An interactive virtual classroom-multimedia distance learning system

We present the design and the development of a real-time interactive virtual classroom. There has been rapid progress in digital media compression research and the delivery of media data on the public Internet is becoming widespread. A real-time interactive virtual classroom allows a remote participant not only to receive a live class feed but also to interact in a live class by asking questions. Many instructors use electronically prepared slides during their class. The traditional video coding algorithms are not able to compress this slide data very well at low bit rate. We propose a Web-based real-time presentation system for the electronic slides. Instructors also write text on a white board or a piece of paper during the class. At low bit rate, the conventional video encoding algorithms cannot encode this handwritten text video with enough fidelity, resulting in an illegible decoded video. We propose an extension of the well known bi-level image encoding algorithms to handle the handwritten text video. Our method results in decoded video frames which can be read very clearly when encoded at low bit rate.