Wimba and lecture capture

One of the main themes to emerge from the Wimba connect 2010 conference was using Wimba as a lecture capture system as well as for web conferencing. This seems to be being driven by users as much as by Wimba themselves, but they are now really beginning to realise that they potentially have a good platform for this. The main advantages to Wimba over other systems like echo 360 is that it is already in use, and that it allows the simultaneous collaboration of both real world and online participants in a session. Wimba demonstrated a set up for using the live classroom browser based platform to record a lecture, especially now that the video capture part supports any video camera/device that can be plugged into the computer, including HD video. With a simple switcher box, multiple video inputs can easily be handled, for example a room camera and a document camera, and a DVD input could all be used in turn during a session. Using a simple video camera with an auto pan tilt zoom and an echo cancelling speaker/mic set like the Phoenix Quattro or its smaller version the duet it looks pretty simple to capture all of the action and sound in a reasonably sized room with a kit that would pack into a flight case. Wimba are considering the archiving and streaming end as well, and it looks like they might even be in the mood to acquire one of the existing lecture capture/screen capture companies.

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