v1.9+)
 L2L activity usable among other
activities inside a course
 Following the Moodle model, the same
module for mngmt and viewing
 Fully compliant (backup, restore)
 Functionalities: Teacher view
 browsing/searching/selecting lessons
using structural and descriptive
metadata
 Managing visibility of content
(presentation, attachments) in the
course context DEMO
 L2L Player visualization
 Currently flash based
 Getting all the content from
Mediamosa (Mediafiles, JPEGs,
Attachments, Presentations, XML
descriptors)
 A/V visualization and sync
 Lesson “navigation” by: Student view
 Direct access to the timeline
 Slides thumbs
 Table of contents (slides’ titles)
 Full-text search results
 Concepts
DEMO

19. Concetta –
Concept browsing
 Providing students with the ability to browse the lesson using a list of concepts
pointing them to the specific slide where the concept is being discussed
 L2L integrates ConceptMapper an open source tool developed by Cineca in the
context of the European project Papyrus (news items’ annotation)
 ConceptMapper (built on top of WikipediaMiner) exploits Wikipedia information to
automatically identify and disambiguate relevant concepts in texts (it, en, de, fr).
 outputs consists in a list (XML file
stored in Mediamosa) of concepts
identified by the titles of the
Wikipedia pages that describe them
 For each concept a relatedness
measure to the document or to a
domain is provided
 L2L applies two filters:
 a threshold on the relatedness
measure
 selecting concepts of a slide
only if they are also identified
on the entire presentation
http://www.ict-papyrus.eu

20. Concetta –
workflow
L2L Recorder
L2L
Package Concepts
Publish
Inges-on
Module
DAM
Slide Slide Concept
Text SlideTextSlide
Text Text Mapper
Sync (SLide)
Concepts

21. Current works/developments
• preparing for migration to MM2
• SCORM-compliant player (mandatory for distance
learning universities)
• L2L Mosaic
 Automated post-processing based on the
GStreamer Framework
 Getting an unique A/V file from a L2L lesson
according to the lesson type and a skin
 DEMO
• New HTML5 – open video L2L player
• Web-editing of L2L lessons

22. Future works/developments
 Mediamosa 2 and Moodle 2: Moodle Repository API plug-in for MM2
 L2L: integration of new lecture recording software (i.e.
Matterhorn Recording agents, …)
 Mediamosa and Fedora Commons (www.fedora-commons.org)
integration
 Integration of Speech-to-text services (transcripts)
 Currently the Ingestion module extracts the HQ audio from videos
 Testing IBM VoiceTaylor (was IBM Attila research prj) and PerVoice
 2 levels: MD, concepts identification and subtitling for accessibility
(manual correction)
 Use an external service and develop language models for specific
domains (i.e. medicine, law, history)
 New transcoding/transformation tools (i.e. L2L Mosaic as a MM
transcoding tool)
 L2L: new techniques for A/V segmentation (currently L2L relies on
PPT)
 Automatic generation of contextual and usage MD (i.e. from Moodle
courses)
 L2L: ePub delivery

23. Thanks!
The L2L service will be presented
The Fifth IEEE International Workshop
on Multimedia Technologies for e-Learning (MTEL)
in conjunction with the IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia 2010
(ISM2010)
December 13-15, 2010, Taichung, Taiwan
Matteo Bertazzo - IKMS Department
multimedia@cineca.it
CINECA – InterUniversity Consortium
Via Magnanelli 6/3
40033 Casalecchio di Reno (Bologna), Italy
http://www.cineca.it