Archive
Protected: Why we need autoaccept messages from on-premise equipment mailboxes to students in the Office365/live@edu cloud
Why to save Audacity projects locally …
… with enough file space to avoid unspecific problems, including later parts of your recording becoming inaudible.
This problem was caused by attempting to save an Audacity project to a network share over a slow network and with limited storage space.
This Audacity project (.aup extension, with subfolders) had a size of a 200MB – the exported .mp3 likely less than 1% off that.
So always save Audacity projects you are working on on local hard drive or USB thumb drive.
SOLVED: How to record, in Adobe-Flash, video from my built-in iSight web camera on an 2010 iMac, combined with sound from an external cs100 PnP USB audio device
- Problem : Our new campus-wide Moodle Kaltura installation enables authentic oral proficiency examinations (we have no other Moodle Plugin for audio recordings). However, we still have no webcams on our mainstay PCs. We do have a few iMacs with built-in iSight webcams, but for providing students more privacy during their assignments in the language resource center, we need headphones. We have for spare some old headphones which we would like to use up, but they are analogue. These iMacs do not have an analog headset connector, only a line-in which would require a preamp. We have good sturdy USB headsets from Sanako, but these are too expensive to purchase for the iMacs that have no ways to secure them and little other specialized language learning use which we do not already get from the PCs (and more…).
- Workaround :
- Try an inexpensive USB audio device that has 3.5mm analog headset inputs.
- On my iMac 2010
- If in system preferences / sound/ I direct input and output to the USB PnP device
- test passes playing system sounds
- in audacity (if you CRANK the microphone sensitivity to the max!)
- recording test passes: The headset loudspeakers and micro work (not well, but they work, as a tab on the microphone indicate: there is static, and the recording volume is still softish, but better than the built in webcam microphone)
- in Kaltura,
- Flash only brings up the security dialogue (in Safari 5 and current Firefox ESR and Chrome) for allowing the web application accessing to the built-in iSight web camera, but no options to choose a separate audio device
- However, if you control-click on Flash’s a video preview window for the web camera, and click on “settings” (not “global settings”, although that is useful for always allowing access from certain URLs like your LMS) .
- Click on the microphone icon :
- Make sure the USB PnP device is selected.
- You can bring up the settings dialogue, make sure the USB PnP device is chosen for audio and CRANK up the microphone input sensitivity! Then test the volume levels with the built-in volume meter (should show lots of green bars when you speak. You may have to adjust the Califone headset microphone arm so that the microphone is very close in front of your mouth. ) Unlike in the picture, do not choose “reduce echo ”.
- Remaining
- Questions :
- Can this sensitivity setting be permanently stored for all users in the iMac software image, or do our students always have to adjust the microphone sensitivity?
- It remains to be seen whether this inexpensive and unsecurable device survives long when being used by our student population.
- Problem : The review video function of the Moodle Kaltura Flash video remains very temperamental on the Mac OS X (In my testing, one of the numerous problems we had with Moodle Kaltura on the iMacs popped up again: when starting to review the recording, the time counter goes, but the video stalls for a few seconds – afterwards everything seems to play fine, but this is enough to confuse the heck out of my users) . While we made another small step of progress towards enabling Moodle Kaltura webcam recordings in the language resource center, it seems easier to just get web cameras for the PCs.
- Questions :
How to do successful Moodle-Kaltura webcam recording assignments
Kaltura turned out to have a number of limitations, and we have some of our own in the LRC. Both required some debugging and finding of workarounds, which you can benefit of if you follow carefully our step-by-step guides for teachers or for students.
Yes, Chrome, you too can display my RSS feeds nicely…
… if you install this extension made by Google themselves (who, I think, should include this RSS feed display extension in the default Chrome distribution):
No comparison with Internet-Explorer’s feed display, but much legible than the XML code display Chrome defaults to:
When installing apache-maven-3.0.4 on Windows 7 (64-bit), environment variables do not expand in %Path%
- Do not follow the instructions for installing apache-maven-3.0.4 on “Windows 2000/XP”, or your final test running mvn –version to verify that it is correctly installed will fail.
- When adapting the Environment variable path, do not use %M2_HOME%\bin, but rather repeat the explicit path, e.g. “G:\conf\lang\java\apache\maven\apache-maven-3.0.4”
- Why is that?
Error code 14001 when installing Audacity
- Symptom: Audacity installation seems to complete without error, but attempting to start Audacity at the end of the installation process results in an error about bad environment with the above error code.
- For your reference: It is has been the missing Visual C++ redistributable installation here in the past on staff computers.
- Solution: Download and install the redistributable, then try restarting Audacity: It should start now.
If students have no mp3 audio on LRCRoomCoed433a Listening Stations
Problem: A Student that took the French Respondus Lockdown browser on PC 43, when playing to listening comprehension files, had no audio on her headset (except for her microphone input was played back for her. The test is single attempt only, and lockdown browser prevents us from troubleshooting.
Cause: Master volume for Wave and SW Synth on lrcroomcoed433b back to 0, like so:
Workaround: plug in one of the black headsets (USB) temporarily (plugging in another brown headset did not resolve the issue).
Solution: None currently: even when the Respondus lockdown browser is not running, Deepfreeze will not allow making changes, and changes in the current user profile will not affect users whose profiels gets created upon login (which is all student users). Longterm: Don’t try to run identical software images on different hardware configurations. Not as longterm: Autoit FTW?
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Other ways to find help
If you cannot find it here, look there: 5,500 Language-Learning Links and Programs for learning or teaching 150 languages
Shortcuts:Our Lists, Our Maps, LRC Staff Moodle Site,LRC Project Moodle Site, 49erexpress, UNCC Moodle, Student Recordings: s:claslcslrcsanakostudent
Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
Test the Sanako Installer, Webbrowser Popup Konfigurator for XP, or Windows7, faster LRC TeacherPC Log-in Let MS facilitate diacritics writing by installing for you US-International keyboard layout
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