An Upload Session, a Reading App Tried Live, and a Plan for Splitting Class Videos
A session at Upload, and a lot of work on tools for the classes they produce.
An Upload session, and the reading-cue app tried live
From 16:00 to 18:30 I ran a session for Upload Partners. Afterward I edited the recordings so they were ready to publish.
That same session was the first real live class for the reading-cue app I'm building as a favor for a friend. I kept notes as it ran. It caught most page changes, but a page full of numbers took it about three minutes to notice. During the quiz it sometimes jumped to the next question before the instructor did, and the answer key pages pulled it off track.
I fixed the answer key and question problems that same evening. Now it ignores the answer keys, and once the instructor starts calling out question numbers, it waits to hear the next one. Those fixes haven't been tried on a live class yet.
More on the reading-cue app
Early this morning I added a warning for when the class sounds like it's using a different book than the one that's open. It offers to switch, but never switches on its own. It gave one false alarm during the class, so that still needs work.
A first test version for Windows and Linux is out for testers. I also wrote a way for the Mac version to listen to Zoom directly, so testers won't need extra audio software. That part hasn't been tried on a real Mac yet.
A plan for splitting class videos
I started planning a second tool for Upload Partners. Each class is recorded twice: once showing the presenter, and once from the screen capture. Right now someone has to line those up and cut them into separate lesson and quiz videos by hand. The new tool will line the two up, find where each lesson, quiz and break starts, and cut the videos. A person still checks every cut and names it before it goes out. So far it's just the plan. I'm waiting on sample recordings to build it against.
OmniBridge
In OmniBridge, I can now start and stop an Epiphan encoder's streams right from the page, and see any errors it reports. I connected another encoder out in the field to it. It also does a better job finding devices on a remote network that have their own web page, like a camera, and links straight to them.
Two GitLab problems
My GitLab server stopped loading from outside. It wasn't down. My router's intrusion protection had decided the normal traffic between RustProxy and GitLab looked like an attack, and blocked it. I cleared the block, then told the router to leave that traffic alone so it doesn't happen again.
Later in the evening, 21 accounts signed up on my GitLab server with fake email addresses. New sign-ups there wait for my approval, so none of them got in. I deleted them all and blocked the internet address they were coming from. I left sign-ups open.