{"id":1066,"date":"2015-11-04T12:37:32","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T12:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/eltt\/?p=1066"},"modified":"2022-04-13T15:46:56","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T15:46:56","slug":"whats-under-the-bonnet-of-blackboard-collaborate-ultra-html5-video-capture-thats-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/whats-under-the-bonnet-of-blackboard-collaborate-ultra-html5-video-capture-thats-what\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s under the bonnet of Blackboard Collaborate Ultra \u2013 HTML5 video capture that\u2019s what"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Christopher John<\/a>\u00a0(guest blogger)<\/p>\n

This week, we have another blog post by Christopher John. Chris is the E-learning Team Leader, based in the\u00a0Cardiff School of Social Sciences<\/a>. Chris and the SOCSI eLearning Team have been testing out the newest version on Blackboard Collaborate –\u00a0Collaborate Ultra, and have kindly written about their experiences. This version should be generally available for University staff in September 2016<\/strong>. For further information about our current version of Collaborate, please read “New Year \u2013 New Technologies<\/a>“, “Introducing Learn Plus (Panopto) and Blackboard Collaborate<\/a>” and “First Steps with Blackboard Collaborate<\/a>“.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a previous job I spent quite a lot of time developing learning technology that included video capture, it wasn\u2019t difficult, using plugins such as Flash<\/a> or Java<\/a>, products could quickly be created with video capture at the heart of them.<\/p>\n

Times have changed and not altogether recently, Flash and Java are still prevalent in learning technology, but a vendor\u2019s reliance on plugin-based technology for product delivery can seriously impact on its chances of success.\u00a0 When I heard there was a new HTML5 version of Blackboard Collaborate,<\/a> named Ultra, I was very keen to take a peek under the bonnet and see how they achieved the video capture feature of the product.<\/p>\n

The Answer is native HTML5 video capture using WebRTC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Blackboard<\/a>
Figure 1: Blackboard Collaborate Ultra<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is WebRTC?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Without getting too heavily into the technology, WebRTC<\/a> is a collection of JavaScript APIs that include the ability to access a user\u2019s camera and microphone directly through the browser, then capture or transmit the data to another browser, all without plugins.\u00a0 It is still experimental technology and not yet universally supported but can be used across Chrome, Firefox and Opera browsers and is supported by Android and iOS operating systems.\u00a0 Ultra uses a Flash<\/a> backup where WebRTC is not supported.<\/p>\n

What does it mean for Collaborate users?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The range of features in Ultra is admittedly (currently) less than Blackboard Classic but access to both versions will allow you to tailor your delivery option to the needs of your target audience.\u00a0 For example, workplace-based learners often struggle to install Java, needed for Classic, without the support of their IT department, Ultra would get round the need for this.<\/p>\n

WebRTC impact<\/strong><\/p>\n

WebRTC is still an evolving technology but being JavaScript-based could be integrated into existing learning technologies to support more content-rich user experiences or to improve accessibility for sign language users.\u00a0 It\u2019s great to see a company like Blackboard investing in WebRTC and hopefully this will lead to wider support in the future.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that long ago that Internet Explorer didn\u2019t support HTML video at all.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a>
Figure 2: www.fingerspell.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Build your own HTML5 video capture applications<\/strong><\/p>\n

Want to get your hands dirty and dive into the code?\u00a0 HTML5 rocks<\/a> has some great WebRTC tutorials and I have created a demo application named CameraCaptureJS<\/a>\u00a0which will help get you started.<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/a>
Figure 3: CameraCaptureJS (Social Sciences eLearning team)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CameraCaptureJS<\/a> will (Where WebRTC supported) display the feed from your web camera (Desktop or Mobile) and for Firefox users includes an added bonus of being able to record and playback video using another piece of experimental JavaScript technology named the MediaRecorder API<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have posted the code for CameraCaptureJS on GitHub<\/a>, feel free to pull apart, build new applications.<\/p>\n

Useful websites<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.webrtc.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.html5rocks.com\/en\/tutorials\/webrtc\/basics\/<\/a><\/p>\n

For further information, please feel free to contact:<\/p>\n

Christopher John
\neLearning Team Leader, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University
\njohnc11@cardiff.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by\u00a0Christopher John\u00a0(guest blogger) This week, we have another blog post by Christopher John. Chris is the E-learning Team Leader, based in the\u00a0Cardiff School of Social Sciences. Chris and the SOCSI […]","protected":false},"author":386,"featured_media":1144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[371],"tags":[137,172,170,190,171],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-education","tag-blackboard-collaborate","tag-cameracapturejs","tag-collaborate-ultra","tag-html5","tag-webrtc"],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":1066},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4KqgK-hc","meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/286\/2015\/11\/socsielt.jpg","pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/386"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}