tech tips

Making Movie Clips with VLC Player

/ Donna Campbell / Leave a comment

Update: Here’s how to change the picture format from .png to .tiff

I made this presentation for class, but I recently needed to use it to refresh my memory.

Lo and behold, Dropbox now renders all saved PowerPoint files as empty presentations, and its workaround doesn’t work. You have to go in and download the presentations individually.

Since the entire point of Dropbox is to be able to access your files on every computer when you want to, this seems a massive failure to me. (Update: You can save individual folders by right-clicking on the folder in Finder and choosing “Make Available Offline.”)

But here’s how to make clips for classroom use using VLC Player (below). Remember, this is just my experience; you might have a better way, and I’d welcome hearing about it. I’m posting this in case it would help you as it has helped me.

Using Zoom on the desktop and PowerPoint on the iPad: a game-changer for making my class videos

/ Donna Campbell / Leave a comment

This week, I figured out how to write on PowerPoint slides with the Apple pencil and record that in Zoom. You classroom tech wizards can skip this post because you doubtless have a far better solution, but this one was a game-changer for me. I’m writing it down for two reasons (1) possibly to help those teaching online who aren’t tech wizards with an easy method to mark up and record their lectures and (2) so I don’t forget how to do this.

Background: Last year, WSU moved from Blackboard to Canvas, which includes Panopto as a video capture suite. I dutifully took the several weeks of training in all this from WSU’s office of AOI (Academic Outreach and Innovation), but I ran into a roadblock when trying to record with Panopto. I could never trust that it would actually show just the PowerPoint, as I told it to, and when it did show the PowerPoint, it would only show the speaker’s view. AOI couldn’t solve it, and neither could I, so I went to plan B.

Plan B was Zoom, which does a great job of recording PowerPoint and a tiny picture of me in the corner, so the students know that I exist and am not exclusively, or even primarily, a disembodied voice. Here’s the process:

  1. Open a Zoom meeting. Click on Share Screen, and go to the three dots that indicate more settings. Click on Record on this Computer. Note: I learned to share screen before I started recording after recording a lot of videos that began with my large concerned face clicking around to share after the recording started.

2. After you record the lecture, stop recording, end the meeting, and navigate to where the recording is on your computer. On mine, it goes to the Documents – Zoom folder. I don’t edit it because (1) I don’t have time and (2) I hate those videos where every pause is edited out, leaving the viewer gasping for breath.

3. Once the .mp4 recording is available, upload it to Panopto – Upload Media.

3. This will take a little while. After it’s uploaded and ready, click on Edit. Edit allows you to turn on Smart Chapters (based on the titles of your PowerPoint slides) and also to generate Automatic Captions. You can then Share the video link in other places in the Canvas course space (Modules).

4. The captions and so on will take a little while to render, but that’s basically it.

Now here is the game-changer part:

When I was recording with Zoom and using PowerPoint on my desktop, I could annotate slides using the Zoom tool. But if you use the Zoom annotation tool, the annotations hang there on all the subsequent slides like decorations on a Christmas tree, unless you remember to clear them for each slide. By the end slide, the whole thing looks like a Jackson Pollock.

This latter task assumes that you can juggle four things at once–Zoom, the annotation tool, the turn-off-the-annotation tool, and your brain. It also assumes the mouse will click on these instead of balking and sulking in a corner somewhere.

Enter the iPad! If you bring up the PowerPoint on an iPad and use an Apple pencil for annotations, these problems disappear.

  1. Connect the iPad to your desktop or laptop computer. I use a cable, since it’s usually more stable than AirPlay, but you could also use AirPlay.
  2. Open a Zoom meeting, click on Share Screen, and choose iPhone/iPad via Cable.
  3. Open the presentation in PowerPoint on the iPad and select Draw. Make sure the Apple pencil is already connected via Bluetooth.
  4. Go to Slide Show – Start and begin your lecture. You can use the Apple pencil to write things (much easier than manipulating a mouse), circle, cross out, and otherwise use the kinds of emphasis and explanations available when you’re writing on a whiteboard in a physical classroom.

Best of all, once you’re finished recording and are closing the PowerPoint on the iPad, it asks you whether you want to preserve the annotations. I always say “No, in thunder,” but you could choose to keep them.

Would a whiteboard feature be easier? Maybe. I’ve tried whiteboard features like Google Jamboard but couldn’t get them to do what I wanted; also, Jamboard tended to snap itself shut at odd moments. Trusty old PowerPoint won’t quit, and it is wonderful for annotating and discussing text when you’re doing close reading.

Would a document camera be easier? I sometimes use a little inSwan USB Document Camera that I bought for teaching from home at the beginning of the pandemic, which does a good job of showing actual books. But to use that for close reading and discussing texts means switching the camera view in Zoom in the middle of the video, and it’s not necessary if you have the text already typed in to PowerPoint.

inSwan Document Camera with Documate.

So, in short: this method is easy, reliable, and fun. I can’t ask for more than that from a tool for teaching.

Research workflow: more tips and trying out Tropy

/ Donna Campbell / 1 Comment

Screen Shot 2018-06-30 at 3.17.16 PM

Figure 1. A screenshot of a collection in Tropy.

I’m posting some more research workflow tips   in order to remember the things that worked and that didn’t on recent research trips. There may be better ways, but here’s what’s worked for me.

 

One useful practice is to put the photographs in some kind of order immediately, while you’re still in the archive.

  1. After taking a set of pictures, about one or two folders’ worth, upload them to Dropbox and give the folder a name. I use the Box, Folder, and Title, since that information is useful later.
    1. Why photos and not .pdfs or scans? I’ve tried those apps, of which Scanner Pro worked the best, but it takes longer to get the photo centered, etc., and anyway, I can create the .pdf versions later. If I were working with more typewritten materials where OCR is a possibility, Scanner Pro would be fine.
  2. In Preview, I then add the folder name to each item before the image name

    Screen Shot 2018-07-03 at 7.12.41 AM

    Figure 2. I keep the image numbers in there until I can rename the files.

    by using Select – Rename .  This is just a placeholder until I can add a more meaningful name. Although it’s a good idea to get the folder information in the picture itself (see previous post), that might not be possible all the time. This immediate identification ensures that there aren’t any mystery images.

  3. Screen Shot 2018-07-03 at 6.59.23 AM

    Figure 3. These really should follow the XML date conventions.

    Later, when the archive is closed or when I have time, I give them a more descriptive name and, if there’s time, transcribe them. This picture is from is an older batch; more recently, all the files follow the xml date convention YEAR-MONTH-DAY since there’s no confusion about that and sorting is easier.

  4. For ease of reading, you can make a .pdf. In Preview, open a group of files, select them using the Thumbnail pane, and choose File – Print – Print as .pdf. (I have had better luck with this than with Export as PDF, which sometimes will only do one image.) Another tip: if it takes Preview a long time to make this .pdf, the file is invariably too huge to manage. For some reason, if you try the process again (select, file, save to .pdf) it will often go very quickly and result in a smaller file size. It’s pretty random.

This brings me to Tropy, which is a great free app for organizing research materials and. The image at the top of this post is the material in Figure 3 organized in Tropy.

Screen Shot 2018-07-03 at 7.45.01 AM

Figure 4. One of the items in Tropy, opened to show the transcription as well as the image.

You can read all about it at the Tropy link, but what Tropy does is to provide a space for metadata AND the image AND the transcription all in one place, which is pretty great.

You import the photos into Tropy (it doesn’t do .pdf files) and then add the information. To put photos together, as here, you can drag and drop them onto the first page. You can also batch-input metadata such as collection names, etc., by highlighting and adding the information to the whole group.

Also great: with the image open, it’s much easier to transcribe in the Notes section (or simply to write notes about the information if you aren’t transcribing it). You can even use the dictation feature (fn-fn, as in Word) to read the letter into the Notes section.

It’s wonderful not to have to look back and forth between the transcription and the image, or to be able to read a lot of pages at once without creating a .pdf.

Features that Tropy doesn’t have so far that would be extremely useful:

  1. Ability to sync with Dropbox so that you can use the file across multiple computers. You can back up and copy the .tpy file, but when you open it in a different computer, you won’t see the images.
  2. Ability to output text in something other than .jsonld format. I can see that this is a hugely useful format, but if you (like me) aren’t experienced with .json  and want to export your notes and transcriptions as text, it would be nice to have that option.

That said, Tropy’s still an elegant way to organize and work with your files, especially for a discrete collection like a cache of letters.

 

 

 

How to combine multiple PDF files into one in Preview

/ Donna Campbell / Leave a comment

Even though Mac updates destroyed Preview on my desktop, my ancient MacBook (6 years old and proud of it) still has a functioning Preview app. Here’s the process, which I’m writing down here because otherwise I forget it and have to rediscover it every single time.

  1. Open both documents in Preview.
  2. Choose the Sidebar icon in both of them, or the one that shows you little thumbnails of the pages along the side.
  3. Select the document you want to move from the thumbnails in the sidebar of one document and drag it over to the other document. Place it wherever you’d like it to go.
  4. Select all the thumbnails in the sidebar of the combined document.
  5. IMPORTANT. If you try to SAVE or EXPORT the document at this point, you’ll end up with one page. Don’t do it. Instead, choose PRINT.
  6. When the PRINT dialogue comes up, choose PDF as your printing option.
  7. Name the file, save it, and you’re done.

Theoretically you can do this with Adobe Acrobat DC as well, with only a few more steps, but that’s available only with the Creative Cloud subscription.  It’s also possible with NitroPro (which isn’t free) and apparently with the free FoxItReader. You can’t merge them using the free Adobe Reader, though.

I have yet to find a good–that is, simple–workaround for inserting signatures into documents.  Adobe Acrobat DC has a lot of complex options for this, but not one has allowed me to do what Preview used to do with a single click.

 

Farewell, Preview! Yosemite 10.10.5 killed you off for good

/ Donna Campbell / Leave a comment

First, a riddle:

Q: How is a Mac system update like an “old dark house” mystery?
A. It kills off your functional programs one by one with no explanation.

It’s been a few weeks since Apple unleashed the Kraken that is Yosemite 10.10.5 on my iMac.  I wrote about how to get Word 2008 up and running again, which has worked for a few weeks although it’s being balky now.

But Preview is officially kaput, crashing so much that it’s clear it will rise no more.  If I want to look at a .pdf, I use Adobe Reader. If I need to edit or crop a picture, I use a much older MacBookPro where the apps are still functional.

According to MacRumors, this latest build of Yosemite improved security, which is all to the good.  We’ll soon have El Capitan, which is supposed to focus on “improving performance and user experience.”

Here’s a pro tip, Apple: a big part of “user experience” is not killing off the apps we use every day. Just a thought.

If Yosemite 10.10.5 broke Word 2008 on your computer, here’s a solution

/ Donna Campbell / 1 Comment

Yosemite 10.10.5 descended on my Mac on September 19, and, as usual, programs began crashing in droves. Well, Word 2008 and Preview, the two programs I use most, broke, rendering the Mac useless for most work.

Word would open, crash, ask me about “Report this problem to Microsoft?” and display a crash report.  I tried opening in Safe Mode, restarting, resetting the Font Library, and other suggestions found online.

According to this thread and this thread, the problem is that documents with Track Changes were open in Word when the update occurred.  Here’s what worked:

  1. Open Word but hold down the Shift key as it opens to prevent the documents from automatically loading. (Here is the source of the information: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/56684/is-there-a-way-to-stop-ms-word-from-automatically-opening-previously-opened-docu)
  2. Once Word opens, go to File -> Open Recent -> Clear Recent and clear out those files.
  3. Shut down Word and restart it.
  4. Open the files that you need. You can even open and save the ones that were open during the 10.10.5 update, and they seem to be unharmed.

This seems to work for Word.  It doesn’t work for Preview, so I have switched to Adobe Reader for now.

It’s not clear to me why Yosemite 10.10.5 has such a grudge against Word and its Track Changes feature, but that’s a matter for the wizards in Redmond and Cupertino to solve.

Downloading and uploading graded papers to Blackboard

/ Donna Campbell / 21 Comments

The new Blackboard really, really wants you to use its inline tools to grade and comment on student papers. But what if you have a system in place already, including autotext comments you’ve prepared (which won’t work inline) and don’t want to follow Blackboard’s master plan?

This is largely a bookmarking post so I won’t forget how, so please feel free to click away if you already know how to do this.

To download papers (pretty straightforward):

  1. Go to Full Grade Center.
  2. Go to the column where the assignment is.
  3. Click on the drop-down arrow and scroll down to Assignment File Download.
  4. Check “Select All Users” or “Select Ungraded” or whatever.
  5. Download these as a zip file.

Once you’ve graded them, how do you get them back on Blackboard? There is probably an easier way, but this one works.

  1. Go to Full Grade Center.
  2. Go to the Assignment Column. In the gradebox where the student attempt is, click the little drop-down arrow.
  3. Go to Attempt.
  4. In the right-hand box, where it says Feedback to Learner, click on the drop-down arrow.
  5. Underneath the Notes box, there’s your old friend the paper clip, which means that you can attach the graded file.Screen Shot 2015-08-18 at 4.00.53 PM

Here’s another way, no less obscure:

  1. Go to Full Grade Center. In the Assignment column, under the arrow, click on View Grade Details.
  2. It will take you to the Grade Details Page. (If you click Attempts at this point, you’ll be back in the “Attempt” menu, as above.)
  3. Click on Edit Grade. Now, you won’t see the attachment icon here, because it’s hidden in the extended menu.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-18 at 3.56.18 PM

    Figure 1. Nothing to see here, right?

  4. Click on the down arrows, though, and you’ll see the paper clip attachment icon.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-18 at 3.56.35 PM

    There it is!

Workflow for Research Archives

/ Donna Campbell / 2 Comments

cropped-410px-the_house_of_mirth_page_of_original_manuscript_edith_wharton1.jpgUpdated addition 2/28/23: https://donnamcampbell.wordpress.com/2023/02/28/update-to-workflow-for-research-archives/

Some good recent  posts talk about how to organize your workflow for working in a research archive.

From 2013, Dan Royles on Digital Workflows for the archive at ProfHacker:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/digital-workflows-for-the-archives/53505

Jessica Parr at Early Americanists: http://earlyamericanists.com/2015/07/07/making-the-most-of-your-time-in-the-archives-research-technology/?

Both these posts list some good apps as part of the discussion, so check them out.

Since I just returned from a trip to a research archive, here are a few tips, not entirely digital, that I wish I’d thought of earlier.

1. Keep a research log so you know what materials you were working with and when. I used to keep this on a yellow pad (in pencil of course) but have mostly switched to a Word document. It’s in two parts:

One part of the log–the part I still keep on paper–is the list of what boxes I ordered; when I ordered them and the date I ordered them for, since they have to be ordered in advance; and when I returned them. It was just plain easier to see this on a paper pad with returned materials crossed out.

The main part is a running list in a Word document of what I am looking at during the visit: which folders and boxes, generally informal notes about what I’m finding, etc.  Since I had been to this archive before, I was able to look at the log I recorded last time, which saved time when reading the folders.

2. Keep a transcription and notes page for each box as you’re working on it. For some of these, a transcription or notation already existed from the previous visit; I just had to photograph the materials.

This may seem obvious, but when you get home, you may not–in fact, probably won’t–remember whether you looked at Folder 754 and not 755 unless you write it down.  You’ll wonder (or I have), “Did I skip this one, or did it not have anything useful for the project?” Taking a moment to note your impressions will save frustration in the long run. I also wrote down whether I photographed a folder or not.

3. Photograph all the things.  Again, it seems obvious, but it’s a lot faster to photograph items than to read them, especially if you’re short on time.  When in doubt, take a picture.

If you don’t develop a record-keeping system, though, you’ll be lost.

Both Royles and Parr suggest using your phone and TurboScan to record images.  I tried TurboScan but ended up using a camera instead, despite the TurboScan benefits.  Why?

  1. TurboScan was slower than a camera, which may be because I have an older iPhone.
  2. The images weren’t as sharp as I needed (especially for pencil marks).
  3. It would take more time to type in the filenames on the phone’s tiny screen, email the images to myself or upload them to Dropbox, etc., than I wanted to spend.

Using the camera let me take sharp images, which I then downloaded in batches.

4. Organize the photographs to match the archive’s box & folder scheme . After downloading a batch of photos to the Macbook, I moved them immediately from Dropbox’s Camera Uploads folder to Folders named for the box & folder numbers I was working on.  I could then rename the files at leisure, if necessary, which I’ve done some of since I returned from the trip.

Most of them have names like DSCN205-ew to jsmith 25-11-27 pg1.jpg for the first page of a letter from Edith Wharton to John Hugh-Smith written November 25, 1927, for example. Sometimes I make a notation about the work (Ethan Frome, House of Mirth). It’s not searchable, but I can find things in the folders by using the transcription and notes page.

folder example

The collection, box number, and folder number are all right in the picture.

5. Updated to add: put identifying information in the picture. It’s immensely helpful to have the box and folder number right in the image itself.  I used to write these on a piece of paper and then photograph the paper along with the document until I realized (finally!) that if I took a picture with the document top or side near the tab of the folder itself, that information would appear in the picture with no need to write the information on  a piece of paper. If I now lose track of where an image came from, there’s the box and folder number, right in the picture.

I want to keep refining the processes, so there might be an update post in the future. For example, I have premium Evernote, Zotero, iAnnotate, etc. but haven’t used them effectively for archive purposes, as Royles and Parr have done. For now, I’m happy to have the materials and to know that I can find things.

If Yosemite upgrade broke Mail on your Mac, here’s a solution

/ Donna Campbell / 3 Comments

macmailAfter upgrading to Yosemite, Mail crashed repeatedly on my Mac. I checked several online solutions, but here is a much simpler solution that worked for me:

1. Go to System Preferences.Click on Internet Accounts.

2. Delete each of your email accounts by highlighting it and pressing the little minus bar (next to the + button) at the bottom left of the pop-up window.

3. Open Mail and be sure it’s working and not crashing.  Close Mail.

4. Go back to System Preferences -> Internet Accounts. Add back each email address one by one. To do this, click on the + icon and add the information.

5. Check Mail after each new email address to be sure that Mail is still working. It will take a little time for Mail to repopulate your Inbox folders, etc., but it works.

I’ve had to do this process whenever the iPad updates its OS and the mail client quits working, so I’m glad it works for other Macs as well.

It’s a nuisance to do this, true, but it’s less onerous than trying to find folders like Mail -> Library -> Bundles or temporarily disable and then rebuild the mailboxes.