CumulusClips now UvmTube

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Wesley Wright

Using the CumulusClips 2.2 base code I was able to build out a credible video server.

https://uvmtube.uvm.edu/

 

Features

  • Upload videos, tag and categorize
  • Accepts mp3, mp4, flv, wmv, rm (RealMedia), mov
  • automatically transcodes to mp4
  • optionally hide or require UVM login to view
  • add captions by uploading srt files
  • watch videos, search for videos, share and embed
  • True streaming via Wowza Streaming Engine (http://www.wowza.com)
  • Watch using JWPlayer (http://www.jwplayer.com)

We are positioning this to replace the now departed RealServer and QuickTime server, and the surprisingly popular “Media Manager”

Technologies

  • Authentication provided by WebAuth
  • Streaming powered by Wowza Streaming Engine
  • Wowza contents NFS share attached to uvmtube
  • licensed “Pro” version JWPlayer
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BBB 0.90 finally released and installed

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Wesley Wright

Notes to myself

  1. Make sure /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/bigbluebutton/WEB-INF/classes/bigbluebutton.properties contains the line bigbluebutton.web.serverNoSslURL=http://bigbluebutton.uvm.edu
  2. Make sure sftp:/waw:@bigbluebutton/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/lti/WEB-INF/classes/lti.properties reduces to bigbluebuttonURL=https://bigbluebutton.uvm.edu/bigbluebutton
    bigbluebuttonSalt=xyxyxyxyyxyxyxyxyxyxyyyxyxyyyxyxyxy
    ltiEndPoint=bigbluebutton.uvm.edu
    ltiConsumers=xxxxxxxxxxxx
    ltiMode=extended
    beans.bigbluebuttonService.url=${bigbluebuttonURL}
    beans.bigbluebuttonService.salt=${bigbluebuttonSalt}
    beans.ltiService.endPoint=${ltiEndPoint}
    beans.ltiService.consumers=${ltiConsumers}
    beans.ltiService.mode=${ltiMode}
  3. nginx index.html files read 
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Notes on configuring Samsung SNO-6084R

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Wesley Wright

I was drafted to purchase and configure yet another IP Network Camera to document the STEM building project. I chose the Samsung SNO-6084R for $750 from B&H Photo.

Samsung web site hosts a PDF version of the User Manual. At 138 pages, one would think it might mention something about rtsp streaming. It does not, so I am writing these notes for posterity.

I pointed my browser at http://132.198.153.89/ . I was asked to log in. I used default user ‘xxxxx’ and password ‘eye’ . Then I was asked to download and install a special camera plugin. I did so, restarted my browser, went back to above address, where I was presented with the iPOLiS Network Camera WebViewer.
First thing I did was go to Setup=>System=>User and reset password to zzzzzzZ (case sensitive)
The documentation said nothing about the rtsp URL needed to access to H.264 live video stream. Google found this reference:
http://www.soleratec.com/support/rtsp/rtsp_listing?camera_company=Samsung
which suggested
rtsp://ip_address/profile2/media.smp
So I dropped this address into VLC Player
rtsp://132.198.xxx.yyy/profile2/media.smp

and it asked me for  a username and password. Oh, bother. I entered the admin username and password defined above, and it worked!

But I didn’t want to put the admin user and password into Wowza . Poking around the camera settings, I found “enable RTSP connection without authentication.” Good. so rtsp://vvv.xxx.yyy.zzz/profile2/media.smp worked sans password in VLC Player.
Then I gave that address to Wowza. Tried to look at via a web page. Video was all black all the time.
After much googling, I discovered that by default, the rtsp stream address returned a Motion-JPEG stream. VLC player confirmed this. Wowza needed an H.264 stream. Here the documentation gave a hint, and intuition provided the rest. In a nutshell, I needed to create a video profile via Setup=>Video & Audio=>Video Profile. Named it uvm, set Codec to H.264. Then back to  Setup=>System=>User . UNChecked “enable RTSP connection without authentication.” Created a new user ‘xxx’ and password ’Zzzz’, and set this user’s profile to all. My final address then:
rtsp://xxx:Zzzz@132.198.153.89/uvm/media.smp
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Archiving STEM construction

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Wesley Wright

Taught Physics webcam to capture still images every N seconds Monday -> Friday 6am -> 6pm.  N initially set to 180 for testing, set to 5400 for production.

Configured server jerboa to accept FTP upload from web cam. Wrote a script to run at 10:30 PM every night moving the days pics into a subdirectory  bases on year and month. script then invoke ffmpeg to produce updated daily time-lapse video, streamed from wowza server.

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BigBlueButton Updates, tweaks

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Wesley Wright

Firefox latest releases have become more aggressive about disallowing mixed http and https content on a single page. This caused the BigBlueButton Blackboard LTI to soft-fail until user manually overrode mixed content restriction. I was able to force BBB to use https only when referenced by the LTI, and force http for all else. This entailed hacking

/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/bigbluebutton/WEB-INF/classes/bigbluebutton.properties (see below) and /var/www/html

and

/var/www/bigbluebutton/client/BigBlueButton.html

First fix broke presentations. Fix for that broke microphones. Fix for that fixed all — I hope.

if (top.location != self.location) {

top.location = self.location.href.replace(‘https’,’http’);

}

if (self.location.href.match(/https/)) {

self.location.href=self.location.href.replace(‘https’,’http’);

}

bigbluebutton.properties…

128,129c123

< bigbluebutton.web.serverURL=https://bigbluebutton.uvm.edu

bigbluebutton.web.serverURL=http://bigbluebutton.uvm.edu

148c142

defaultConfigURL=${bigbluebutton.web.serverURL}/client/conf/config.xml

150c144

apiVersion=0.81

188c182

beans.presentationService.defaultUploadedPresentation=${bigbluebutton.web.serverURL}/default.pdf

193c187

beans.presentationService.presentationBaseUrl=${bigbluebutton.web.serverURL}/bigbluebutton/presentation

207d200

<

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2016 Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Awards nomination form busted

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Wesley Wright

Form was broken. I fixed.

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Perpetual license wowza install

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Wesley Wright

met with ETS/SAA staff to install and configure fully licensed wowza streaming engine server to replace RealServer and Darwin Streaming Server, support stemma and cumulus clips projects

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Mansfield snow depth

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Wesley Wright

Perl robots failin to grab Mt Mansfield data from NWS because thy switched to MiXEd CaSe labels, previously al UPPER CASE. Old scripts case-sensitive. Updated scripts and back filled missing date from email archives  . Amazed by how many people notice when the graph breaks.

http://www.uvm.edu/skivt-l/?Page=depths.php

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Flood video

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Wesley Wright

Paul Bierman wept:

Am trying to grab
http://www.uvm.edu/landscape/1927_flood/1927_Flood_Full_Stream.mov
for teaching…
won’t stream or download.
ideas?

Video using old codec and Quicktime streaming server technology. transcoded video and embedded it on page using contemporary jwplayer standards:

http://www.uvm.edu/landscape/1927_flood/1927_flood_movie.htm

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Gund publications

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Wesley Wright
On Feb 18, 2015, at 10:25 AM, Taylor Ricketts <taylor.ricketts@uvm.edu> wrote:
I’m trying to upload an update of our publications database (as an xml file, per usual).  The import interface is hanging up, now motionless for 20 minutes after I hit submit.  Is this expected?  The files getting bigger, but I don’t remember such a long time before.
we still get lots of complements about the site.
This took a lot of sleuthing. Root cause was a database lock file (from November) that was gumming up the works.
Unrelated but also problematic: there was an issue with tomcat log files and the log rotate script resulting in wasted disk space and runaway jobs. All cleaned up now.
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