Speechi and video
From Speechi WiKi
Speechi and video
Since version 4.0 of Speechi, many new capabilities regarding video have been available to you. The "Intelligent Video Import" function allows you to instantly create PowerPoint presentations that are synchronized with the video of the speaker.
With version 4.0, important improvements were integrated:
Video Formats Supported By Speechi 4
The Video Import Wizard allows you to import almost all video formats (mpeg, mpeg2, mpeg4, avi, mov, etc...). These videos are converted to Flash videos (FLV format) in order to be played by Speechi in a web browser.
An “Import a Global Video“ function is accessible from the Speechi menu.
Import a Global Video in Intelligent Mode
Intelligent Import is a unique method, extremely fast and efficient for post-synching on the fly a video and a PowerPoint.
The intelligent import function allows importing a video file. Two sliders, for beginning and end, can tell Speechi when the video should start and when it should end.
By clicking on the “Intelligent Import“ button, Speechi will automatically post-synchronize the video and all the existing slides, in a single operation.
How Does Intelligent Import Work (the Principles)?
- This function assumes that the professor was filmed during his conference (with any digital camcorder) and that he also used Speechi.
Therefore, the professor has a sonorized video file of his conference, but also has a Speechi made in “real time” during the conference. - After the conference, the professor or the cameraman imports the video file into Speechi. The beginning and end sliders of the Speechi Import Player allow “stalling” the beginning and end to the millisecond.
- Speechi has memorized, during the conference, all the transitions, passages of slides, PowerPoint animations..etc. (To the millisecond precision).
How Does Intelligent Import Work (the Main Screens)?
After adjusting your video settings, you must select the “Intelligent Import” option.
Speechi then shows you a screen composed as follows:
- On the right, the slides recorded by the professor and their exact duration.
- On the left, the video, with 3 sliders to adjust. It is very important to understand the role of each slider:
- The beginning slider "[" (In red in the figure above) allows you to synchronize the beginning of the video with the beginning of the first slide.
- This setting is necessary because in a typical conference, the cameraman would have started filming before the professor starts talking, for “security” reasons.
- This slider can be positioned by hand or digitally, to the millisecond, by entering its position on the left in the wizard and clicking the “Go” button on the left as well.
- The ending slider "]" (in red) allows you to synchronize the end of the video with the end of the last slide.
- This setting is necessary because in a typical conference, the cameraman would have continued filming even after the professor have stopped talking, for “security” reasons.
- This slider can be positioned by hand or digitally, to the millisecond, by entering its position on the right in the wizard and clicking the “Go” button on the right.
- Finally, the middle slider "I" (in blue) must be positioned at the end of the first slide.
- This setting is necessary because in a typical conference, the professor would have launched his PowerPoint before starting to talk, for “security” reasons. By telling Speechi the exact moment at which the professor “turns the first page”, you will allow it to re-stall the whole PowerPoint with respect to the video.
- The duration of the first slide corresponds then to the exact duration between the beginning slider "[" and the middle slider "I".
- When your 3 sliders are set, simply click on the "Sync" button to communicate that information to Speechi, then click on “Preview” to verify the overall synchronization, and once everything is OK, click on “Import” on the wizard.
Import a Global Video in Simple Mode
Simple Import allows you to synchronize a global video with a presentation, and to proceed slide by slide.
The typical case: you have a PowerPoint and a video. You want to synchronize one with the other, slide by slide, the simplest way possible.
Simple mode is not a “one click mode” as is the intelligent mode, but it allows you to achieve a fast and very intuitive post-synchronization for your video with the PowerPoint.
After adjusting your video settings, you should select the “Simple Import” option.
Speechi converts your video files into the FLV format and shows you a screen which is similar to that of “Intelligent Import”, though its handling is different.
This screen is composed as follows:
- On the right, the slides to synchronize (most often, these slides are not yet processed by Speechi)
- On the left, the video, with 2 sliders to adjust (beginning "[" and end "]", in red). The middle slider "I" (in blue) shows the current position on the video (the picture is displayed in the screen on the left).
How Does Simple Import Work (the Main Screens)?
The goal of the game is to position, with each slide, the left and right sliders: The slide will be played "between" the sliders.
Speechi automatically positions you on the first line (first slide). Once you have positioned the sliders, click on the "Sync" button, and Speechi "goes" to the next slide.
Note that the left slider gets positioned automatically at the end of the previous slide. By default, Speechi offers you to play the video "continuously". If you move the left slider, this will correspond to "jump" in the video...
Repeat the process for all slides to synchronize.
Note that it is not necessary that all slides be synchronized with the video. You can decide to synchronize some of them with the sound, for simplicity, for the sake of clarity or for efficiency.
When your slides are processed, click on "Preview" to verify the overall synchronization. Once everything is OK, click on "Import" in the wizard.
Internal Transitions
The Speechi Video Wizard, in simple mode, synchronizes the beginning and end of each slide with the video.
It may happen that your slides have internal PowerPoint transitions.
- Open the grid.
- Click on the "Camera" icon of the slide to synchronize in the "Sound" column.
- PowerPoint switches then to "Slideshow" mode and the slide starts to play. The "Speechi Wheel" and the video appear in overlay.
With the Speechi wheel, you can advance in the PowerPoint (left and right arrows) while watching the video. This allows you to synchronize internal animations with the slide.
If you have a Speechi Pro license, the wheel can also help you, in this step, to annotate your PowerPoint: annotations will also be visible and synchronized when Speechi will play.
At any time during processing, you just need to click on the "Play in Browser" button, on the rightmost of the toolbar in order to replay your Speechi in Flash and verify that the results satisfy your expectations.
Import a Local Video (Synchronized with a Single Slide)
The global import is obviously the simplest way to insert a video and synchronize it entirely with PowerPoint. But it is also possible to import a video and synchronize it slide by slide, in local mode. For this, you only need to use the video functions available on the Grid. They are able to do with the video all what you could do with the sound: import and re-synchronization of the slides, if necessary.
To import the video into a single slide, locally, check the option "Local Video" below.
You can then import the video in any slide and synchronize that slide with the imported video, while using the same techniques used for the global video for synchronizing internal transitions.
Video as a "Floating" Resource Associated with the Slide
When you import a video as a resource, it appears in a frame at the bottom of the browser. Different commands allow then to synchronize it with the PowerPoint (See the corresponding paragraph).
The animations and Flash videos appear in Speechi as floating windows, freely movable by the viewer in case they would disturb him when watching a PowerPoint slide.
In summary:
- Speechi 4.0 allows you to include videos of any format into your resources
- The frame in which imported videos are played as a resource can be moved anywhere by the person watching the video, which avoids a major part of PowerPoint being masked by the video.
- Import and Synchronization have been optimized (Synchronization in Speechi is better and consumes less CPU in version 4.0).
Video in place of the slide
Speechi 4 allows you to also import a video in place of a PowerPoint slide. The video will be then located on the right of the browser – and will replace the slide. It will not be located in the left column but on the space on the right, instead.
This feature is very useful if one of the central points of the lecture is contained in the video.
In the resources Grid, the "PowerPoint" icon of the left column is replaced by the "Video" icon. The "video slides" are movable towards the top and the bottom and can be deleted by simply clicking on this icon.
Furthermore, this technology is also used in the optimal quality of Conference mode.
Synchronize a Video with an External Sound or 2 Videos with Each Others in Speechi
By default, when the line "Slide as a Video" is created in the Grid, Speechi plays the content of the imported video. This setting can be modified in the "Sound" column of the "video slide ".
How to Adjust the Quality of Your Imported Videos in Speechi 4?
The video import wizard allows you to resize your video (without distortions) and adjust the quality of image and the quality of sound. Speechi offers this option to you every time you import a video.
Setting the quality of your video on the Web is a matter of compromise.
This compromise depends on the bandwidth of the watching person (the viewer) and on the server that emits the video.
In the time when these lines were written (March 2009), the Web videos are in general set to a maximal resolution of 640 x 480 and for a maximal bandwidth 500 Kbits/s, which corresponds, for a viewer, to a flow rate coming from a good DSL connection (extraordinary bandwidth advertised by Internet providers are usually far away from the bandwidths actually observed...)
On the server side, a bandwidth of 100 megabits/second is common, very inexpensive and corresponds to 200 simultaneous connections of 500 Kbits/s, which is already good - and it is very rarely reached in a teaching context in France.
Note that if you choose to play a video in the left column, it is unlikely that such a quality be necessary, even if you decide to enlarge that column. A resolution of about 300 pixels and a flow rate of 200 Kbits/s are usually enough for the left column.
Web Servers and Pseudo-Streaming
One of the great strengths of Speechi, to the contrary of many tools for creating and publishing multimedia content, is that it has simultaneously two characteristics such as follows:
- Standard Web Server: the Speechis that you create are publishable in any “standard” Web server (which means that the cost of hosting and posting of a Speechi is extremely low). Concretely, for less than 10 € / month, you can find Web Servers capable of hosting a hundred of hours of Speechis.
- Direct Access to Content: although Speechi works as a standard Web server, you keep the ability to directly access every slide without delay. This capability, usually reserved to streaming, is obtained thanks to different processing and algorithms that we perform on the sound and video. We call this “Pseudo-streaming”. This choice, for the video, is carried out at the level of the publication wizard.
- Publishing to a Web Server Without Pseudo-streaming. Scrolling quality is perfect, without cascades, but it’s impossible to immediately access the end of the video or a slide that has not been preloaded yet. We usually recommend this mode for Conference version.
- Publishing to a Web Server with Pseudo-streaming. All slides are directly accessible when Speechi is launched, but there may be cascades in the video when moving between slides. We usually recommend this mode in Studio version.
Publishing to a Real Streaming Server.
Finally, the Publication Wizard now offers you the possibility to publish your presentations into a real streaming server (Red5 Open Source technology).
Such a server brings together all technical advantages: perfect scrolling quality as well as direct and instantaneous access to all your presentations for viewers. You can install your own Red5 server and some hosting providers offer such servers for rent.
We are actually studying the possibility to offer such a service at an affordable price.
Speechi sends your data to the Web Server and to the Streaming Server via FTP. FTP information should be input in the Server Configuration Tab.
Other Software to Convert FLV
Note that if you import a video that has already been converted into the FLV format, Speechi will not try to reprocess it again: we have considered that such a video is already optimized for Flash by another program and hence, to process it a second time could reduce its quality.
In order to obtain a video into the FLV format, you can used a software such as Flash Media Encoder, Adobe Premiere, Riva FLV Encoder (free), Sorenson Squeeze, Super ou ffmpeg (free software). Note that some versions of these programs produce a non-compliant FLV, which is not the case if you use the internal conversion engine of Speechi.
If you use one of these programs, the "best" settings for the web are the following:
- Movie size: 240 x 180 is a minimum and it seems it is less useful to go beyond 640 x 480. The “average” format popular on the web is 320 x 240.
- Frequency: 15 images per second at least, 25 images per second at most, 20 is a good compromise. Don’t modify the frequency of your original movie, as it can cause significant decrease in quality.
- Bandwidth: For a good quality video, 360 Kbits/s is usually quite enough. For low resolution videos, 120 kits/s can suffice (lower limit).
- Sound Bandwidth: 48 Kbits/s at max, unless if you really have an excellent quality sound and the sound quality is a key criteria for you. Concretely, for a normal quality micro recording, 24 or 32 Kbit/s, mono, would be well enough.
