July 28, 2008
Patent Filing Suggests Apple Is Exploring New Lecture-Capture Software
A patent application filed by an Apple employee details software that would capture video and slides from college lectures and automatically edit them into video podcasts.
The application, titled “Automatic Content Creation and Processing,” was unearthed this month by AppleInsider. The name on the patent application is Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. An Apple spokesman could not be reached for comment Monday, but the company is notoriously tight-lipped about products that are still in development.
Apple already runs a free service called iTunes U that helps colleges around the country manage online offerings, and several companies sell software that helps capture lecture video and slides as well. One unusual feature described in the new patent application, though, is the ability to determine automatically when to run video footage of the professor speaking and when to splice in images of lecture slides. As the patent application puts it, the software would determine “a time to switch the first and second streams from the event data.”
Many college officials are looking for easy ways to record large numbers of lectures and offer video or audio recordings to students. The goal is to capture and distribute lecture podcasts without requiring professors or other staff members to perform time-consuming editing or file management. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Monday July 28, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Apple already has a fairly easy option for recording lectures that can be automatically posted to iTunes U and/or blogs. It’s called Podcast Producer. Kind of a pain to set-up but it’s an interesting solution to capturing content.
— Dave O. Jul 28, 07:02 PM #
Kinda late to that party, aren’t they?
We (and others) have been offering that service to corporate, educational and conference clients for three years.
I’m sure their tool will be cool though…
— Chance Carpenter Jul 29, 12:02 AM #
We have had a home-grown system to capture/retrieve lectures for 8 years as of this coming Fall semester at McGill University.
— David Harpp Jul 29, 07:25 AM #
A company was formed by the inventors
idealsystems.ca
— David Harpp Jul 29, 09:33 AM #
Hopefully, the Automatic Content Creation and Processing includes automatic captioning of the content.
— drive Jul 29, 02:11 PM #
And where does this leave those of us who don’t want our students more easily capturing our lectures – which are, after all, copyrighted material?
When I create lectures for distribution I record them in a studio setting and edit them carefully. How many of us look forward to outtakes from our lectures appearing on U-Tube?
— Plato Jul 29, 02:14 PM #