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Line 63: − A: This project aims to create an Activity to allow users to easily broadcast and stream audio and video from their webcam and microphone or their computer's display output to a classroom's central server, and share the live feed with their peers. This will be integrated into the Neighborhood View (as a "broadcast audio and video to" option or similar) to allow for most seamless sharing of broadcasts. + Line 71:
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Summer of Code/2009/Multimedia-broadcasting (view source)
Revision as of 16:48, 2 April 2009
, 16:48, 2 April 2009no edit summary
Q: '''Describe your project in 10-20 sentences. What are you making? Who are you making it for, and why do they need it? What technologies (programming languages, etc.) will you be using?'''
Q: '''Describe your project in 10-20 sentences. What are you making? Who are you making it for, and why do they need it? What technologies (programming languages, etc.) will you be using?'''
This project aims to create an Activity to allow users to easily broadcast and stream audio and video from their webcam and microphone or their computer's display output to a classroom's central server, and share the live feed with their peers. This will be integrated into the Neighborhood View (as a "broadcast audio and video to" option or similar) to allow for most seamless sharing of broadcasts.
Rationale: This project does not aim to recreate Skype or similar central-server small-scale conferencing software. This project's local-peer-discovery and mass-broadcasting architecture would be of use in a classroom setting for the following reasons:
Rationale: This project does not aim to recreate Skype or similar central-server small-scale conferencing software. This project's local-peer-discovery and mass-broadcasting architecture would be of use in a classroom setting for the following reasons:
As we have seen in classroom settings such as MIT's TEAL project (for teaching introductory Physics), in the context of displaying live information from a to a large group of students for an experiment, lecture, or the like, a video feed must be established and broadcast, ideally via several video displays. In TEAL, many projectors placed throughout the classroom are used for this purpose; however for an elementary school this would be prohibitively expensive. Assuming said elementary school is running a pilot program of Sugar-equipped laptops, they can instead have each student's laptop "listen" to incoming audio and video broadcasts, and display it when received. This also has the advantage of
As we have seen in classroom settings such as MIT's TEAL project (for teaching introductory Physics), in the context of displaying live information from a to a large group of students for an experiment, lecture, or the like, a video feed must be established and broadcast, ideally via several video displays. In TEAL, many projectors placed throughout the classroom are used for this purpose; however for an elementary school this would be prohibitively expensive. Assuming said elementary school is running a pilot program of Sugar-equipped laptops, they can instead have each student's laptop "listen" to incoming audio and video broadcasts, and display it when received. This also has the advantage of
'''Architecture'''
This will utilize an architecture involving multiple peers and a single local Icecast server, all communicating over the local wireless network/mesh. When a user intends to broadcast a new video, . The Icecast server can optionally also record
Video Sources
'''Accepting New Streams'''
There is an obvious security risk of unsolicited streams appearing on students' laptops, especially if the broadcasting occurs from an online source (though this GSoC project does not aim to address online sources, since most in-class activity originates locally anyhow). It is also crucial to make the display of new streams from teachers or peers as easy as possible. Thus, an identification scheme (PGP keys? OpenID?) should be available to uniquely identify users on the network and their role as either peers or teachers. For notification, there can either be a background service which will monitor the port designated for announcing new streams and display a notification, or this monitoring functionality could be built into the activity itself, though this would require that students have the activity open when the stream broadcast is announced.
For locally-originating sources (within a classroom), a confirmation dialog will display the name of the broadcaster, and if confirmed, will launch the multimedia broadcasting/receiving activity if it has not already been launched, and will display the stream. For higher-priority sources, such as teachers in that particular classroom, the stream could be launched without confirmation to ensure that students do not accidentally miss the confirmation notice.
'''Interface'''
Since students may be interested in viewing multiple streams at once (for example, one stream showing the overall demonstration of the experiment and one showing a magnified view of a particular bacteria culture), then the interface should be able to automatically resize and tile individual streams to display them all at once while best utilizing screen space.
'''Video Sources'''
Webcam
Webcam
Icecast will be used for streaming video sources to the laptop.
Icecast will be used for streaming video sources to the laptop.
Video Interaction
'''Video Interaction'''
There should be some equivalent of a "pointer" on the video, for highlighting important information
There should be some equivalent of a "pointer" on the video broadcasting-side, for highlighting important information. There might also be a "pointer" for pointing out comments on the receiver's side, though this would probably cause more trouble and distraction in the classroom rather than promote useful feedback to the presenter, thus this probably won't be implemented.
Potential Enhancements
'''Potential Enhancements'''
These enhancements are probably beyond the scope of a single GSoC project. However, since this architecture has the potential to replace the standard projector-based lecture presentation mechanism, perhaps other, non-video formats, namely PDF lecture slides, might be supported as a future enhancement as well.
These enhancements are probably beyond the scope of a single GSoC project. However, since this architecture has the potential to replace the standard projector-based lecture presentation mechanism, perhaps other, non-video formats, namely PDF lecture slides, might be supported as a future enhancement as well.
Programming Languages: Since sugar-chat-activity uses Python, I will likely be using it for this project as well. The Telepathy and Farsight2 libraries will be used for implementing the multimedia chat feature.
'''Programming Languages and Libraries'''
Since sugar-chat-activity uses Python, I will likely be using it for this project as well. The Telepathy and Farsight2 libraries will be used for implementing the multimedia chat feature.
Q: '''What is the timeline for development of your project? The Summer of Code work period is 7 weeks long, May 23 - August 10; tell us what you will be working on each week. (As the summer goes on, you and your mentor will adjust your schedule, but it's good to have a plan at the beginning so you have an idea of where you're headed.) Note that you should probably plan to have something "working and 90% done" by the midterm evaluation (July 6-13); the last steps always take longer than you think, and we will consider cancelling projects which are not mostly working by then.'''
Q: '''What is the timeline for development of your project? The Summer of Code work period is 7 weeks long, May 23 - August 10; tell us what you will be working on each week. (As the summer goes on, you and your mentor will adjust your schedule, but it's good to have a plan at the beginning so you have an idea of where you're headed.) Note that you should probably plan to have something "working and 90% done" by the midterm evaluation (July 6-13); the last steps always take longer than you think, and we will consider cancelling projects which are not mostly working by then.'''