Galicaster project Home

Introduction

The main goal of the Galicaster Project is to develop an open solution to provide flexible, state-of-the-art solutions for recording educational multimedia contents, like lectures and conferences. Galicaster project is supported by TELTEK Video Research.

Galicaster capture solution is compatible with Opencast-Matterhorn. Galicaster-based devices can work as improved Matterhorn capture agents. They can register as a capture agent, thus being able to receive scheduled recordings and ingest the resulting mediapackages automatically.

New features on Galicaster 1.3.1

Ingest to a Opencast Matterhorn cluster with multiple ingest servers.
New Pushpic plugin: send screenshoots periodically for monitoring with Galicaster Dashboard
Improved VU-meter dynamic range
Several bug fixes including:
- Fixed bug on dialog modality and focus.
- Fixed bug on No-audio-dialog when reloading a profile.
- Fixed serious bug that crashed GC when using Datapath capture cards

Key Features

Live audio and video feedback over a touch interface.
"Recording" red light sign
Visual alarm on muted or low level audio.
No scaler needed for VGA input.
Advanced media manager, allowing playback, metadata edition and sorting and export operations.
Opencast Matterhorn compatible, performs schedule and automatic ingestion.
Basic manual controls of the recording: starting, stopping and pausing.
Remote monitoring via VNC.
HD and SD recording supported from HD-SDI, HDMI, component and composite video sources.
Support for RTP network cameras and Datapath capture cards.
VGA and DVI presentation recordng supported.
Accepts multiple audio sources.
Opencast-Matterhorn 1.4 compatibility.
REST interface plugin.

Galicaster Recorder UI

Main Goal

Galicaster can be used as an automatic in-room recording solution for the classroom, keeping the professor informed and in control, or it can be used as a mobile unit, perfect for recording meetings and conferences.

Our main goal is the creation of an aplication adaptable to different scenarios and equipment. So far, two Galicaster configurations have reached a mature state of development:Fixed Galicaster in the Classroom and Galicaster for Mobile operation.

Galicaster in the Classroom: The idea is to deploy Galicaster in a classroom environment with a basic set of controls and a tactile interface. It works automatically but some manual actions are available to the lecturers, such as muting the audio or pausing/playing/stopping the recording if desired.
Galicaster for Mobile operation: The idea here is to buid a a complete portable recording station, providing full control on the recorded media. Operators can get real-time feedback from cameras and microphones, so that they can react immediately against any unexpected situation, manage a repository with all the recording media, delete many recordings in a single operation, send and resend media to distribution channels, label tracks, etc.

Versatility

Galicaster can be used alone, but it is virtually adaptable to any publishing platform, since it keep all the recording metadata and video and audio tracks are recorded separately. Proof of this is the combined [Galicaster and Opencast Matterhorn] installation which is already in production at the University of Vigo.

Galicaster can be seamlessly integrated with a wide variety of environments: low-cost, flexible equipments; best-performance, customized installations; existing campus-wide infrastructures; media distribution platforms, etc.

Technologies

Both applications are based on Python and GStreamer, both long term projects supported by large communities, ensuring their adaptability to most of the operating systems in the UNIX family. They can also be adapted to multiple kinds of hardware, expanding the possibilities to record with many types of devices such as laptops, HD Webcams, TV Cameras, video players, microphones ...