grabslides 1.0 review

grabslides project is a command line tool we created to automate the synchronisation of videos and slides during live and on-demande

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 17K Developer: Jerome Alet

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grabslides project is a command line tool we created to automate the synchronisation of videos and slides during live and on-demande courses.

It can capture frames from either a Video4Linux device, or from an Axis Video Server, and offers unprecedented flexibility to configure this capturing : device, channel, interframe delay, resolution, compression factor, output directory, link to the current slide, and so on are all configurable items.

Some of them can be modified while the program is running through the use of signals, and in the future through a GUI. In addition, it can generate a PDF document which will contain all the captured slides. There again, multiple possibilities are offered.

We use this software every day to capture slides from the output of a VGA-to-Composite converter. Once the capture is done, a SMIL generator is run over the set of slides produced, and a SMIL file linking to the video and slides, both synchronised, is created. The SMIL generator we wrote will be published later.

Installation :

- Download and extract it :

$ tar -zxf grabslides-x.yy.tar.gz

where x.yy is grabslides's version number.

- Install grabslides :

e.g. :

$ cd grabslides-x.yy
$ python setup.py install

This will usually install grabslides into /usr/bin, although the exact location may vary depending on your system.

- Use grabslides :

$ grabslides --help

grabslides will display its lengthy help, and you'll see the possibilities which are offered.

What's New in This Release:
grabslides can now generate an HTML page containing all slides.
XML presentations in the Aristote Association's OTESA format can also be generated.
The 2-up mode now works in portrait mode when creating PDF.
Finally grabslides can now synchronize itself on another process, and can exit automatically when the other process does.
A nice example of PDF output is now available as well.