How I make the most out of online classes

[ahuckphin]

 My classes are now all online. After attending weeks of them, I have created, discovered and researched special tips and tricks that allows me to make the most out of online classes. However I did not want to keep it to myself hence the existence of this guide. 

 

My5 main tips and tricks are: 

 

1. Record Screens with OBS – Laptop with Nvidia GPU and External Monitor

Spoiler

A guide to recording your screens with OBS when you have a laptop with Nvidia dedicated graphics and a second, external monitor.

 

Unlike a real class, it is really easy to record a video call. So I do it with OBS. While often regarded as a software used to live stream, it also makes a great screen recording application.

 

My setup involves my laptop and an external monitor which is not only larger than my laptop monitor but also positioned at a more comfortable height.

 

However because I use a laptop, there are some limitations. In Windows 7/8/10 there are 4 ways to configure multiple monitors: PC screen only, duplicate, extend and second screen only. Majority of the time for me, I have it set at second screen only.

 

When it comes to attending an online call though, I would set to extend. So that I can have the video call on my top monitor and have a word document for me to write notes on my laptop screen allowing me to record the video call without any visual distractions.

 

With a laptop, when configuring OBS for the first time, you have most likely already have had to specify graphics performance preference for OBS to work.

 

Note that setting which monitor as the main display does not make a difference.

 

Basically if you wish to record your laptop’s screen, set the graphic preference for OBS to Power saving. Alternatively if you wish to record your external monitor, set the graphic preference for OBS to High performance.

 

Referring back to the different ways to configure multiple monitors in Windows 7/8/10, in PC screen only since it is going to be your laptop screen only, set the graphic preference for OBS to Power saving.

 

In duplicate mode, it does surprisingly matter what graphic preference you set despite both monitors displaying the same thing. You will have to set graphic preference too Power saving.

 

In extend mode, if you wish to record your laptop’s screen, set the graphic preference for OBS to Power saving. Alternatively if you wish to record your external monitor, set the graphic preference for OBS to High performance. (yes this paragraph is copied from above)

 

In second screen mode, set set the graphic preference for OBS to High performance.

 

Every time you change either Windows multiple monitor configuration or OBS graphics preference, it is highly recommended to restart OBS.

 

Unfortunately, there is no free solution to allow you to record both your laptop and external monitor.

2. MP4 Video to Word

Spoiler

This is how I convert a MP4 video file into a word file. Meaning, I extract the text and visuals from the MP4 video and paste it into a Word document.

 

A great example and use case for this would be converting a recording of an online class into a Microsoft Word document which would be easier to read through, annotate and find information within.

 

To start, we need to record our online class. I use OBS and if you have a laptop with Nvidia graphics, check out tip number 1.

Once the recording has completed, I will upload the recording onto YouTube. Uploading to YouTube is one way of backing up the recording. However for me, I upload to YouTube so that YouTube can do their magic. After a few hours or maybe a day, YouTube will automatically generate subtitles for the video.

I will download the subtitles as a .txt file using downsub.com. You can download the subtitles through YouTube Studio however it won’t be in a .txt file.

I then open the .txt file with Notepad++ where I will perform 2 line operations. 1st is to remove empty lines and the 2nd one is to join the lines.

 

Then I will copy the entire one long paragraph from notepad++ and paste it in a word document. I will ctrl + h to find and replace words like “I” to “lecturer” and “you” to “we”. I would remove words like "uh", "um", “eh” and equivalent.

 

Lastly, have the video playing on one half of your screen and then have your Word document opened in the other half of your screen. Play, pause, rewind, play again the video while altering the Word document as you wish.

 

Tip. You can use Win + Shift + S to screenshot a part of the video to add it into the Word document.

 

If the MP4 video contained the use of presentation slides, I would first convert the presentation file into a Word document. If I have the presentation file, I follow tip number 3.

 

At this point, I would have 2 Word documents open. 1st one containing the output of converting the presentation file into Word and the 2nd one containing the output from Notepad++.

 

Every time the slide changes in the MP4 video, I would cut the words from the 2nd document that has been reviewed and paste it into the 1st Word document below the section of text containing the conversion of that slide into Word.

 

Using this as an example. I have the presentation slides on the left side. On the right side is the YouTube generated subtitles and in the centre, I have the output from converting the presentation slides into Word.

 

In the Word document containing the YouTube generated subtitles, I ignore the words that are in common with the output of converting the presentation slides into Word. I instead just take what’s there that is not there on the other Word document. Which in this particular case is “A fountain pen is typically the most costly of these 3 types.”

 

However if you do this, you would soon get tired of having to constantly switch between your Word document and VLC player to play, pause, rewind and play again the video.

 

So what I did was buy a dedicated numpad and with AutoHotkey scripts, I use the numpad to control VLC. I have 5 scripts in total. AutoHotkey is a program allows for the creation of custom keyboard shortcuts.

 

Faster Speed – Alt tab into VLC, increase playing speed and alt tab back into Microsoft Word.

 

NumpadMult::

Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}
Sleep 50
Send {]}
Sleep 50
Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}

Go Back – Alt tab into VLC, jumps 10 seconds backwards and alt tab back into Microsoft Word.

 

NumpadLeft::

Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}
Sleep 50
Send {Left}
Sleep 50
Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}

Go Forward – Alt tab into VLC, jumps 10 seconds forward and alt tab back into Microsoft Word.

 

NumpadRight::

Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}
Sleep 50
Send {Right}
Sleep 50
Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}

Play Pause – Alt tab into VLC, play the video if the video is paused or pause the video if the video is playing and alt tab back into Microsoft Word.

 

NumpadEnter::

Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}
Sleep 50
Send {Space}
Sleep 50
Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}

Slower Speed – Alt tab into VLC, decrease playing speed and alt tab back into Microsoft Word.

 

NumpadDiv::

Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}
Sleep 50
Send {[}
Sleep 50
Send {Alt down}{Tab}{Alt up}

At the end of it all, it may seem like a lot of work. However all these tips and tricks really goes a long way to help to make the whole process faster and less boring.

 

However you may be asking all along. What if there is a lot of visuals? What if I don’t have the presentation file? What if I want to extract the text out of the screenshots? Check out tip number 4. 

 

3. PowerPoint to Word

Spoiler

So you have a PowerPoint you would like to convert into a Word document. There are many ways to do this but my preferred for it’s formatting and speed is this.

 

I start by going to an outline view.

 

The user interface should change to this.

 

I’ll then select all the text in the overview either by Ctrl + A or just drag to select the entire section.

 

Lastly I will go into Microsoft Word and right click, paste without format.

 

All that’s left and is completely optional is to format the just pasted text in Word.

 

This method isn’t perfect. Images, diagrams and text in non-default textbox (textboxes that does not come with that slides layout) will not copy over unfortunately.

 

For me, I will most definitely format the just pasted text in Word by cross referencing to the PowerPoint. Format as in apply styles to the text like heading 1 and heading 2. While cross referencing, I’ll copy over the images, diagrams and text in non-default textbox if I deem them necessary.

 

This method is much better than my previous method which had me copying slide by slide which was far too time consuming.

 

To further aid to productivity, I have a few custom macros set up within Word. My first one is paste without format.

Selection.PasteAndFormat (wdFormatPlainText)

As a computing student, some of the PowerPoints I am converting have code in them. To differentiate the code from normal text, I would change the font colour of code to blue with this macro.

Selection.Font.Color = RGB(0, 0, 255)

Lastly, when copying diagrams or multiple images from a PowerPoint slide and I want them to just be one image in Word, I’ll use this macro which pastes as a picture, selects the picture just pasted in and resizes it.

Selection.PasteAndFormat (wdChartPicture)
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdWord, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
With Selection.InlineShapes(1)
	.Width = CentimetersToPoints(12)
End With

 

4. Image to Text

Spoiler

OCR or optical character recognition is the technology used to extract text from images. However many free OCR services accessible from Googling, requires uploading the image to their servers. If you have a slow internet connection, this is not ideal.

 

However there is a solution. OneNote. Currently it is a free applications made for note taking. However last time, it was part of your office suite of applications.

 

We are looking for the version of OneNote that was previously bundled with Office and not the one you can download from the Microsoft Store. So sadly, this solution is not free as you will need an active Office subscription.

 

Firstly, install OneNote. Download link available within this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/install-or-reinstall-onenote-for-windows-c08068d8-b517-4464-9ff2-132cb9c45c08

 

Open OneNote and create a new notebook. Paste in your image. Right click and copy text from image. It’s that simple!

 

Paste the output and boom. You have successfully extracted text out for an image.

 

This is something that I definitely wished I knew earlier. My previous solution was to download Bluestacks. An Android emulator on my computer. In Bluestacks, I install Google Translate via the Google Play Store. It is quite a buggy experience though. Often requiring clearing cache and storage for it to work.

 

In Google Translate, I would open the camera and from there import the image I want to extract the text from. It is quite easy to import image from Windows into Bluestacks. Google Translate can then return all the text from the image and you can simply copy it and paste it where ever I would like to.

 

5. Ergonomic setup 

Spoiler

Lastly, it helps to have an ergonomic setup. One where you can sit at for hours at a time. Cause now you are not only doing revision and completing assignments there but also learning and communicating with team mates on group discussions. 

 

[The_russian]

One thing I would note is to take a look at your syllabus, a lot of my professors had sections saying you are not allowed to record lectures. That was before the whole switch to online, but I’m not sure if/how professors will change that rule. I also hope you are setting your YouTube videos as private so others can’t see them.

[Skipple]

There might be a legal issue with recording your professor without their knowledge in some states.

[ahuckphin]

3 minutes ago, The_russian said:

One thing I would note is to take a look at your syllabus, a lot of my professors had sections saying you are not allowed to record lectures. That was before the whole switch to online, but I’m not sure if/how professors will change that rule. I also hope you are setting your YouTube videos as private so others can’t see them.

I probably should have mentioned but I delete the videos as soon as I'm done extracting the subtitles. 

[The_russian]

Just now, bindydad123 said:

I probably should have mentioned but I delete the videos as soon as I'm done extracting the subtitles. 

But do you set them as private? Either way, recording a lecture could still not be allowed. 

[ahuckphin]

2 minutes ago, Skipple said:

There might be a legal issue with recording your professor without their knowledge in some states.

 

4 minutes ago, The_russian said:

a lot of my professors had sections saying you are not allowed to record lectures

 

I didn't know this was a thing. I am not aware of any college or state (I'm not from USA) policy regulating recording of lecturers. Furthermore, my lecturers would actually provide students with recordings. Though these are done by the software they used e.g. Microsoft Teams. I ignore these recordings as I would need to establish a way to download them to upload them. 

[Skipple]

8 minutes ago, bindydad123 said:

policy regulating recording of lecturers.

I'm even talking beyond a class or college policy. In many states it's illegal to record someone without their knowledge.

 

Just ask permission first.

 

It's why you hear the "this call is being recorded for training purposes" message on phone calls. It's a state level legal issue. Just ask Kanye.

[ahuckphin]

2 minutes ago, Skipple said:

Just ask Kayne.

Who's Kayne

[Skipple]

5 minutes ago, bindydad123 said:

Who's Kayne

Mr. West

 

Edit: I realize my mistake now and I am disappointed in myself. I am working to better myself and will make changes to ensure this never happens again going forward. I have learned from these actions and have grown as a person. This isn't who I am and I'm am deeply and truly sorry.

[SupaKomputa]

27 minutes ago, The_russian said:

Setting your YouTube videos as private so others can’t see them.

You still can see private videos if you know the URL, it's not globally protected. Just don't share the videos, keep it to yourself.

[Crossbourne]

Those are some good tips, and who cares if it's illegal in your state or if your professor won't allow it. Don't tell anyone, and make the most out of it. I never thought about putting the videos through YouTube for subtitles, haha, amazing. Thanks!

[ahuckphin]

I sometimes put my recording into a video editing software. Allows me to identify quickly which part of the recording is silent and which part has talking. 

[ahuckphin]

I did not attend online classes for 4 months and when resuming this month, found reading this useful for jogging my mind.

 

My department at my university seems to have moved exclusively to Microsoft Teams and I re-discovered/discovered that Microsoft Teams has surprisingly competent live captions that included punctuation too. Something lacking with YouTube's closed captions. A bit unfortunate though that I cannot change the (font) size of Microsoft Team's live caption. 

 

Discovered that to save / download the live captions / have Microsoft convert the audio to words, I can use Microsoft Stream. 

 

 

The format of the file downloaded is VTT and inside you will data that supplements the auto generated captions understandably like time stamps. Surprisingly, this basic HTML website: https://web.microsoftstream.com/VTTCleaner/CleanVTT.html exists and takes care of eliminating the unnecessary data. 

 

 

Original file on the left, website on the right. 

[Wictorian]

On 8/9/2020 at 11:11 AM, SupaKomputa said:

You still can see private videos if you know the URL, it's not globally protected. Just don't share the videos, keep it to yourself.

As far as I know you can see unlisted videos if you know the URL but not private videos.

 

On 8/9/2020 at 7:11 PM, Crossbourne said:

Those are some good tips, and who cares if it's illegal in your state or if your professor won't allow it. Don't tell anyone, and make the most out of it. I never thought about putting the videos through YouTube for subtitles, haha, amazing. Thanks!

Also some people do it to get songs' names from copyright warnings.

 

On 1/19/2021 at 1:22 PM, bindydad123 said:

I did not attend online classes for 4 months and when resuming this month, found reading this useful for jogging my mind.

 

My department at my university seems to have moved exclusively to Microsoft Teams and I re-discovered/discovered that Microsoft Teams has surprisingly competent live captions that included punctuation too. Something lacking with YouTube's closed captions. A bit unfortunate though that I cannot change the (font) size of Microsoft Team's live caption. 

 

Also google meet has subtitles ( though probably not as good as teams as they are same/similar to youtube's)

[ahuckphin]

2021 Update – my 2021 workflow is almost entirely different to my 2020 workflow. 

 

Additionally it is no longer "how I make the most out of online classes" but rather "how I can make the most out of online classes" since with my past semester, I have been slacking.  

 

1st Pre-requisite – Wow audio file 

Spoiler

I obtain an audio file which contains the pronunciation of the word wow. Such files can be obtained from text to speech websites. I personally used this one – https://ttsmp3.com/.

 

2nd Pre-requisite - Programs

Spoiler

For programs, I will need:
    • Microsoft PowerPoint
    • Microsoft OneNote
    • Open Broadcaster Software (OBS)
    • VLC
    • AutoHotkey

 

Note on Microsoft PowerPoint. I have tried to substitute it with LibreOffice Impress. However print scaling is superior with Microsoft PowerPoint then with LibreOffice Impress when dealing with native PPT or PPTX files. 

 

Note on Microsoft OneNote. I use the desktop version. Not the OneNote for Windows 10 version. OneNote has strong native OCR support and when Ctrl + F, it will not only search the characters but also the characters inside a picture! However I have to add double quotations at the beginning and end of my search terms for more accurate results. 

 

3rd Pre-requisite – Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) configuration

Spoiler

Under Sources:

 

1 Window Capture for online class

1 Media Source with local file being the wow file obtained through the 1st pre-requisite. 
Media resource renamed to wow.  

 

Under Settings → Output → Recording: 

 

Note on Recording Format. Mkv files are not natively supported with DaVinci Resolve however is supported by Shotcut. I select mkv files oppose to mp4 files because:

 

Under Settings → Audio → Global Audio Devices: 

 

Note on desktop audio. I populate both desktop audio (1) and desktop audio 2. Allows me to quickly switch from hearing my online classes through my laptop speakers and through my 3.5mm earphones with little disruption to recording. 

 

Under Settings → Video:

 

Under Settings → Hotkeys → Wow:

 

Under Audio Mixer: 

 

 

I rename Desktop Audio to Speakers and Desktop Audio 2 to Headphones. 

 

4th Pre-requisite – VLC configuration 

Spoiler

Under Tools → Preferences → All (Advanced Preferences)→ Interface → Hotkeys settings:

 

 

 

Hotkey for speed and position related actions important to note for 5th pre-requisite. 

 

5th Pre-requisite – AutoHotkey script 

Spoiler

My AutoHotkey scripts are available in this GitHub repository. https://github.com/adylanchng/Keyboard-Control-for-VLC 

 

6th Pre-requisite – Keyboard cap labels 

Spoiler

I previously used a keyboard with a number pad and so I stuck labels onto the number pad keys. It looks like this: 

 

 

I am now using a keyboard without a number pad and use the number row instead. It looks like this: 
 

 

That is it for the pre-requisites. Now for what I do with every online class. 

 

1. Record the online class with OBS

Spoiler

Note that my university allows for recordings and at times where there is 2 online classes back to back, I will miss the first few minutes of the 2nd class. In these cases, I will depend on the lecturers recording instead of mine. 

 

Generally I prefer my recordings as they contain the meeting chat while recordings done by Microsoft Teams initiated by the lecturers does not. Microsoft Teams is the platform primarily used in my university and also allows for real time live captions which I turn on despite having no good reason to do so. 

 

Often PowerPoint slides are used by my lecturers. When the lecture changes to a different slide, I will hit the wow key on my keyboard. 

 

2. Upload recording to Microsoft Stream

Spoiler

Once the class is concluded, I upload the recordings to Microsoft Stream. After a few hours, I will be given the option to download the captions which is what I will do. After verifying that the caption file is not blank, I will delete the video from Microsoft Stream. 

 

For my next semester, I plan to run 2 instances of OBS concurrently. 1 instance will record video and audio. The other instance will just record audio. By doing this, I hope that the uploading time will be drastically decreased. In a 2 minute test recording, video + audio totalled to about 70 megabytes while audio only totalled to about 3 megabytes.  

 

3. Print PowerPoint to OneNote

Spoiler

 

If the PowerPoint features notes, I will print in “Notes Pages” format.

 

If the PowerPoint does not feature notes, I will instead print in “Full Page Slides” format. 

 

4. Making caption file usable

Spoiler

The format of the captions file downloaded from Microsoft Stream is VTT and inside you will find data that supplements the auto generated captions understandably like time stamps. There exists https://web.microsoftstream.com/VTTCleaner/CleanVTT.html which eliminates the unnecessary data. This website can also be downloaded and will continue to function no problem. I will paste the output into Notepad++. 

 

5. Splicing captions

Spoiler

 

I have 2 monitors in a stacked 1 on top of the other 1 configuration. In my top monitor, I will split half half Notepad++ and OneNote. In my bottom monitor, I will have a full screen of the recording.

 

 

If I was paying attention in class and “wowing” my way though, I would be able to Ctrl + F the word wow in the Notepad++ file and replace with \n\n with the search mode set to regular expression. This promises to take 1 giant paragraph and split it up so that if there was 30 PowerPoint slides shown, there will be 30 paragraphs now.

 

If I was not paying attention in class and not “wowing” my way through, I would then need to hit my “forward 1 minute” key repeatedly until the recording shows a changed slide. Then I would hit my “backward 10 second” key repeatedly until the recording shows a changed slide again. If there is no subtitles present, I would hit my “play pause” key until a subtle is shown. My AutoHotkey script allows me without moussing over to Notepad++ find window to start typing in the subtitles which is what I will do. Then I will mouse select from that point to till the beginning of the Notepad++ file, cut and paste under the corresponding slide in OneNote.

 

Once done, OneNote looks something like this:

 

 

The black squares in the above screenshot are messages from the meeting chat which I will screenshot and insert into OneNote during at this stage. I have found Windows Snip & Sketch unreliable and now instead use Greenshot.

 

Note on Notepad++: I previously used LibreOffice Writer and Microsoft Word instead of Notepad++. However the time it took to cut due to formatting was too noticeable. I like for the auto generated captions to be blue in colour. So now with Notepad++, after I am done, then I will select all and change text colour to blue in OneNote.

 

Closing remarks, disclaimer and future possibility 

Spoiler

The Microsoft Stream auto generated captions are not perfect. Additionally, splicing of captions done either by the “wow” markers or by jumping 10 seconds here and there is not perfect. I am ok with this. For better precision, you can play the recording back around the wow marked or the 10 seconds jump to know more exactly the position and corresponding auto generated captions when the slide was changed.

 

I have noticed that the live captions to be superior than the auto generated captions done through Microsoft Stream. So it is a shame there is no option to download the Microsoft Teams live captions. However from observing how it works: constant altering of the text till it is kicked off screen; a reworking on of it’s mechanism will be probably need to take place first before a download option can be introduced.

 

I have experimented with an AutoHotkey script that initially promised to allow for splicing of captions to be performed in real time during the running of the class. In execution, it failed to work as it was all too hectic and how Microsoft Teams live captions mechanism works. Can read more about this adventure I had here -

and here - https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=85908