grabslides

I recently had the opportunity to try out the Grabslides project - a command line tool designed for the automation of video and slide synchronization during both live and on-demand courses. This tool is simply amazing as it is able to capture frames from Video4Linux devices or Axis Video Servers, while giving users the flexibility to configure different parameters such as the capture device, channel, interframe delay, resolution, compression factor, output directory, and link to the current slide and much more.

Also, some of these parameters can be changed during runtime using signals or user interfaces to further enhance usability. Another impressive feature I found was that Grabslides can generate a PDF document containing all the captured slides with multiple possibilities offered to users. It is also worth noting that we use this tool regularly to capture slides from the output of a VGA-to-Composite converter.

After the capture is complete, the tool runs a SMIL generator over the sets of slides produced, creating a SMIL file linking both the video and slides together for perfect synchronization. Although the SMIL generator is written in-house, it is expected to be published later.

For installation, the process is relatively easy, with users needing to download and extract Grabslides tarball before running the tool's installation instructions. Users will also find a help section where they can see all the possible commands available in the tool.

Overall, I was impressed with the new releases of the tool which includes a HTML page containing all slides, XML presentations in the Aristote Association's OTESA format, 2-up mode working in portrait mode for PDF creation, and the ability of the tool to synchronize on another process. Also, grabslides can now exit automatically when the other process does. My favorite update, however, is the availability of a beautiful new example of PDF output.