Open Volume Control/Options/Properties and select "Adjust volume for Recording." Make sure the volume controls for the Microphone, CD Audio, and Line are displayed. Using the check box at the bottom, select the Microphone volume control. The Volume Control on the Speaker may need to be muted to avoid feedback. Make sure that the Microphone is not muted under the Volume Control/Options/Properties "Adjust volume for Playback" section. One can now record wav files using either Sound Forge or the Windows Sound Recorder. Alernatively, selecting "CD Audio" or "Line" under Volume Control/Options/Properties "Adjust volume for Recording" allows one to record from those sources.
Save the PowerPoint slides as .jpg files. Use PhotoShop or the equivalent to resize them to the desired presentation format (I used 640x480). Use Real Slide Show to arrange them in order on the time line. Record wav files for each slide using the microphone and Sound Forge. Drag the corresponding wav file for each slide onto the time line to associate it with the slide. Real Slide Show can then generate the .rm, .ram, .smi, and .jpg files that comprise the slideshow. Upload the files to the web site using the send function and test with Netscape and RealPlayer. Some attention needs to be paid to the file locations and URLs to get this last step to work.
Connect the video out jack of the VCR to the USB capture card. Connect audio out jack of VCR to line connector of sound card. Adjust Volume Control to select Line as the input. The sound connection can be tested with Sound Recorder or Sonic Foundry. The video connection can be tested with the video capture applet that comes with the capture device. For some reason I have to reinstall the video capture driver after each computer reboot to get it to work. Open Premiere or equivalent and select the capture settings: size, number of frames per second (fps) and audio (mono/stereo, xx kHz) to capture. 320x240 fps, 10 fps, and 22 kHz mono ran at 63 MB per captured minute to an avi file (1 GB was approximately 16 minutes). I experienced about 5% dropped frames but did not notice any problems in the video quality from them. There is much web discussion about capture device and hard disk combinations that allow higher quality and bandwidth audio/video capture. Use Real Encoder to convert the avi file to .rm streaming format. I choose 200 kbps (kilobits per second) as the target streaming rate based on informal testing on the LBNL network. Real Encoder is limited to 500 kbps. At these settings, the finished video averaged 6 fps, somewhat jerky but with understandable sound. The compression was significant, 1.4 MB per captured video minute, which corresponds to over a factor of 40 compared to the avi file. As explained at the streaming video tutorial site use Notepad to generate a .ram file with the target URL of the .rm file and upload both files to the web server (the MSD training site is on ux8) and test with Netscape and RealPlayer.
As with Method 1, except capture directly to the .rm file using Real Encoder. The advantage is that one avoids generating a large (i.e. > 1 GB) .avi file. The disadvantage is that one would have to rerecord to generate .rm files with different target streaming rates. I used this method for the longer training videos.
Joel Ager, 1/17/00