How to setup a lecture

Included in

Education

Welcome to the lecture setup guide! You're in the right place to learn how to create a seamless and professional recording of your lectures. With the Lecture Director, you can automatically switch between the speaker tracking and blackboards, ensuring your viewers never miss a thing. Let's get started!

In a university setting, smooth cinematographic movements are often less important - the main focus is that your viewers can follow the lecture and read the blackboard. For this use case, MiruSuite comes equipped with the Lecture Director - specifically designed for switching between lecturer and blackboards.

How does it work?

Lecture director is best suited for lecture scenarios where you have a single lecturer moving around in a stage area. When facing the audience (and thus the camera), the lecturer is tracked and automatically kept within the center of the frame. Additionally, there can be a number of blackboards, each defined by a preset. When the lecturer turns around and begins writing on a blackboard, the preset of this blackboard is automatically enabled. When the lecturer continues talking while facing the audience, tracking mode is resumed. If the lecturer switches blackboards at any time, the lecture director will adapt to that. If the lecturer is lost, an optional stage preset will be activated or, alternatively, the camera returns to the home position. As soon as the lecturer is found again, the normal behavior is resumed.

Setup

Add a device with the lecture director

To begin, add a new device, go to the new device and select Setup for Lecture Mode. Select the controller type for your camera in the modal. This adds the following components:

• a video input (Webcam, NDI®, or MJPEG),
• a person tracker,
• a lecture director,
• and a PTZ controller (for the manufacturer of your PTZ camera). Next, select your input in the Unassigned input component and enable the device.

Configure presets

MiruSuite needs to know where the blackboards are located and where the camera should move at the beginning of the lecture.

1. Enable the PTZ controller and move the camera to the desired stage position (this should be a position where the lecturer can be seen at the beginning of the lecture).
2. Save the position as a preset by clicking on Add preset icon button on the bottom right of the device card.
3. Give the preset a meaningful name (e.g. Stage).
4. Click Create preset to save the preset. It will now show up on the Presets page.
5. Repeat the steps above for every blackboard you want to use. Make sure to give the presets meaningful names (e.g. Blackboard Left, Blackboard Right).

TIP

We recommend choosing the presets in a way that the lecturer is always visible when writing on the blackboard. This means that a little room should be left on the side of the blackboard presets.

Configure the lecture director

1. Open the lecture director settings by clicking on the gear icon in the top right corner of the lecture director component.
2. Click on the Scenes tab.
3. Select the stage preset and the blackboard presets you want to use.
4. In the Tracking tab, configure sensitivity, shot size, border limits, etc. to your liking.

INFO

MiruSuite has many configuration options and this can be daunting at first. At first we recommend using the default settings and make changes step by step to adapt the behaviour to your specific requirements.

Start the lecture

1. Enable all remaining components (e.g. input, person tracker, lecture director).
2. The tracking will start as soon as the lecturer enters the stage area.

Configuration

See Director Components for configuration options.

Congratulations! You've successfully set up the Lecture Director. Now you can sit back and let MiruSuite handle the camera work. If you need any more help, our support team is always here for you.