The policy for keeping BlueCast recordings is to maintain them for one year beyond the semester in which the course was taught.  As such, it is now time for us to delete recordings from classes taught during the Spring 2012 semester.  Deletions will begin on June 3rd for these courses.  If you wish to archive and download copies of your class recordings there are a couple of methods for doing this.

• Archiving your recordings: Podcasts
  This method allows you to download a single MP4 movie file of the lecture which is playable on most any type of computer or mobile device and can be easily put on web pages and BlueLine.
• Archiving your recordings: Offline Viewer
  This process downloads the presentation as several files which together can let you view the presentation just like it looked in BlueCast, but without the searching capability.  These presentations can be put on a web server for later viewing, but the process is move involved since it is more than just one file.

More information on both of these processes, including how to do them, can be found by clicking the links above.

If you teach an online course which re-uses recordings on BlueCast for multiple semesters please fill out the Long Term Storage Request form to let us know so that they will not be deleted. Please contact us if you require any assistance with re-using lectures for new semesters as there could be implications with the new student rosters.

If you have any questions about these procedures please contact us at AeT@creighton.edu.

Hi folks,

Our Learning Environments team has been in lockstep with all of the construction and renovations going on here at Creighton and that includes setting up new BlueCast equipped rooms and

The Sony EVI-D70, our standard for PTZ cameras.

classrooms. Some of the multi-use rooms are receiving awesome new Pan Tilt Zoom (or commonly referred as PTZ) cameras that allow the user or faculty member to use a remote control (Just like the one at home for you home theater) to move the camera around the classroom and zoom in and out of the image to get the best angle for your lecture. These cameras are immensely useful and flexible and I hope everyone gets a chance to use a room with one installed and see how they can capture your lecture.

The color bars generated by our capture cards.

Before we get excited and seek out equipped rooms with these cameras, I do want to talk a little about Color Bars (or SMPTE Engineering Guideline EG 1-1990 if you want to get technical ). In our standard BlueCast setup the capture card we use generates the color bars test pattern when it does not see any signal coming from the room’s camera. This serves two purposes: 1. It lets you and us know that there is a problem with the camera in this room and 2. It tells us that the capture card is functioning. If you see these color bars in the Panopto Recorder’s preview please pick up the red Classroom Support phone to let us know so we can fix it!

The reason why I’m telling you about a test pattern is because this it’s important to understand what these mean in the rooms with PTZ Cameras. The Sony EVI-D70 has a remote control that allows you to turn the camera on and off. If the PTZ camera is turned off it won’t be sending a video signal to the capture card in the computer, thus show color bars inside the Panopto Recorder’s preview. In this case what you should do is ensure the camera is turned on by using the remote control’s on/off button. If the video does not pop up after that then please use the Red Classroom Support and we’ll come on down and get the camera functioning.

Now that i’ve gotten that caveat out of the way, the Equipped Classrooms list has been updated so click here to find a room with a PTZ camera and get recording!

It’s been awhile since we last gave an update on BlueCast. We’ve been busy with the impending closure of BlueLine Classic and transitioning to a new Web Conferencing solution (WebEx), but we haven’t forgotten about all the BlueCasters out there! We’re currently focusing our efforts on integration between BlueCast and BlueLine2 offering single sign-on and course provisioning. This is something that both vendors have been working on and we’ve been beta testing, providing feedback and trying to help out in any way we can. In order to bring this new integration on board we’ll need to do system upgrade before the end of Spring 2013. The exact date is still yet to be determined.

This update is going to be big one. Lots of enhancements and major improvements in the backends of the system. Almost every aspect from the Panopto Recorders, Web UI, Indexing, and Processing servers will become more stable, resilient against failure, and overall much more awesome.

We’ll post another announcement on the Blog with some of the awesome new changes soon so keep an eye out!

All that BlueCasting deserves a relaxing break! (not really though, we have work to do!)

In our continued efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of CU information systems and bring updated service to the Creighton Community, please note the following maintenance:

Thank you for your cooperation. If you have any questions or concerns about this maintenance, please contact the Service Desk at x1111

Here’s a quick BlueCast tip for using the Viewer URL links: If you want your audience to start viewing a recording at a specified time simply append “&start=[seconds]” to the end of the Viewer Link. For example if you wanted to see the exact point in Rick’s BlueCast Introduction presentation where he does a funny dance you would simply add “&start=29” to the end of the URL like this: http://bluecast.creighton.edu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer/Default.aspx?id=5a85c991-db40-4568-94f8-50e4459d0667&start=29

Hello folks,

We’re currently having some issues with BlueLine Classic this morning and as such it affects the way users log into BlueCast. Until we’ve fully resolved this I’ve put a work-around in place that should be able to get everyone logged into the system.

When you try to launch the Panopto Recorder or log into the Web UI using the BlueLine Account option you may receive a security warning popup

This is telling you that everything looks good except for the name on the security certificate. It is looking for “blueline.creighton.edu” but while the DNS resolving is not working I’ve directed the log-in page to BlueLine’s IP address. So the certification is seeing a number rather then the friendly BlueLine URL. You want to Click “Yes” or “Allow” or “I understand the risks”. This will get you logged in and able to record or view sessions. As soon as this issue with BlueLine Classic is resolved things will return to normal. If you have questions with this or difficulty logging in to either the Recorder or the Web UI please contact the DoIT Service Desk at x1111