Streaming Second Life into Connect by cogdogblog
posted 2 Apr ’08, 9.28pm MDT PST on flickr
For the NMC Symposium on Mashups we are also mashing up the venues for this online conference. Here we have a presentation by Jonathan Richter on the SaLamander Project that is taking place at the NMC Conference Center in Second Life.
But we are also streaming it, or casting it, into Adobe Connect using the application sharing features. Unlike Elluminate, which does something like 4 frames a second of screen, Connect goes faster on refresh- not quite smooth, but for a presentation where not moves, it is more than okay.
The tricky part is getting audio. We owe our thanks to the clever folks at LearningTimes who figured out the technique- requires a PC with a sound card that does stereo mix, to capture all the outward sounds (video, audio from SL plus the voice chat client, which is actually a second application) that than becomes the microphone source for Connect.
I think this could be done on a Mac using Hijaack Pro or SoundFlower.
The trick is getting the cameraman avatar to capture all sound since it is distance or zoom dependent, so ir requires some deft zooming on speakers or audience members of they ask questions.
We have a shared backchannel chat in Skype to pass comments/questions back and forth.
It was a giant experiment but went fairly well
Just got through watching the Adobe Connect recording of Brian’s session. I am glad you wrote this post, because I am not sure how many of the participants appreciated that the real virtuoso of mashups in this conference was…you! From my perspective of a non-attendee, your work to weave content, streams, feeds in and out of the different environments was absolutely masterly. Well done, and thanks for letting me be able to experience the fun, if at least second-hand if not in second life.
Thanks Scott (blush) but it was not all me– it was a team effort from my colleagues Rachel and Larry to coordinate things, from Colin in our office who did heroic tech support for attendees, and the amazing team from LearningTimes who choreographed the Connect portion and enabled the SL application sharing (apparently, none of us with our high end PCs have the right kind of sound card to do the audio mix).
But yeah, you really had to be there to know how way over the top (in a good way) Brian was. And you know how damn humble he is about taking praise.