Micala project¶
What is Micala¶
A comprehensive lecture archiving system, including components for recording, processing, archiving and disseminating multimedia web lectures. Micala has evolved since 2001 from multiple projects of the University of Michigan ATLAS Collaboratory Project and CERN, and is now used in production at both of those institutions. Part of its development was funded by the US National Science Foundation.
Why this software¶
Traditional lectures and seminars follow a linear pattern: the speaker presents the lecture usually accompanied by visual support material. Questions may be taken during the presentation, at the end, or not at all. In each case, students must rely on their notes and/or copies of the support material to recall the key points of the lecture at a later date. A software with a web-based technology can make available the lecture’s content, video and material.
Components¶
Recording
- linux: encoder software for recording laptop using firewire port for the camera.
- windows: encoder using Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder (free), completely runtime configurable using XML profiles.
Processing Conversion to Lecture Object of encoded files, crop, split of lectures. Analyze slides video to extract slides and metadata.
Archiving Adaptable configuration to deploy lectures in different archive architecture.
Disseminating Flash application to display the web-lecture output. It provides video-podcast mp4 (Universal) and m4v (iPhone family). Easily extensible with other formats.
Micala is used by the University of Michigan and CERN¶
The following institutions have lecture archiving services that are powered by micala.
The CARMA lecture archiving service at the University of Michigan uses micala. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) uses micala.
Contributors¶
Nicola Tarocco (nicola.tarocco@cern.ch) - Currently the main developer. Wrote the web-admin interface, translating Perl scripts to Python, making many improvements and fixes. Created the new flash player, wrote the new versions of recording interface, moved the project to use the codec H.264, refactored the source code.
Jeremy Herr (herrj@umich.edu) - Project Manager - Wrote processing scripts, set up monitoring database, set up git repo, got the open source project started.
Thomas Baron - Wrote the Windows recording interface used in permanent room installations at CERN that uses Adobe FMLE.
Former contributors¶
Jim Irrer - Wrote software for and set up the lecture recording cart, including camera control software.
Tushar Bhatnagar - Created the camera control web interface for recording chalkboard images, as well as the Linux recording interface.
Curtis Hiller - Created the old Flash web lecture viewer.
Mitch McLachlan - Improved many aspects of the software and worked on a DVD-creation script.
Jay Novak - Wrote a Java library for camera control.
Eric Myers - Wrote an early version of the lecture archiving software.
Giosue Vitaglione - Wrote an early version of the processing scripts to create RealPlayer web lectures.
Charles Severance - Created an early version of a web lecture capture and viewing system.
License¶
The code is available under the Educational Community License version 2.0. This is a very permissive license. We are considering also releasing it under the GNU Public License version 2.0, because it would be a shame if a GPL-licensed project wanted to re-use our code and couldn’t.
History¶
Micala is an acronym for University of Michigan and CERN Automated Lecture Archiving In 2000, Professor Homer A. Neal at the University of Michigan founded the U-M ATLAS Collaboratory Project, whose mission is to “study and advance the technologies and practices required for the organization and execution of modern, large-scale collaborative research experiments.” This has included developing technologies for videoconferencing and lecture archiving.