Learning2gether Episode 105
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Before Google rollowed out “on air” we made our first attepts at
Recording Google Hangouts
WordPress will not accept the upload of this shockwave file so I had to store it at Dropbox. It is amusing:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40757132/learning2gether/learning2gether20may2012.swf
Vance Stevens started a Google+ Hangout and hosted a discussion of how Google Hangouts can be recorded, hopefully doing just that in the process. This should eventually become a standard feature with Google Hangouts, but unfortunately live stream ON AIR shows are not available to everyone yet. Therefore we tried some of the other tools available to make a recording of the proceedings, using the tools curated at this Scoop.it
http://www.scoop.it/t/understanding-googleplus
Starting at the most logical place:
http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.ca/2012/05/google-plus-hangouts-on-air-feature-now.html
This page posted May 8, 2012 is entitled
Google Plus Hangouts on Air feature now available to all users
However it mentions the caveat that “Google had added the ability for a limited group of people to be able to broadcast their Hangouts to the world.Google has just announced that Hangouts On Air is now available to all Google+ users worldwide. It will be a gradual rollout though so the system doesn’t get overwhelmed all at once.
but unfortunately, I’m on the dark side of the world
According to this page, this is how it will work once the rollout is complete:
With Hangouts on Air, you will be able to broadcast yourself publicly to the entire world, see how many viewers you have, and even record and reshare your broadcast. The public recording will be uploaded to your YouTube channel and to your original Google+ post.
The NEXT best way to do this is to use the Jeff Lebow method at his Book of GoogleCasting
<http://www.jefflebow.net/streaming-recording-google-plus-hangout#comment-1674>
Watching the video with clear, explicit directions, I realized I would need a USB mic. Now, I HAD one but lost it at a recent conference where I had been broadcasting, so with just 20 min. before show time, I discovered I didn’t have mine :-((
That left us one last resort option: <http://mashable.com/2011/08/05/google-plus-record-hangouts/> – 5 Free Tools for Recording Google+ Hangouts posted August 05, 2011 by Amy-Mae Elliott
- Amy apparently didn’t know that Pixetell was acquired by a black knight and taken down in May 2011: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixetell>.
So we were down to the following 4 options … - Screencastle: <http://screencastle.com/> – I’ve tried this before, couldn’t get it to work – Jim couldn’t get it to upload tonight either 😦
- Screenr is another option, but with only 5 minutes recording time, not robust enough for Hangouts: <http://www.screenr.com/> (and we found the same constraint with Jing, <http://jingproject.com>
- BB Flashback Express looks promising. You have to visit <http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/BBFlashBack_FreePlayer.aspx> and give your email address and they send you a free download link.
- The final option of the 5 is Screencast-o-matic, which is what Jeff Lebow uses, and if Jeff says this requires a USB mic, I have a hunch it ain’t gonna work. So we didn’t try <http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/c6lIFqX3H>
http://www.scoop.it/t/internet-tools-for-language-learning/p/1813908778/learning2gether-the-podcast
http://www.scoop.it/t/latest-social-media-news/p/1812868455/learning2gether-the-podcast
Ok, show time. Starting my hangout, Jeff mentioned he made his public but when I did that it immediately began filling with strangers, so I started a new one and invited my Professional Contacts circle only.
This netted the ‘right’ sort of people, like Rita Zeinstejer, Michael Coghlan, Jim Buckingham and his cat, and eventually Elizabeth Anne – We know that Dan Bassill tried to join, and my wife Bobbi put in a cameo appearance (with our cat :-).
The task was to get the recordings going. Jim tried to record on Screencastle but it didn’t seem to want to upload. In the end we successfully made recordings using Screenr, Jing, and BB Flashback. As Jeff could have told us, none of these picked up sound card audio, so we ended up with three recordings in which only the person doing the recording can be heard talking. Obvously this needs to be done with USB mic in order to record using 3rd party software; or alternatively wait for Google to roll out Google Air worldwide.
Rita recorded using Jing, limited to 5 min, and no sound card audio
Michael recorded using Screenr with similar results as per Rita
Meanwhile, I was downloading and installing BB Flashback Express. I think this gave best results because the recording time was unlimited. The installation required slowed my computer and consumed so much resources that the screen went black much of the time, yet the recorder captured it all in the background, and the results are quite amusing (I put the recording at the start of this post so you could stop it playing easily, but you can see in the screen shot below how amused everyone was 🙂
And then, Michael went to bed in Australia, Jim went to dinner in UAE, and Rita and Elizabeth and I moved over to …
14:00 IATEFL LTSIG Event
20/5 – LTSIG Panel Q&A http://ltsig.org.uk/online-events/46-future-online-events/234-205-ltsig-panel-qaa.html
When: Sunday 20 May 2012, 14:00-15:00 GMT.
(But sound for me was so bad I couldn’t stay. I hope the recording will be ok … )
Announcements:
- http://taedtech.ning.com/events/2012may20gmt1300
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/29339
Meanwhile, here’s an update one week later – Google has finally rolled out its On Air feature as far as UAE. Hello World! A new day has dawned:
Learning2gether 