Digital Media | News

Bloomsburg Upgrades to Multi-Perspective Lecture Capture

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 03/13/14

Bloomsburg University will be upgrading its video capture and management tools this spring, allowing faculty to capture and stream multi-perspective high-definition videos of classroom projects and faculty research.

While the Pennsylvania institution has been using the Mediasite Enterprise Video Platform from Sonic Foundry for the last several years, it will shortly move to the company's newest video content management system, Mediasite 7, introduced in 2013.

Currently, the institution maintains 1,350 Mediasite presentations, of which a thousand were created in the last year with the use of My Mediasite. The latter is a simple interface that allows people to create, upload, manage, and share video content. The feature also includes collaboration and approval workflow functionality.

Bloomsburg's four colleges are using the video platform for lecture and special event presentation capture, as well as other user-generated content. On top of that, the university is currently in the process of digitizing what is described in a statement as "hundreds of hours of classroom footage" stored on VHS tapes.

The upgrade to the latest version of the software will let Bloomsburg users more easily capture and stream multi-perspective high-definition videos of classroom projects and faculty research.

"Mediasite 7's ability to select any combination of cameras to be captured and streamed simultaneously will be helpful for role-playing student interviews and focus group research," said Media Technician Asa Kelley. "Mediasite is the most versatile, robust system around."

Mediasite 7 includes a MultiView feature that shows up to four high-def video perspectives on one display, including recordings being done in separate spaces. Content sources can include not just cameras, but also laptops, tablets, diagnostic equipment visualizers, whiteboards, and video conference endpoints. The user doing the viewing can control what appears on the media player, rearranging and resizing content streams and even camera angles.

Among Sonic Foundry's other higher education customers are Western Nevada College, the University of Florida and Clemson University.