SVBRG Lectures For Zoom Meetings
As we are unable to hold are normal meetings we are now planning to introduce regular "zoom meetings". To make the meetings run as smoothly as possible we intend to run some lectures as recorded video, with live questions at the end of the session. If you are really keen it all could be done live.
Using recorded lectures has a number of advantages.
- Once started it should run without problems.
- The videos are available for later showings.
- We have the option of getting distant speakers without incurring travel costs.
- The software can also record live lectures if the speaker has a microphone.
- Lectures could be exchanged with other groups.
OBS Studio
The software used to record the videos is "OBS Studio". This is free to download from the following site. OBS Studio For a general introduction to loading and using OBS there are numerous videos on youtube.The following seems to do a reasonable job. Introduction to OBS Studio
Powerpoint
The lecture needs to be prepared as a standard Powerpoint presentation.The OBS software needs to be set up to record your audio and computer screen. This is a fairly simple thing to do and is explained in the following video. SVBRG Powerpoint on Zoom
OBS can record from other sources such as directories or lists of photos, but in this mode the cursor is hidden so pointing to things is not possible.
Video Editing
Once you have your initial video file it may be worth editing it to remove any mistakes or long pauses. You will probably find you have video editing software already installed with your operating system. It would seem sensible to try this first, and you should find instructions on youtube.If you don't have any software then you could try Kdenlive. This is free and the software I use.
Kdenlive video editor
Again there are lots of instruction videos on youtube.
Suggestions
- You may find a lapel microphone gives better audio. Any cheap one will do, I bought this. Clip-On-Mic
- Try a very short presentation first to make sure all is set up right and you have good audio levels. These can be a bit low, try right clicking on the "cog" icon near the microphone display and select "advanced audio properties". This gives the dB adjustment options. Make the figure more positive for greater volume. I suspect windows has some other mixer controlling the volume, but have been unable to find. Linux settins were very low with -dB figures initially. Once set positive audio was good. The following video is very helpful on setting up sound: OBS Sound
OBS Windows setup
- Window may have problems with the screen grab. If you only get a black screen showing then the problem is with multiple video cards. Window sometimes has two, one for the normal display and a second high power one for games. Windows does not tell OBS which one to use, you need to do it once at set up. Some of the settings can be found in the settings window and more by right clicking on the screen, with OBS minimized. The latter was what got things finally working. Here are the instructions to sort this out: OBS screen issues
- There was also an issue with the camera only showing a still image. We suspect this is Norton antivirus limiting access to the camera, but we have not yet had time to resolve, as it does not stop powerpoint working. Again on Linux it just works.