Mediasite Administrator Update, November 2014(Archive)
As part of an ongoing effort to keep Mediasite administrators on campus informed, we created this DELTAwire article specifically for you! For help with any Mediasite questions, please contact us at mediasite-help@ncsu.edu.
This article includes information on the following topics:
Carolinas Chapter Mediasite Meeting
Register now for the first Mediasite Community Carolinas Chapter meeting on Wednesday, November 12 hosted at East Carolina University from 10am – 2pm. Join Mediasite users from North and South Carolina to share ideas and collaborate in this group. The day will end with an optional tour of Mediasite-enabled ECU rooms from 2:15-3:15pm.
Here’s what’s in store:
- Welcome and Introductions
- Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? Matt McCurdy & Tom Irons, Sonic Foundry
With the explosion of easy to use cameras from your phone to a flip cam, the ability to create video is readily available (even to 5th graders). Matt & Tom will recap the Mediasite 7 series of releases focusing on desktop content creation and new publishing options. You’ll also get a glimpse into exciting new Mediasite developments. - Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Laura Stephenson, NC State | Jean Merenda, ECU
Explore best practices for employing video in your classroom, trainings or marketing with first-hand insights and practical advice from the My Mediasite and Desktop Recorder deployments at ECU and NC State. - Let’s Make a Deal – Networking Lunch (Meal will be provided.)
- What’s My Line?
Facilitated discussions – We’d like your input on which topic would interest you most. Please take the poll in this presentation to cast you vote and we plan to feature topics that receive the most votes. - (Optional) Mediasite Tour – Get a behind the scenes look at Mediasite-enabled ECU rooms.
Also, please make sure to join the online community on the Mediasite User Group Community website. Once on the Mediasite Community Carolinas Chapter page, simply click the button in the upper right corner that says “Join Now”.
Mediasite Server Maintenance
OIT will be performing maintenance on their data centers on Saturday, November 8th and Sunday, November 9th. While our systems are not housed in the campus data centers, we do rely on login services that OIT provides us from their data centers.We anticipate that there will be sporadic times when you are unable to log into one of the following services. If that occurs, please wait a little while and try again. For further information and updates regarding the server maintenance, please see: https://sysnews.ncsu.edu/news/543d5d42.
The monthly Windows Updates for the Mediasite servers will be installed on Saturday, November 22th between 5am and 6am. Several of the servers will need to be rebooted during the window which will cause a short outage. This will result in about 10 minutes of downtime at some point during the maintenance window.
If you have any Mediasite issues, please contact mediasite-help@ncsu.edu.
For all regular scheduled server maintenance windows, please see the Updates & Maintenance schedule.
Upgrading to My Mediasite 7
During the upgrade of the My Mediasite instance in August, an issue was discovered that did not allow access to some pages that start with http://mymediasite. Sonic Foundry has released a solution, testing has been completed and we will be upgrading to version 7 during the winter break maintenance window in December. This decision has been discussed and approved by the Wolfware Governance committees, based on two key factors:
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Mediasite Desktop Recorder compatibility with OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) – The version 6 Desktop Recorder is not currently certified for use on OS X 10.10. In the meantime, it is suggested that Mac users do not update to 10.10 if they require the use of version 6 Mediasite Desktop Recorder.
- VodCast – Many users have expressed interest in the use of vodcast, a single file download that can be published directly from My Mediasite to a YouTube channel or iTunes, this feature is part of My Mediasite version 7.
Once the server has been upgraded, all users of My Mediasite will be required to download the new version of the desktop recorder and re-establish their connection to the server.
Get Help
DELTA’s support staff are ready to answer questions that may arise as you transition to the upgraded version of My Mediasite. Take advantage of the following resources if you have questions:
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Visit DELTA’s Knowledge Base page for informative FAQs
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View Sonic Foundry’s Training Catalog for tutorials, best practices, tips and tricks.
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Email mediasite-help@ncsu.edu
Mediasite Scheduler and Templates
Mediasite automates the process of presentation recording and publishing through its scheduling feature.
When creating a schedule in the management portal you have the choice to use a template or a stream group to build the schedule. DELTA recommends using a template to create your schedule because the template includes presentation tile, player and presenter information along with the encoding stream settings.
After a schedule has been created from a template, the template is no longer used for creating recurring presentations. If the presentation title, presenter or player needs to be changed after the schedule is created from the template, the changes will need to made in the schedule. The schedule settings override the template settings and therefore, edit changes will need to be made in the schedule. DELTA recommends making the edit changes in the template as well for consistency.
Upgraded Recorders in the Management Portal
Once you have upgraded your recorder, you may notice the correct upgraded version is not displayed immediately in the management portal. This is expected behavior. Once the recorder has been upgraded, it will not resync until it communicates with the server. As part of the upgrade process, we recommend testing your connection with the server which initiates a “handshake” between the recorder and the server to display the correct version.
Media Management
As we approach the end of the semester, it is important to reduce the number of unnecessary files on your recorders and in the management portal. To free up disk space and help the management portal run faster, please take the following steps:
- Empty the recycle bin. Files in the recycle bin will, over time, consume large amounts of space on the Mediasite Servers.
- Delete any unneeded schedules.
- Delete any unneeded scheduled presentations.
- If you have presentations with both wmv and mpeg files, please remove the duplicate wmv file from the presentation.
- Delete expired security roles and unneeded players, catalogs.
If you need assistance with instructions on how to complete any of these tasks, please email mediasite-help@ncsu.edu.
More Information
To learn more about Mediasite at NC State, or to see other topics covered in our next update, please contact Laura Stephenson at laura_stephenson@ncsu.edu. Your suggestions are always welcome.
Please send Mediasite help requests to mediasite-help@ncsu.edu.
Subscribe to Mediasite updates by sending the message “subscribe mediasite” to mj2@lists.ncsu.edu.
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