Go to the Archives!About CARMA
About: Introduction
CARMA is a lecture recording and archiving service available to the U-M community that makes use of the technology developed as part of the ATLAS Collaboratory Project. Developed to make knowledge available to physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland and around the world, the service comes to the U-M community at a cost-effective rate to insure that lectures can be recorded and archived for posterity.
We feel that this technology should be made available to the wider University community. CARMA's presence on campus makes it possible to record multimedia presentations inexpensively, and to archive and provide the materials online in multiple formats within hours of the event. We are pleased to offer this service on a cost recovery basis to capture and preserve any U-M campus talks and presentations, including special talks, conferences, workshops, seminars and classes.
Here's an example of what your lecture will look like.
The URL you will receive looks like this:
http://lecb.physics.lsa.umich.edu/CWIS/browser.php?ResourceId=1429
Flash lecture (what customers see)
1. What is captured
CARMA offers mobile staff and technology that can capture your lecture, conference or event in a variety of settings, whether on or off campus. We capture audio and a full profile shot of the lecturer, and in addition, we capture the lecturer's slides and notes as they are projected. The final deliverable is a URL that points to a lecture in both Flash and RealPlayer format. We can usually provide the URL to a lecture within one business day.
1a. Video of the speaker
We begin filming at the moment agreed upon by CARMA staff and your event's organizers. We capture your speaker's voice and face, as well as the the slides or notes presented on the speaker's laptop.
1b. The speaker's notes
The timings of the images gathered from the speaker's notes are also captured. The lecture and image timing is synched in the Flash and RealPlayer files, which allows viewers to visually scan through a lecture by slides information.
1c. Audio of the speaker and audience
In addition to a microphone that is focused on your speaker, we also set up audience microphones at each recording to capture questions from the audience.
1d. The Lecture Object
We refer to this collection of information and metadata about your lecture as the "lecture object." What we mean by this is that all audio, video and image streams are preserved in their original high resolution, along with extensive cataloguing metatdata, in a non-proprietary archival data object. You will receive full access to your lecture object, and we will archive it for at least five years on our servers, at which point we will transfer the data to the Deep Blue archive.
More information about lecture objects can be found at the ATLAS Collaboratory Project website:
http://atlascollab.umich.edu/lectureobject
2. Formats and Resolution
CARMA captures a full TV resolution video of the speaker, as well as full VGA resolution image of the presenter's laptop in real time.
TV resolution video (720x540), captured as a MPEG-4 file.
Full VGA resolution images (up to 1280x1024), captured as .jpg files, one per second.
2a. Flash web lecture
The Flash Web Lecture is currently CARMA's format of choice for presenting your web lecture, and offers a slightly larger video of the speaker (240x180).
For more information about Adobe Flash Player and to download, visit: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
2b. RealPlayer web lecture
CARMA offers your presentation in RealPlayer format, allowing the viewer the ability to jump from slide to slide. The video is presented at a resolution of 160x120.
For more information about RealPlayer and to download, visit: http://www.real.com/
2c. iPod video podcast
We are able to transform a Lecture Object into a 320x240 mp4 video file suitable for playback on video iPods or with QuickTime on a computer. This single video feed switches automatically between the close-up shot of the speaker and the slides.
2d. A Mini DV copy
In addition to the above available formats, we capture and store a "hard" copy on Mini DV. We keep a mini DV copy of your lecture in our archive should we ever need to access the raw footage.
3. How it's produced
When you schedule an event with CARMA, we make sure to visit the location of your events and determine what equipment we need to bring along with us. We also collect as much information as possible from you to add to the metadata for the lecture object that we are about to create.
We bring equipment that allows us to capture audio from the speaker and the room (we recommend the use of a wireless microphone, which we provide). We capture the speaker's notes by capturing a feed directly from the projector, leaving the speaker's computer undisturbed.
The camera is operated by one of CARMA's staff members. CARMA hires operators with experience in film and video production, giving your video a professional look and feel.
We bring a lecture recording kit on location with us and capture the lecture and slides directly onto a linux laptop. In addition, we capture the raw footage of your lecture on Mini DV should anything happen to the digital files.
When we return from location, we upload the lecture to our server for processing. A script encodes the lecture for both Flash and RealPlayer formats, and analyzes the slide timing of the lecture notes. After the lecture has been reviewed by a human eye, we provide you with the newly created URL, which you may distribute however you like.
The whole process takes a team of about 2-3.
Our pricing is based on the cost of salaries, equipment maintenance, and long-term archiving and on-demand streaming. Any extra money is used to fund ongoing development to improve our recording technology. Everything, including five years of unlimited streaming, is included in a one-time fee. For a typical one-hour talk anywhere on U-M campus, the basic package costs $400.
4a. Basic Package:
Our staff will meet with you, scope out the venue beforehand, and attend the recording, taking care of all setup and breakdown, and recording the audio feed from the speaker, video feed of the speaker, and the high-resolution images of computer slides, packaging all of this into an on-demand web lecture. If the venue is equipped with an audio system, we are able to work with you to patch into it, although we always come with our own professional quality wireless microphone. Our staff is unable to provide general A/V support, since our undivided attention will be on ensuring the success of the recording.
We will handle all digital video conversion, storage in the long-term archive, and provide you with URL's to Flash and RealPlayer based web lectures. If you wish, we will provide you with the high-resolution master materials.
Generally we are able to post the talks in less than one day.
4b. Additional Services
Although we are able to execute a "basic package" recording in a highly efficient manner because of the automation capabilities of our technology, we are also able to accomodate a variety of requests. We will have to charge more for some of them, depending on the complexity of the task. Please contact us for a quote.
4c. Video editing
Our default mode is to start and stop the recording at the approprate time, so that no editing is required, allowing us to post the talk very quickly. However, we have a video editing workstation and skilled staff to accomodate a large variety of requests.
4d. Audience recording
If you would like to have audience questions or multiple speakers' voices recorded, we can set up additional microphones for this purpose. We can be very flexible. Please tell us what audio set up (if any) you already have in the venue and how you would like us to integrate with that.
5. For more information
visit the page of Frequently Asked Questions.
