Purdue University uses Matrox encoders to record and broadcast live classes

This academic institution of the United States offers digital engineering classes through video on demand thanks to these systems, to provide your students with a quality teaching experience, as if they were in person on campus.

The online engineering master's program Purdue University, which has its main campus in West Lafayette (Indiana – USA), has been ranked consecutively in recent years in the top ten for quality and providing working professionals with the flexibility they need to complete their studies.

Precisely with the objective of providing its distance students with an authentic experience as if they were on campus, The center now records all the engineering classes taught in its classrooms from Monday to Friday, and later offers them as digital classes through video on demand.

Remote students can watch a live broadcast of a class, or download a high or low resolution video within twenty minutes of class ending, thanks to the use of H.264 encoders Matrox Monarch, that simplify the capture, issuance and storage of classes.

To produce these digital classes, all engineering classrooms are equipped with two rotating cameras, tilt and zoom (PTZ, pan-tilt-zoom), which provide medium audio and video signalsSDI connection to a video switch located in an operator room, from which a production engineer produces the audio and six video sources to capture the class.

The six video sources consist of two PTZ cameras focused on the teacher, a document camera, two laptops and a computer with presentation material. The resulting output of the switch is used as input to the Monarch HD encoder. Each class is unique and is captured and output at different resolutions and speeds.transmission data, to adapt to the diverse needs of distance learners and reproduce the dynamic experience of being in class and help them in their training.

The Matrox Monarch HD encoder plays a critical role in Purdue University's current media production setup, sending a full frame rate, 1280x720p RTMP stream to a Wowza media server., while simultaneously recording at a resolution higher than 1,920×1.080 on a mapped network drive.

This system can record MP4 or MOV files to a locally connected SD card or USB drive, or to a mapped network drive. Therefore the recording baud rate is not tied to the broadcast bandwidth limitation and can be set to a much higher value.. For example: when issued to 2 Mbps, The recording baud rate can be set to a value greater than 28 Mbps.

Since Monarch encoded files do not need transcoding, are immediately ready to be transferred to the appropriate viewing server/folder and offer higher resolution digital classes than the broadcast.

Supported by application programming interface (API) of the encoder, the Monarch HD Dev Tools automation agenda app, developed by Purdue University, controls the operations of scheduled events. For this type of recordings, a third-party driver starts and stops operations by having the API call Monarch HD encoders.

“When we moved into our new engineering center we wanted to upgrade to an all-inclusive solution,” recalls Joshua Brown., multimedia production engineer at Purdue University-. Monarch HD makes it possible to have a recording completely ready to use and at our disposal as soon as class ends. “It simplifies issuance and storage with great flexibility.”.

Through broadcast and video on demand (VOD) of classes, the centre's online platform has opened new opportunities and strengthened key points thanks to a broader network of international applicants. Working professionals now have the freedom to learn whenever they want, The result is a lower dropout rate and an overall more satisfying distance learning experience..

Purdue University officials are exploring the possibilities of Monarch LCS, an H.264 encoding device specifically designed by Matrox for classroom lecture capture. With dual inputs compatible with SDI and HDMI, an integrated agenda and various distribution options, Monarch LCS lecture capture device offers more flexibility for academic institution's distance learning initiatives.