Flexible and Automated Production of Full-Fledged Electronic Lectures Peter Ziewer
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Fakult¨at fur¨ Informatik der Technischen Universit¨at Munc¨ hen Flexible and Automated Production of Full-Fledged Electronic Lectures Peter Ziewer Institut fur¨ Informatik Lehrstuhl Informatik II Flexible and Automated Production of Full-Fledged Electronic Lectures Peter Ziewer Vollst¨andiger Abdruck der von der Fakult¨at fur¨ Informatik der Technischen Universit¨at Munc¨ hen zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Naturwissenschaften (Dr. rer. nat.) genehmigten Dissertation. Vorsitzender: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Arndt Bode Prufer¨ der Dissertation: 1. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Helmut Seidl 2. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johann Schlichter Die Dissertation wurde am 30. November 2006 bei der Technischen Universit¨at Munc¨ hen eingereicht und durch die Fakult¨at fur¨ Informatik am 24. Mai 2007 angenommen. Abstract This thesis describes the automated production of multimedia-based learning mate- rials. Recording of real live lectures enables a lightweight and cost-effective way of creating electronic lectures. The flexible screen grabbing technology can capture vir- tually any material presented during a lecture and furthermore can be integrated seamlessly into an existing teaching environment in a transparent manner, so that the teacher is not aware of the recording process. Throughout this thesis the design and development of a flexible and easy-to-use lec- turing environment on the basis of Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is explained. The VNC infrastructure and protocol is adapted to build up an environment that of- fers scalable transmission of live lectures and is capable of supplying a large number of distance students in parallel. Furthermore, the suggested system provides com- fortable lecture recording in order to produce electronic lectures for asynchronous replay at any time later. These electronic lectures preserve the verbal narration of the teacher and any material or applications presented during a lecture including additional annotations (e.g. adding freehand drawings by use of an electronic pen). Unlike other pixel-based recording environments, the suggested system offers slide- based navigation and full text search. This is achieved by automated post-processing which generates appropriate indexing structures and search bases by analyzing the recorded lectures. Several analysing concepts are introduced and compared by eval- uating recorded lectures of different presentation styles. Furthermore, an implementation of the suggested concepts and ideas { the TeleTeach- ingTool { is presented and usage scenarios are given in order to approve the usability and the advantage of the system. Acknowledgment I would like to thank Thomas Perst and Pete Bankhead for their patient efforts in proofreading and their helpful suggestions and comments. Contents 1 Introduction . 1 1.1 Outline . 4 2 Presentation Recording and Transmission . 5 2.1 Electronic Lectures . 5 2.1.1 Terms and Definitions. 6 2.1.2 Usage Scenarios and Benefits . 9 2.1.3 From Traditional to Digital Lectures . 11 2.2 Symbolic Representation vs Screen Recording . 16 2.3 Lightweight Production and Transparent Recording . 23 2.4 Criteria and Features . 29 2.4.1 Criteria Catalog . 35 3 VNC: Virtual Network Computing . 41 3.1 The VNC Environment . 41 3.2 Remote Framebuffer Protocol (RFB) . 42 3.2.1 Common VNC workflow. 44 3.2.2 RFB Message Types . 45 3.2.3 Pixel Format . 47 3.2.4 Encoding Schemes . 47 3.2.5 Hextile Encoding . 48 XIV Contents 3.2.6 Limitations . 49 3.3 Distance Learning based upon VNC . 50 3.3.1 Summary. 52 4 Scalable VNC . 55 4.1 Limiting Individual Properties . 57 4.1.1 Reducing Pixel Formats . 58 4.1.2 Encoding Agreement . 60 4.1.3 Combining Framebuffer Update Requests . 60 4.2 One-To-Many Communication . 62 4.2.1 Routing Schemes . 62 4.2.2 Communication Protocols . 63 4.2.3 Size Limitations and Message Dependencies. 64 4.2.4 Splitting Framebuffer Updates . 66 4.2.5 Splitting Hextile Encoded Rectangles . 67 4.2.6 Parsing and Buffering . 69 4.2.7 Format of Datagram Content . 70 4.2.8 Unreliable Transmission: Packet Loss . 71 4.2.9 Unreliable Transmission: Out of order Delivery . 73 4.2.10 Additional Unicast Support . 74 4.2.11 Client Initialization . 75 4.2.12 Framebuffer Initialization and Late Join . 76 4.3 Summary . 78 5 VNC Session Recording . 81 5.1 File Formats . 82 5.1.1 Delta Pixel Values . 83 5.1.2 Recording Distinct Rectangles . 84 5.1.3 Event Logging . 86 Contents XV 5.1.4 Log File Header . 87 5.2 File Sizes . 88 5.2.1 File Compression . 89 5.2.2 Sizes of Recordings Without Keyframes . 92 5.2.3 Summary. 93 5.3 Random Access and Keyframes . 94 5.3.1 Checking the Past . 95 5.3.2 Keyframes as Check Points . 96 5.3.3 Keyframe Stripes for Invariant Frame Computation . 96 5.3.4 Optimization: Current State as Keyframe . 97 5.4 Random Access Performance . 97 5.4.1 Test Results . 99 5.4.2 Different Presentation Styles . 102 5.4.3 VNC Sessions without Keyframes . 104 5.4.4 Completing Updates instead of Keyframes . 107 5.4.5 Optimized Effective Pixels Test . 108 5.5 Summary . 108 6 Annotations and Digital Whiteboard . 111 6.1 Annotations . 111 6.1.1 Annotation Controls . 114 6.2 Digital Whiteboard . 114 6.3 Protocol Integration . 115 6.4 Evaluation of Annotation Usage . 116 6.4.1 Dynamics of Lectures . 119 6.5 Summary . 120 7 Navigation and Automated Indexing. 123 7.1 Navigation by Time . 124 XVI Contents 7.2 Navigational Indices . 125 7.2.1 Intentional Annotations . 125 7.2.2 Side-effect Indices . 126 7.2.3 Derived Indices . 127 7.2.4 Post-hoc Indices . 128 7.2.5 Index Querying . 128 7.2.6 Automated Analysis . 129 7.3 Slide Detection . 130 7.3.1 Slide Detection By-Byte . ..