ClassX Interface
The ClassX interface provides you with an easy and intuitive step-by-step progress to publish your video files and encode them.
Find guidelines and help for these steps below. If you should have any further questions, please contact the ClassX-Team. Thank you.
Creating a New Subject
Every lecture, talk, session or similar should be published in a subject of its own.
During the creation process, you will be able to specify title, date, description, access restriction for your subject.
After you click "Submit" in the interface, your course details will be saved in the database, and therewith turns into an existing subject.
Publish for an Existing Subject
You can now choose your subject from the course list under "Publish for an Existing Subject". Select it, and click "Go to Subject Page".
The system enables you to upload content for every session of the lecture.
That is why you are initially presented with the task of naming the current session. Pick anything you can easily remember and that can
identify the current session. (Examples: "Lecture Week 01", "Lecture 1", "Session 20110231", "Talk No 1"
Please keep in mind that the session name can only contain letters, numbers, and white spaces.
After submitting the new session name, you will be directed to the step-by-step publishing process of your lecture contents.
Step-by-Step Content Publishing
Here we go. Follow the system's guide to publish your ClassX videos and slide material.
Step 1: Title and Description
Click on "edit here" to specify the date the leacture was held, and give a short description of the lecture's subject.
Search tags will be automatically extracted from this text, so make sure to describe the topic accordingly.
Click "Save" when you're finished. You will be redirected to the guide overview, and should continue with Step 2 now.
Don't worry, you can always go back to editing date and description if you realise you made a mistake. Just click on the link "(Click here to edit)" in Step 1 of the overview page.
Step 2: Upload/Delete Files
This is the most important step for publishing in ClassX.
Now is the time to upload your video and the lecture's slides, so make sure you have them ready on your hard drive.
Click "Click here to upload, view, or delete files for this lecture." on the overview page whenever you are ready.
Follow the instructions given on the page:
- Upload your video and presentation PDF files using the uploading widgets below.
- To use the widgets, hover over the highlighted bars that read "Click here to upload a file". This will allow you to choose a file from your hard drive. Do not rename them, the system automatically puts together several files according to meta-date. If you rename files, it won't e able to match them!
- Locate your video file in one of the following formats: avi, flv, mov, mp4, MTS, or wmv.
- If you want to provide the lecture's slides, choose them using the second uploading widget. They should be PDF-files.
- You will see status bars indicating the uploading speed. A green check appears when the upload is complete.
- You can always press the red sign next to any active upload to cancel it.
- After all uploads are complete, click on the refresh link next to "File Summary" below to see the updated list of files and let the system check your video files for integrity.
- Make sure not to skip this essential step. Only a successfully uploaded video that passed the system tests can be encoded with ClassX.
- Your video and slide files will appear on the website. Make sure again that the correct ones were uploaded.
- When all the files are okay and the video check is passed, click "Done" at the bottom of this page.
- This will redirect you to the overview page, where you can check for the results of Step 3.
Step 3: Video File Check
If the website does not show a green written "Passed.", please go back to Step 2 or follow the given instructions.
Has your video passed the checks, then go to Step 4.
Step 4: Enter Encoding Options and Start Encoding
Follow the link "Click here to go to the encoding page.", this will guide you to the last step in the publishing process.
Choosing an Output Format
First, decide for an output video format (you will only get to choose an output format, if you have uploaded a HD video):
- If you do not want any of the pan and zoom features that ClassX has to offer, choose the standard encoding, which will play your video in a resolution of 960 x 540 pixel without the pan/zoom features. Please disregard the next step of defining regions of interest.
- Only the HD video with pan/zoom option will allow the user to pan and zoom the video scenes, and receive a video crop of the relevant region of interest. The lecturer can automatically be tracked. If you select HD with pan/zoom, you will be asked to draw rectangles around important scene regions. This assists the generation of preset views and automatic trackings.
(Should you have encoded the video previously, you have the option to re-encode it, where you can decide for another video format.)
Selecting regions of interest
Draw a rectangle and click when done. This will keep the selection and you are then free to mark another region of interest or specify information of the marked area by selecting "edit".
If you have uploaded at least one PDF file for the presentation, you will see an option to enable or disable slide synchronization. (Note that this option will not appear if you not uploaded any PDFs.)
Start Encoding
Start the encoding after you have completed the last steps, then go back to the subject overview page. There, you should see the newly created presentation under the list of "existing presentations". Its status should indicate that video encoding and slide synchronization are in progress.
Note that you may return to the publication page later on by clicking on "Edit Information/Encode" in the table of existing presentations, in order to update or add either video encoding or slide synchronization.
Trimming Videos
Sometimes, the recorded video will have some "dead time" (unwanted scenes) at the beginning or the end (i.e. if the recording was started too early or stopped too late). The "trimming" feature of the ClassX system provides an easy way to remove such dead time.
Here's how:
- Once the video you encoded in step 15 has finished encoding, go to the subject page, and click on "Trim" in that video's row. This will take you to a page where you can enter the start and end times of the video you want to keep.
- Enter minutes (i.e. 3:00 and 10:00) for the start and end times respectively.
- Now, go back to the subject page and click "Click here to watch" to watch the video. You should see that the ClassX player is playing only the desired segment of the video.
Note that this process does not physically alter the video files. You can modify the trimming limits or even undo the trimming completely by turning the start and end fields blank.