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NCast Presentation Recorder Reference Manual

NCast Product Documentation

Presentation Recorder

Reference Manual

Revision 2.2

May 29

, 2014

PR-HD Software Release 8.0.13

NCast Corporation

Revision 2.2

Page 1

Summary of Contents for PR-HD-Basic-M

Page 1: ...ecorder Reference Manual NCast Product Documentation Presentation Recorder Reference Manual Revision 2 2 May 29th 2014 PR HD Software Release 8 0 13 Copyright NCast Corporation 2014 NCast Corporation...

Page 2: ...Transmission 18 3 5 Decompression 18 3 6 Display Function 18 3 7 Audio Subsystem 18 3 8 Archive Flash Disk 18 4 Quick Start Configuration and Setup 19 4 1 Quick Start Page Organization 19 4 2 Channel...

Page 3: ...12 1 Serial Interface 99 12 2 Telnet Interface 99 12 3 REST Interface Archive Download 100 12 4 REST Interface Image and Thumbnail Capture 100 12 5 REST Interface Graphics Overlay Upload 100 12 6 REST...

Page 4: ...against harmful interference in a residential installation This equipment generates uses and can radiate radio frequency energy and if not installed and used in accordance with the instructions may ca...

Page 5: ...correct the interference at the expense of the user The user may find the following publication prepared by the Federal Communication Commission helpful How to Identify and Resolve Radio TV Interferen...

Page 6: ...from the internet decompresses the imagery and presents the received information to a viewing audience through use of a large screen monitor or via a room projector Presentation Recorders are able to...

Page 7: ...ities This is a very small form factor chassis suitable for mounting on the walls of a podium on top of or underneath a podium shelf in a mobile cart or on a wall in an equipment room PR HD Basic M A...

Page 8: ...o the room projector VGA Component Out RGBHV or Y Pb Pr output to the local display USB For specifying a static IP connection with a USB drive or saving an archive file Line In Line Out Mic In Unbalan...

Page 9: ...esentation Recorder Reference Manual Backpanel for PR HD Basic R PR HD Basic D Backpanel for PR HD Extreme M PR HD Extreme P Backpanel for PR HD Extreme R PR HD Extreme D NCast Corporation Revision 2...

Page 10: ...GENERATION 2 Earlier versions of the PR 720 and PR HD Presentation Recorders had a different backpanel and connector lineup Documentation on these first generation units is found in Chapter 14 1 8 PRE...

Page 11: ...NCast Presentation Recorder Reference Manual 1 9 PRESENTATION RECORDERS INSTALLATION The diagram below shows a typical room installation NCast Corporation Revision 2 2 Page 11...

Page 12: ...he Streaming View button press Launch Quicktime Player in Window and you re done 2 1 2 Mini Start This is a short introduction on how to get started with a Presentation Recorder 1 Plug the unit into a...

Page 13: ...o connect different media desktop players using multicast protocol If your network is not multicast enabled you must be on the same LAN segment as the encoder Your client player should launch and you...

Page 14: ...le devices Send a Unicast or Multicast Stream In this mode of operation one of the Presentation Recorders is designated as the Sender and all of the other units are designated as Receivers The media s...

Page 15: ...ream to an RTMP Server and Record to File Supports live streaming using the RTMP streaming protocol and in addition simultaneously records to create a local archive See the diagram and description abo...

Page 16: ...r is configured to receive a stream from another unit acting as a sender The receiving unit decodes and renders the composite image created by the sender and displays it on the attached monitor This c...

Page 17: ...press and decompress YUV video and graphics images to H 264 streams Display Output Sub system Media streams which are received and decoded are presented on the attached display for viewing Both RGBHV...

Page 18: ...viewers 3 6 DISPLAY FUNCTION The display will output imagery from two different sources If the unit is configured as the sending unit a local copy of the captured image prior to compression but after...

Page 19: ...cording Control Recording of a session on a Channel is started paused or stopped Status Bar A real time display of session activity and input signal status Control Icons Special controls to power off...

Page 20: ...work The Channel s multicast or unicast addresses Recording Archive filenames and other recording parameters Upload Disposition of the archive file once the recording has completed Notifications Email...

Page 21: ...ppear on the locally attached monitor 4 3 SOURCE SELECTION The selection of which input signal connector to use for the Main and the PIP windows is accomplished by clicking the Video button in the Sou...

Page 22: ...ays Shows or hides the graphical or text overlays allows edit of text overlays Preview Creates a static image of the frame being captured 4 4 STREAMING START STOP The Streaming Start button activates...

Page 23: ...entry of metadata for the recorded file Title Presenter Description 4 6 STATUS BAR The Status Bar at the bottom of the page creates a real time report of the activity underway and has indicators for S...

Page 24: ...rating parameters will be properly saved and restored 4 7 3 Factory Defaults Restores all Channels and other settings to their factory default All configuration information will be lost Nothing is sav...

Page 25: ...upport section on NCast s website contains Release Notes outlining what features or fixes have been implemented in the latest firmware The Software Update dialog box lists the current release s of sof...

Page 26: ...oder comes with 25 factory defined Channel layouts for the most commonly used inputs and compositions These layouts are not fixed permanently but simply examples of commonly used arrangements Any Chan...

Page 27: ...t addresses MTU s and TTL Recording Recording filename title and description Upload FTP or Secure FTP server names and passwords USB or Presentation Server Notifications E mail reports of important Ch...

Page 28: ...ll be transmitting in a one way one to many multicast only session to other units or remote desktops Streaming Send with Recording The unit will be transmitting in a one way one to many multicast only...

Page 29: ...a power failure 5 2 5 Auto Start Recording Recording starts and stops when the Session starts and stops 5 3 EDIT CHANNEL FRAME SIZE 5 3 1 Set Frame Size The Frame Size defines the dimensions of the F...

Page 30: ...ea 5 3 2 Set Aspect Ratio The aspect ratio of an image is the visual width divided by the visual height For most computer systems square pixels are displayed so the aspect ratio of the image is the pi...

Page 31: ...Overlay They are not scaled during Upload Transparency in the alpha channel is not implemented The information box Overlay n Left Top Width Height shows where the overlay will appear in the compositi...

Page 32: ...modifications to these entries have no effect until the next Session start The enable disable button will cause the text to be included or not included in the composite media stream being created More...

Page 33: ...el name p AM PM P am pm R Archive presenter S Second 00 to 60 x Date for example 12 31 08 X Time for example 23 13 48 Y Year for example 2009 z Numeric time zone for example 4000 Z Alphabetic time zon...

Page 34: ...s to be associated with the graphics media stream Sample Rate Channels Bit Rate Quality 11 kHz Mono 16 kbps Phone 22 kHz Mono 32 kbps FM radio 44 kHz Mono 64 kbps CD 44 kHz Stereo 128 kbps Stereo CD I...

Page 35: ...might be to send a lower resolution SVGA 800x600 image at a higher frame rate At settings of 10 frames second cursor movement and drop down menus look natural but video still suffers At 15 frames seco...

Page 36: ...s on the material being presented using the network at hand 5 6 4 Key Frame Interval Changes the number of seconds between key frames I frames Note This parameter is for advanced users only who fully...

Page 37: ...nt IETF RFC 3180 describes a mechanism for statically assigned multicast addresses in the address space 233 8 based on a formula that incorporates the Autonomous System AS number in the middle two oct...

Page 38: ...to applications desiring an automatically generated port number Even if different multicast addresses are being used it is recommended that different port numbers be used for the different media stre...

Page 39: ...acket contains additional headers Set to 1 to achieve extra low audio latency This is an audio encoder option it doesn t affect the decoder 5 7 4 Set TTL The time to live defines the number of router...

Page 40: ...a streaming server e g a Presentation Server The transfer is accomplished by RTSP ANNOUNCE commands sent from a Presentation Recorder RTSP client to the server The system makes sure that the latest v...

Page 41: ...er accessing the RTSP server 5 9 5 Set Video MTU The Maximum Transmission Unit MTU is the maximum length of a packet and is normally set to 1500 For some special circuits satellite links others the ma...

Page 42: ...option it doesn t affect the decoder 5 9 8 Set Maximum Audio Frames in Packet Sets how many AAC frames can be sent in one packet The default value is 8 The valid range is from 1 to 10 Lower values re...

Page 43: ...un b Abbreviated month name for example Jan c 4 digit counter C 6 digit counter d Day of the month 01 to 31 H Hour 00 to 23 I Hour 01 to 12 m month 01 to 12 M minute 00 to 59 n Channel number 001 to 1...

Page 44: ...tomatically creating RSS feeds for the recording once it has been uploaded to an Presentation Server Once a recording has commenced the description information may be updated on the Archives page Spec...

Page 45: ...contents of the Text variables may be viewed on the Configuration Custom Texts tab 5 11 EDIT CHANNEL UPLOAD The Upload tab provides for automatic upload of archives to a streaming server using File T...

Page 46: ...hed and ready file a server using File Transfer Protocol FTP a server using Secure File Transfer Protocol SFTP a locally inserted USB stick transfer to a Presentation Server using the Capture Agent RE...

Page 47: ...nnel Table settings may be used to differentiate the upload repository for each different recording Information about what Channel was used to record an archive is retained with the archive If later f...

Page 48: ...directory will be pr hd Class 002 archives This provides for automatic placement of uploaded files into directories based on the channel number which was used for recording Changing directories based...

Page 49: ...entation Recorder Reference Manual 5 11 17 Universal Serial Bus Upload The Presentation Recorders are able to transfer ready archive files to a locally inserted USB drive NCast Corporation Revision 2...

Page 50: ...the Presentation Server scheduler the Series and Workflow in effect for the archive come from entries in the scheduler For locally initiated recordings the Channel preset will be used to specify this...

Page 51: ...such as Recording Start Failed Disk Full or Archive Upload Failed See Section 7 9 for information on how to setup system wide error notifications 5 12 1 Channel N Settings Notifications Each Channel...

Page 52: ...em wide events is available for Channel specific notifications A system wide event would report the start of ANY Session whereas a Channel specific event would only report the start of activity on Cha...

Page 53: ...7 1 hours of recording The disk size in the unit is noted at the beginning Archive page The resolution and frame rate of a channel aren t as important as the max bit rate set for operation Recording...

Page 54: ...n In addition to the MP4 file two additional files may be retrieved XML Contains metadata about the recording such as Title and Presenter SRT Contains a timed text track which may be used for captioni...

Page 55: ...h the archive If later from the Archives page a new upload or re upload is requested the system extracts current S FTP settings from the Channel Table entry and uses that S FTP site information to upl...

Page 56: ...ger required Quicktime Pro an inexpensive add on to Quicktime player for both MACs and Windows is suitable for taking the original files and exporting them to a variety of other formats for further ed...

Page 57: ...1 2 Contact Name The Contact name is typically the name of the owner or administrator of the unit responsible for being the source of the generated media stream It could also be the name of the person...

Page 58: ...may drift over longer time periods This option is controlled by the Stop NTP button which will terminate any active Session and reconfigure the system If the NTP client has been stopped an additional...

Page 59: ...ut alternatively they may be entered through the use of commonly available USB memory sticks When shipped the units are setup with DHCP enabled The DHCP setting means that any network or router which...

Page 60: ...ithin the Presentation Recorder may on occasion require contact with a valid name server 7 3 6 Secondary DNS The numeric IP address of the secondary or backup Domain Name Server 7 3 7 Ethernet Mode Ad...

Page 61: ...ecorder is being used with a simple hub or switch Long bootup times will be shortened as the box is no longer searching for network time servers This file should be created edited with any simple ASCI...

Page 62: ...P MIB UDP MIB HOST RESOURCES MIB DISMAN EVENT MIB NOTIFICATION LOG MIB For security reasons and to prevent unwanted use and probes of your network it is advised to change all the default settings in t...

Page 63: ...dentification of the Slave unit to be controlled by this recorder For additional information on use of this facility please refer to the Tech Tip NCast Dual Stream Recording 7 3 21 Remote Logging For...

Page 64: ...fficial SSL Certificate or has created a non authoritative one which can be done with many different SSL tools this new certificate may be uploaded and installed on the Web Control page When HTTPS is...

Page 65: ...o decrease the local loopback refresh loading The local screen will still be updated but at a rate which provides some relief from excessive use Reduce the setting from the Full value if needed to max...

Page 66: ...ter display to be set in an area of the screen that does not obscure other important windows like the PIP window for example 7 5 7 Configure OSD The contents of the OSD can be tailored to contain only...

Page 67: ...7 7 SCHEDULER 7 7 1 Overview The PR HD Series Scheduler is a feature that allows the manager of one or more Presentation Recorders to schedule these appliances through use of a Google calendar or thr...

Page 68: ...n Recorders where the web based Google Calendar is the administrative interface for defining session start stop times for one or more Presentation Recorders within a customer s network The process wor...

Page 69: ...s the actual stop time Thus events may be scheduled back to back The Where field is the DNS name or IP address of the Presentation Recorder to be controlled Only one Presentation Recorder may be liste...

Page 70: ...ck for conflicts or overlapping events If times overlap for a given Presentation Recorder the results will occur in the order scheduled 7 7 7 iCalendar Overview There are many different calendar appli...

Page 71: ...up to one month s worth of events from the file then checks for a Google Calendar account and utilizes any additional event information coming from Google Calendar Overlapping or conflicting event in...

Page 72: ...name of the iCalendar scheduling file which will be used 7 7 13 View Buttons These buttons allows the operator to check on scheduled events View Google Check on activities scheduled by Google calendar...

Page 73: ...he PS Installation Use the following checklist if there are problems in getting the encoder to work with the server 1 On the Configuration Presentation Server tab double check that the correct server...

Page 74: ...ts during its operation Events can be informational like Archive uploaded or they can be error reports such as Disk full Event are categorized by their severity level Info Warning Error and Critical a...

Page 75: ...irewall rules ISP restrictions or other requirements 7 9 6 SMTP Authentication Check this box if your SMTP server requires authentication 7 9 7 SMTP Username The username required for authenticated e...

Page 76: ...ollows First select the severity level desired for reporting Typically this would be Critical and Error unless there is an interest in the more frequent and less interesting Warning and Info messages...

Page 77: ...hrough 9 may be used to define the Title Presenter and Description fields Normally these variables are initialized and changed through the use of serial commands TA TJ This table lists and allows edit...

Page 78: ...ettings are for Event messages They may trigger mail to the system administrator that the disk needs cleanup They do not directly contribute to file cleanup or removal They are simply warning trigger...

Page 79: ...of the hardware unit Hardware architecture Software release revision and date Revision of firmware and FPGA code REST API interface level Current system date and time USB Disk Status Archive space av...

Page 80: ...tation Recorder are recorded in the Event Logs These Logs are part of the Event Notification System discussed in Section 7 9 8 3 2 Download Logs Log reporting is an important tool which NCast uses to...

Page 81: ...ction of recent activity for the Serial link 8 4 2 Download Logs Log reporting is an important tool which NCast uses to diagnose any problems whether they hardware or software bugs or operational issu...

Page 82: ...e required interface cable is a DVI D Single Link Digital or DVI I Combo Analog and Digital or DVI A Analog RGB A DVI D Dual Link cable is also acceptable The Main Full or PIP Full expands the image t...

Page 83: ...audio input source If recording in Mono make sure the active audio is available on the LEFT channel Audio over HDMI or audio over SDI is not currently supported 9 2 2 Audio Microphone Gain The audio...

Page 84: ...utput levels in dBu are shown in the chart 9 2 6 Audio Loopback Gain Allows input audio to be looped back to the output connector The normal use of this loopback is for confidence checking of the inpu...

Page 85: ...are a mix of 16 9 and 4 3 windows If the Swap button is pressed with a mix of two different window aspect ratios there will be distortion When there is a change of speakers with a change of computers...

Page 86: ...isables display of text overlay 1 4 Text overlays are initialized from the Channel Table presets and after Session start may be changed though use of serial commands or via the Edit button shown above...

Page 87: ...player with all the information required to find or request the media stream s and to decode the information contained therein Four different types of files are dynamically created by the links File...

Page 88: ...eads the contents of the SDP file and determines how many media streams must be requested what types of audio video codecs are required to process the media and what type of connection multicast RTSP...

Page 89: ...ensions Firewalls either in the laptop desktop or externally are blocking access to the required RTSP or UDP ports The network being used is not multicast enabled and multicast connectivity is being r...

Page 90: ...s simple to use and has some existing support in the open source community and works with several players The format is an srt text file type which is described here http en wikipedia org wiki SubRip...

Page 91: ...time slider true head meta name title content NCast PR HD Series Commercial meta name author content VP Sales meta name copyright content NCast Corporation 2007 layout root layout height 285 width 330...

Page 92: ...alism wisc edu worldcaption World Caption is a program for adding captions to a QuickTime compatible video using a transcript of that video While World Caption cannot be used to generate a transcript...

Page 93: ...ext Overlay 4 has the highest visibility and the black matte background the lowest As part of the Edit Channel Layout window the Presentation Recorder provides an easy to use drag n drop style interfa...

Page 94: ...nd 16 9 aspect ratio The Main graphics window occupies an area of 960x720 Main Window and the PIP video window is set to 320x240 In this example the Graphic Overlay 1 png image is 320x480 and is locat...

Page 95: ...that there is no overlap 7 Click on the Upload button and upload the jpg png or gif image of your choice Note the size of the image must match exactly the space allocated for it These incoming files a...

Page 96: ...ng made here is that in planning for a conference or seminar recording rooms may have a podium right or podium left configuration and the overlay graphics which are created must be able to accommodate...

Page 97: ...2 Channel 7 Channel 3 Channel 8 Channel 14 Channel 23 Channel 15 Channel 24 11 1 3 Customer Layout Examples NCast customers and associates have created some outstanding examples of graphically intere...

Page 98: ...NCast Presentation Recorder Reference Manual TeraGrid Conference courtesy of UCSD Virtual Teams Conference courtesy of Media X HP Historical Presentation NCast Corporation Revision 2 2 Page 98...

Page 99: ...Telnet Interface One such program is called the Presentation Recorder Management System and there is a version written in Java and Python See the Download area of the NCast web site An example of the...

Page 100: ...uration WEB page 12 4 REST INTERFACE IMAGE AND THUMBNAIL CAPTURE The HTTP Interface may be used to capture single images from the encoder Commonly employed utilities such as wget can retrieve the curr...

Page 101: ...Presentation Recorder Reference Manual 12 6 REST INTERFACE REFERENCE MANUAL All REST Interface calls are documented in the Presentation Recorder REST Interface Guide NCast Corporation Revision 2 2 Pag...

Page 102: ...observed viewers will see various artifacts pixelation stuttering loss of lip sync that lead to a negative experience The principal causes of these artifacts are packet loss due to overloading of the...

Page 103: ...to the Presentation Recorder Make sure that the camera s video output does not have time date stamps battery icons or other clutter on the signal being captured There are usually menu options to turn...

Page 104: ...of microphones for the panel discussion is available 13 2 4 Automatic Recording A Presentation Recorder Channel can be setup to automatically start recording when a Session is started This is probabl...

Page 105: ...make the following points Use a microphone Even if the room audience can hear the speaker well non use of a microphone can be a disaster for the webcast or recording The proper microphone must be on...

Page 106: ...ression of the material 13 4 1 Streamclip One such tool is a free utility called Streamclip This program may be obtained at the following website http www squared5 com To use Streamclip to trim a file...

Page 107: ...le as a starting point move the slider backward or forward until a usable key frame is found Drag the slider to the end of the new clip and select an Out point where the new clip ends Save the file as...

Page 108: ...The VGA connector does not accept component signals Y Pb Pr Only on DVI A The position of the VGA Loopback has been swapped with the VGA input The PIP function with HDMI and DVI is no longer supported...

Page 109: ...ty for the first generation product MAIN PIP VGA DVI A DVI D HDMI S VIDEO COMPOSITE VGA Duplicate No Yes Yes Yes Yes DVI A No Duplicate N A Yes Yes Yes DVI D Yes N A Duplicate Yes Yes Yes HDMI Yes Yes...

Page 110: ...he remotely displayed image Line Level Sound level signals typically in the range of 10 dBu to 30 dBu Lip sync The synchronization of independent audio and video streams at a receiving decoder so that...

Page 111: ...s 5 4 Support for a 4 3 aspect ratio is accomplished by utilizing a 1280 960 subset of the display surface Telnet An IP network based protocol which was originally used to connect remote consoles and...

Page 112: ...ort of MPEG 4 Elementary Streams J van der Meer et al November 2003 IETF RFC 2326 Real Time Streaming Protocol RTSP H Schulzrinne et al April 1998 IETF RFC 2327 SDP Session Description Protocol M Hand...

Page 113: ...pload method supporting Kaltura servers Revision 2 0 Updates based on software Release 6 5 0 Introduction of the REST API based GUI Revision 1 2 Updates based on software Release 6 4 5 Revision 1 1 Up...

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