Unique Value Proposition
You may have noticed that most of the content we have
captured with EDUSPOT does not have the look and feel of being professionally
produced.
That is the whole point of EDUSPOT. Everything must be done by lay people
without post-production and it must still look good and convey full
information about what happened with automatic slide synchronization.
Most content on video sites that feature content that looks professionally
produced look like that because they use professional videographers
and professional lighting and cameras which increases the cost per capture.
But for day to day classrooms or meeting room use or for routine events, it
would be impossible and also exorbitant to use professional videographers. Our equipment makes it possible for lay people
to create content that conveys complete information about events with
reasonable quality. That is the unique value proposition of our product. The
greatest value added is in education where recorded classes enable students
to revisit any lecture any time they wish and with random access to its
segments based on title, topic or words in the slides. This product is
specially designed for universal classroom capture in a university and such a
prospect should always be the eventual objective in an educational
institution.
Our product is also unique in allowing just one person to control multiple
cameras to easily track all the action in the classroom or event room and
move or zoom the camera based both on subject movement as well as words
spoken. When this is added to automatic slide synchronization and random
access to parts of the content based on slide or text extracted from slide,
it makes both capture and viewing - compelling propositions. Our product is
the only product in the world that can handle traditional blackboard based
instruction which constitutes more than 50% of all instruction in the
developing world without having to change to newer technologies like digital
boards etc. which represents a major change in teaching methodology that is
bound to run into major customer resistance.
FAQ: Is is possible to automate camera movement?
Everyone goes the same route - believing that automating camera movement is
desirable. To get good video quality, manual camera control is inevitable.
Camera movement is not based only on motion of the speaker but also on the
words spoken as well as well the context of what is happening in the room. In
other words, camera movement is driven by cognitive factors like viewer
curiosity and not only on technological factors like subject movement.
Problem is most technologists miss this fact – we made it a point to take
courses in Film and TV production before we took started developing this
product.
To give an example of why automatic camera movement will not work: Good
picture composition requires the following: If the instructor cracks a joke –
the next shot should be on the AUDIENCE to look at how they reacted to the
joke. If the instructor says “If you look at the right hand side of the
equation” – then the camera should zoom on the right side of the equation. If
the instructor says “John, do you have the answer to this equation” – then
the camera should then point to John.
As can be seen for the above examples, it is impossible to automate camera
movement in all the above scenarios. So we determined that manual operation
is a must but it should be possible to do it 1) Easily 2) By a lay person
using common intuitive logic 3) Without encountering any fatigue. This is the
highlight of our product more than anything else.
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