developers
The Colby LRC design team welcomes any interested collaborators. If you have a Mimio capture bar, a Mac, and some available staff time, contact us for more info. All work will be licensed under Creative Commons.We have made all of our source media available for download. Under the share-alike provision of the Creative Commons license, users may download and reconfigure all source content (non-commercial, share-alike see commons deed for details).
Mimio software is also available as a free download (as long as the license info remains with the application file after install).
download all source media - [available soon]
download Mimio 1.6 for
Mac OSX
Though not the intended purpose of the Mimio digital whiteboard, we found that the movie playback feature is ideal for chinese handwriting capture. The Mimio pen attachments register pressure and record (as a single stroke) anything between a given downclick and the following upclick, so it's perfect for chinese (lots of short, discrete strokes). Thus, one can write chinese at normal speed, and the Mimio device records everything, resulting in speedy capture. A two person team is best (but not necessary): one to write, and one to monitor and run the app.
It is also possible to use a digital tablet for media capture, email us for details.
We used the Mac version of Mimio 1.6, though other developers interested in joining the project can work on any platform so long as quicktime is the final file format. The beauty of the Mimio Mac software is rapid export to iMovie.
our production sequence:
- capture handwriting with Mimio
- export to iMovie
- record audio (aif) for character
- import audio into iMovie project**
- type text into iMovie title (stripe subtitle)
- export to quicktime
- compress movie to 1fps (!) and 320x240 pixels (cleaner)
- embed metadata (cleaner)
**By using a separate application for voice recording, we were able to get more done faster with asynchronous teamwork. The option would be to record voice straight into iMovie, which may be preferable.
While we are happy to provide our source media for reuse, we are even more interested in recruiting other developers with Mimio boards to create files and add to the database. Any institution or individual interested in contributing to this effort please contact Zach Chandler (zechandl at colby.edu). We will of course properly attribute all work.
more tech stuff:
Mimio:pen width = 0.3
capture area = 4x6 (smallest)
draw the character large enough so that it looks ok in the 4x6 frame (will take some getting used to)
export to iMovie from Mimio
60 strokes per minute (change from default 350 spm)
iMovie:
check "QT margins" box
75% font scale
stripe subtitle, 10 sec. max, fit title length to clip length
type hanyin pinyin, meaning, # strokes
export to QT for CD (15fps)
Once subtitle is applied and audio is imported/recorded, export to QT using CD presets (15fps, 320x240, etc.). Minimize iMovie. Export next Mimio project into iMovie, and open the new iMovie project without quitting iMovie, this wil save your settings from the previous file, which requires less typing. Dropping new iMovie project file onto the application's icon won't bring it into view, a final click on the iMovie application icon is required to get it up and running.
Discrete
Cleaner:
1fps
320x240
metadata settings
noise reduction
clickback URL
1 channnel 16bit MPEG4 audio
MPEG-4 codec, .mov extension
Contributors can use QT Pro instead of Discreet Cleaner to apply the most important of the above settings.
