ICDC2020Preparing Online Presentation

Each presenter of accepted and registered paper for ICDC 2020 is required to prepare and upload a pre-recorded video of their paper presentation. The format, duration and resolution of the video can be found below

In the Recording Software and Tools section, we provide instructions on software packages and tools that you can use to record your video. Making a presentation using PowerPoint and then recording it using Zoom with local recording options might be the simplest option.

Please submit your video file by August 14^th. We will provide instructions how to upload your video file to the ConfTool submission system by August ^5th.

Video requirements

Please, note that the duration and maximum size of the video (MB) depends on your type of presentation either Podium or Short

Resolution

Minimum resolution: 720p(HD). Maximum resolution 1080p(FHD)

Aspect ratio

16:9 (do not use square aspect ratios)

Format

mp4

Encoding

We are aiming that videos are visible in most of browsers and devices, hence we require H264 for video encoding and either AAC, MP3 or MP2 for audio encoding

Podium presentation

Duration

Minimum 9 min and maximum 10 minutes

Size

Max. size: 200 MB. With adequate compression and bit rate videos should not occuppy more than 140 MB

Short presentation

Duration

Minimum 4.5 minutes and maximum 5 minutes

Size

Max. size: 100 MB. With adequate compression and bit rate videos should not occuppy more than 70 MB

Recently a huge amount of online material has been created to explain how to record presentations for online events. Lot of information of this tutorial has been obtained from this link

Recording the video

There are multiple ways of recording your presentation:

Powerpoint

With PowerPoint 365 from Microsoft you can record your presentation including audio and video coming from your webcam. The presentation can be exported to a .mp4 video

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Microsoft provides a nice tutorial on how to proceed. In addition, in this online tutorial you can check how to convert the presentation you have just recorded into a .mp4 file

Some recommendations and tips:

• Be sure you include the Recording menu in the Ribbon. Check it from the Options menu
• When you enter in the "Record slideshow mode" you can choose the proper input for your webcam and microphone from the Settings command. Remember to check that specially if you have different audio/video input sources.
• It is recommended that you duplicate the presentation before you start recording. Remember you can remove the audio/video associated to a presentation from the Clear command in the Record slideshow mode.
• In the "Record slideshow mode" you have access to a laser pointer and to a pen which you can use to mark/draw something on the slide.
• Audio is tight to its corresponding slide (even if you have recorded all the audio in a row). You can remove audio of certain slide individually.
• If your presentation has animations, be sure that they are played before you start talking. While presentations are played no audio is recorded.

Visualization problems

ATTENTION: During the conference presentations we faced two problems while playing the .mp4 videos created using PowerPoint. Our recommendation is that you check the videos with exactly the same multimedia player and operating system that is going to be used in the conference.

1. Audio stopped or lost synchronism after a slide change. We experience this problems with some of the videos when using VLC multimedia player in Windows. We had to manually move the video position bar a little bit forward so the audio is synchonized again. This problem was not observed using Windows Media Player or BSPlayer
2. Video showed strange artifacts during a slide transition. During the transition the slide changed to the next slide, then quickly went back to the previous slide and finally estabilized to the following slide. All that very quickly, producing an annoying effect in the viewer. We observe this in most of the presentations does not matter which multimedia player we used.

Video conference software

Most of the software that is used nowadays in video conferencing can be used to record a presentation. In this case, you can create a meeting of just one person, share your screen, share your webcam (if you want) and start recording. Your screen and your voice will be recorded. Be sure that you know where you can fetch the video once it has been created. Remember that the video will not be automatically available, but it might take some time to encode the video once you have finished the presentation.

Here you can find a list of software with related instructions:

Jitsi

With Jitsi, you do not need to install any software, just open the Jitsi meeting site, create a meeting, join the meeting and share your screen. When you press Start recording you should select the Dropbox account were to store the video. is another option that is using the Jibri plugin. For that, check this tutorial.

Zoom

Zoom is a quite popular online conference tool very easy to setup. There are many tutorials available on how to setup Zoom. For instance, this and this. To perform a Local Recording you can follow this Zoom tutorial. It is very important that you choose "Record on this computer" before starting the recording, otherwise, the video will be recorded in Zoom cloud

Google Meet

Google online tool for meetings. Take into account that you would need a G-Suite account to activate the meeting recording, so unless your company/institution will provide access to the G-Suite, this might not be a suitable option (Google Meet confirm that recording option will be available for all users until 30.09.2020). You can find more information on how to record the video in this Google tutorial.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft option for online meetings. Microsoft provides some instructions on how to set up a call. In addition, you can find here how to record a meeting.

Webex

Cisco online conference tool. Some instructions on how to record a Cisco Webex Meeting.

Screen recorders

Instead of using a online conference tool, you can use a screen recorder to record your presentation, including the audio. This software will record your screen while you are talking. There are many screen recorders available, both commercial and free. Here we present some of the free options.

OBS Studio

Possible the most complete screen recorded currently available. It is a free and open source multi-platform solution to video record and live streaming. It permits to have multiple video sources (including screen) at the same time, as well as, mixing capabilities. You can compose your video utilizing multiple video source as an input. It is slightly difficult to setup, but it is very powerful software. You can follow this tutorial to set everything up.

vokoscreenNG

Free and open source screen recorder very easy to use. It does not offer all the possibilities given by OBS studio, but it is much more simple to use. In this case, you should compose the output in your screen. You can find a good tutorial to set up vokoscreenNG in the following link.

SimpleScreenRecorder

Linux free an open-source screenrecorder, very easy to use, but not as powerful as the two previous ones.

Screen-Cast-O-Matic

Commercial online solution to record your screen. It includes also a very simple video editor. This solution is specially tailored to education environments. You can have a look to multiple tutorials in screencast-o-matic tutorial section.

Camtasia

Another commercial solution that includes screen recorder and video editor. In this case, it is only working with Windows and Mac. There are many tutorials in Internet such as this one. Techsmith provide an interesting set of video tutorials to learn to use this tool.

Editing the video

If you would like to have more elaborate video, with more advanced characteristics such as transitions, text overlay, complex compositions and multiple audio sources, you need to use a video editor. In this case, we are not going to provide any tutorial but just a list of free and commercial solutions.

• Openshot(Free, Commercial)
• Kdenlive(Free, Open-source)
• Blender(Free, Open-source).
• Adobe Premiere(Commercial).
• Microsoft Windows Video Editor (old Movie Maker)
• iMovie(Free, Commercial)

Encoding and compressing

Usually, with most of video editing tools you can choose output format, resolution, encoding and associated parameters. However, in order to ensure right settings according to specifications we recommend to download FFMPEG, a cross platform software tool for converting, encoding and streaming video and audio. Once you have installed it in your computer, you can generate a video with any of the previous mentioned video authoring tools and then transform it to the right format using the following command:

ffmpeg -i input_video.avi -vcodec libx264 -crf 25 -preset medium -vf scale=-2:1080 -acodec libmp3lame -q:a 4 -ar 48000 -ac 2 output_video.mp4

Tips for recording

• Prepare a script, although it is not recommend that you read directly your presentation. If you do not give adequate tone, it may sound too monotonous.
• Record your video in a quiet room, avoiding background noises. Be sure that the room is big enough and that does not have echo. Some furniture might distort the sound.
• Unless you have a good microphone, it is recommended that you use a headset for your recording. Try to avoid built-in microphones on computers
• If you are using camera, be sure that you have correct lighting. The source of light should come behind the camera
• Do a small test recording of 1min and do the whole process, just to check that audio and video quality are OK.
• Rendering and encoding your video might take a lot of time (several hours) and disk space (even GB). Be sure that you prepare the video with enough time just in case the render fails. It is possible that you would need to leave your computer processing the files for long time.

Access your ConfTool account (same one you used to upload your files). After login in into your account, please go to “Your Submissions” and select “Final Upload” option on the right. Please upload your video file as a 2^nd file (.mp4 or .zip) in this field:

Please do not upload or otherwise delete the file already uploaded by you as 1^st file in the system.