Lecture Capture for the Masses with Camtasia Relay Wednesday, February 20 3:55 PM

I looked forward to this session at EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference since I suspected Camtasia Relay may work the way I'd like for a pod/screen/lecture-casting system might work; my live-blogging notes are available online, and I have a few thoughts following the session. As other posts have done, I've bolded my own personal revelations and/or conclusions below.

Geraud Plantegenest, Michigan State, commented that one of the most significant features to offer learners with a podcast, from their experience, is variable speed playback controls. That allows learners to listen to a recording at up to twice the original playback speed; learners then can review a lecture in 25 to 50% less time than the original time. This feature is not one I had considered in the past, but as a student, I know variable speed playback could be incredibly useful for review purposes.

In very rudimentary and concept-only terms, Camtasia Relay is a new product based on Camtasia Studio. Realy splits the front and back ends of Camtasia Studio into two pieces. The recording tools are captured in a client application to be installed on a standard computer; the encoding and publishing functions are deployed as a server application. With a profile created to specify encoding and publishing options, a faculty member only has to start and stop a recording from the client application. Once the recording is stopped, the raw file is sent to the server for encoding and publishing per the specifications within the profile.

A few specific questions that were answered during the session.

• Relay supports publishing to media servers and iTunes etc.
  
• TechSmith is working on a Blackboard plugin and e-mail notification to users.
• The client application can latch into LDAP, active directory etc to authenticate identity before publishing a recording to a channel.
• The application is currently in a very limited closed beta; the beta may be expanded between now and mid-summer with a potential product release at that time (if I heard correctly).
• No preliminary licensing structure or pricing estimates are currently available.
  

From what I've seen and read, I believe the approach used by Camtasia Relay is the most reasonable and cost-efficient configuration possible for lecture-casting from classrooms. It avoids the need for and does not press for the purchase and installation of encoding devices in individual classrooms, and there's not a secondary market for an upsale to streaming classroom lectures which I generally believe has little to no value. I do hope the licensing and pricing structure will focus on the server application and allow a more open distribution of the client application across an institution; I believe that would make the most sense given the client seems near useless without the server application, and the more open distribution would make the solution more scalable and cost effective for educational institutions.