Connecting to a Fuze Classroom

Heritage College and Seminary has introduced a new method of lesson delivery through our connected classrooms and the use of Fuze for Rooms. Fuze is an industry leading web conferencing solution similar to products from WebEx, Adobe, and Microsoft (Skype for Business). The HD video and audio quality, in addition to its ease of use, made Fuze the appropriate choice for Heritage.

With Fuze, remote students and classrooms can connect in via a conventional computer with a webcam, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Virtually any device that has internet access can be used to connect in.

As of this writing, we have one connected classroom, with a second on the way. We have begun streaming live classes and connecting remote students and reception has been overwhelmingly positive. To get connected to a classroom, the process is as easy as clicking on a link, adding your name and clicking Join!

Quick Start

The easiest way to connect to a meeting is to click the meeting link. They look like this.

https://fuze.me/35914311

The meeting link would have been provided via email, or would be noted in the Links section of the course in myHeritage. So, go ahead and click on the link and follow the on-screen instructions. Your computer, smartphone, or tablet will attempt to download the Fuze App, install it and connect to the meeting.

For detailed instructions on the many permutations of connecting to a Fuze meeting, have a look below. Also, if you do not wish to download and install the app, there is an option to ‘join via browser’.

More Details

To connect to a meeting, you will need the Fuze client app, which can be downloaded from here. You will also need

a meeting id,
a meeting invite email that contains a link, or
a copy of the meeting link from myHeritage.

There are multiple ways to connect to a class.

Via your computer/laptop with a webcam.
Via mobile phone.
Old-school dial-in via a toll free number.

Chapel Workstation and Projector System

The chapel at Heritage is fixed with a workstation (computer/PC) and widescreen projector such that folks can use the workstation to project slides, video, images, and more onto the large widescreen at the front. We use this setup throughout the school year during our chapel services. There is also a second projector facing the back wall so that presenters on stage can see what the audience sees.

Setup the Workstation and Projector

Flip on both of the switches in the production booth labelled A and B. This will turn on the sound board and amps automatically.
Turn the computer on and log into it with these credentials.
- username: chapel
- password: Heritage1
Lower the screen. Find the white remote control and press the down arrow once. You don’t have to hold the button, the screen will lower into position and stop automatically.
Turn on the projectors. There are two remotes plugged into thin black cables. The black remote is for the front projector, the grey remote is for the rear projector. Press ON to turn them on. They will take a moment to fire up and light the bulbs so be patient and don’t press the ON button a bunch of times in a row.
Turn up the speaker volume by using the MAIN fader on the sound board.

At the end of the event, please turn the projectors off by pressing the ON button twice.

Wowza GoCoder Setup for HeritageLive

Heritage Live uses the Wowza Streaming Engine on the back end to facilitate ingestion of external video and audio sources, transcoding of those sources, and publication to an external site. To setup GoCoder as an ingestion source for the Wowza Streaming Engine hosted by Heritage College and Seminary, please use the following instructions and settings.

The Wowza GoCoder is supported on iOS and Android mobile devices.

Download the Wowza GoCoder app from the app store on your device (i.e. the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store).
Once the app is installed, launch it and it will show you a brief legend for each of the apps buttons.
Open the Server Info section. The settings are as follows:

Host -> Server: streams.heritage-theo.edu
Host -> Port: 1935
Application -> Application: HeritageLive
Application -> Stream Name: can be anything that will identify your device in the system.  Use only letters with no spaces.
Login -> Use the Publisher Name and Password sent to you by the Heritage IT department.

In the Video Options section of the application you can change what is being sent with your stream, such as video & audio, video only, or audio only. You can also change video encoding settings such as the size. For primary video we will be starting with a 720p stream and re-encoding that using the streaming engine on the server. For secondary source such as a secondary classroom, using a lower resolution such as 640×360 would be appropriate. The key is to use a sufficient bit rate. The bit rate setting can be found on the main screen in the lower left corner.
Once you’ve got all your setting made, try it. Punch the big red button in the lower right corner. If the app is successful in publishing the stream to the server the message will change from Connecting to Connected!

You’re done. Congratulations!

We first used the Wowza Streaming Engine with an Introduction to the Bible course taught by Gord Oeste in the fall of 2015.

Media Organization

It’s important to catalog our published media so that they are properly organized, easy to find later, and able to be backed up. The Media folder contains directories for each year. Your media should be saved inside the directory corresponding to the year it was published. A folder should be created for each event/date with the following naming convention.

yymmdd description

i.e...

151008 Chapel

That way each entry will be sorted by date and easy to find later. Further the description helps for search-ability.

The location for our published media is:

\\heritagecollege.local\public\media

A rough process for publishing media files is as follows…

1. Production - i.e. Capturing audio and video.

2. Save RAW footage to external USB hard disk.

3. Copy RAW footage to internal drive for editing.

4. Editing - compile final cut using an DAW (audio) or NLE (video).

5. Save the completed work to the Media folder.

6. Publish the media to Moodle or other web location.

Relevant Links

Get Organized: How to Manage Video Files

For editors, how do you keep track of/organize all of your raw video footage?