NAVOCEANO Project Proposal from NPAC/Syracuse U.
A Real-Time Session Recording Capability for the TangoInteractive Collaboratory System
Project POC
David Bernholdt, NPAC/ Syracuse University
Email: bernhold@npac.syr.edu
Telephone: 315 443 3857
Fax: 315 443 1973
Project Description
The ability to create archival copies of an electronic collaboration session, with automatic indexing of the related textual and other interactive material delivered during the session, can be extremely useful both in the context of classed and collaboratory sessions. We therefore propose a system integration and deployment effort in which we will add and integrate a seamless session recording capability to the BuenaVista system (a/v conferencing component of the TANGO Interactive system). This effort is compatible with the current developments of the TANGO Interactive system funded by other MSRCs to provide user identification, authentication, session recording, and courseware annotations capability, integrated with the relational database support and XML information rerieval templates.
Session recording for audio and video stream is a particularly challenging project due to the real-time nature of the data and due to the difficult stream multiplexing and time-stamping issues. We propose a limited-scope project that can be implemented at a relatively low level of effort. The project would implement and deploy a solution providing AV session recording at the source, combined with the distributed daemon infrastructure for automatic sub-stream gathering, time-stamping, indexing, and storage on a media server. The implementation would involve automatic format conversion tools allowing for storage of the audio/video streams and a popular RealAudio/RealVideo formats. (Note that while RealA/V is a popular and useful format for playback of media streams, it is not suitable for actual real-time bi-directional conferencing applications, such as BuenaVista supports, and cannot replace the protocols currently used in BV). Implementation of this project will bridge the gap between the videoconferencing and audio/video-on-demand technologies as currently available.
Note: A recent project for the ASC MSRC PET program developed a "lecture recorder/player" system which can be used with TANGO. That project was specifically focused on capturing and training sessions is a simple but effective fashion. The present project is technologically completely different, and although also capable of capturing training classes, it is the ability to archive a complete collaborative session which sets this project apart.
We have organized this project as a 17 month effort divided in to two phases.
Phase 1 Jan 99-May 99, 5 months, NAVO PET Contract Year 3
Phase 2 Jun 99 -May 00, 12 months, NAVO PET Contract Year 4
The Project Deliverables and Budget reflect the two-phase nature of this project.
Project Deliverables
Milestones: -
Phase 1:
Session recording and retrieval capability for BuenaVista available May 1998
Phase 2:
complete system prototype available by December 1999
system deployed in January 2000
user-supported technology evaluation phase January - May 2000
Project Benefits
This project will benefit both training and collaboration applications of TangoInteravtive. On the training side, such a capability can be used to greatly simplify and accelerate the production of asynchronous training resources from live presentations. On the collaboration side, it provides the ability to provide an electronic record of a "meeting" which can be replayed later to review discussions, or to assist team members unable to participate in the original session.
Collaboration
We will make tools available to NAVO PET staff and partners, as they become ready for testing. This will benefit the project by increasing the robustness of the final delivered tools, and provide early access to the tools for interested users.
Budget Justification