Use Echo360 Universal Capture Personal to record video and pre-record lectures

What is Echo360 Universal Capture (UC)?

Echo360 Universal Capture is a simple stand-alone desktop application that allows you to make recordings from your office or home, and publish them via LSE’s lecture recording system. You can record your computer screen (e.g. a PowerPoint presentation or other materials) with audio narration, along with a webcam video (optional). It runs on both Windows and Mac.

Before you start

To be able to publish recordings to the Echo360 system, you need to be registered as an Instructor

  • If your timetabled lectures are already being recorded, you will already have an Echo360 account and will be registered as an Instructor.

  • If you are a Teacher or a Teacher (Editor) in a Moodle course, and that course has a link to lecture recordings, you can follow that link to become an Instructor in the corresponding Echo360 section.

  • If you want to create recordings for a different course or are not already registered as an instructor, contact eden.lecturerecording@lse.ac.uk and state the course to which you want to publish.

Installing the software

Ensure your computer meets the general Universal Capture Specifications.

On an LSE Desktop computer

If you are using an LSE Desktop computer, Echo360 Universal Capture Personal is available via LSE Self Service, which you can find on the Windows Start menu.

Open LSE Self Service and click “Echo360 Universal Capture”. Within a few minutes, you should be ready to go.

On your own computer

The software is available for Windows 10 and macOS. Please review the system requirements.

  • Visit https://echo360.org.uk/downloads, and enter your LSE email address to log in.

  • You may be prompted to enter your password and to provide Multi-Factor Authentication if you are not already logged into your LSE account.

  • Scroll to “Universal Capture: Personal” (not Classroom!) and choose the appropriate link for your operating system.

There is more help available from the Echo360 website.

Launching Universal Capture Personal

If you selected to have a shortcut added to the desktop during installation, you can double-click the shortcut to launch Universal Capture Personal. Otherwise, follow the instructions below.

macOS

Open Finder on your Mac and navigate to the Applications folder and then select Echo360 Capture.

Windows 10

Click on the Sart menu and select Echo360 Universal Capture. Alternatively, use the search bar next to the start menu and search for Echo360 Universal Capture.

Once you launch the Universal Capture Personal application, you will be asked to log in. You will be taken to the LSE login page where you need to enter your LSE login credentials. A pop-up message will appear on your browser, click ‘Open Echo360 Capture’.

Quick start guide on recording

Below is a screenshot explaining the application interface and a short video tutorial demonstrating how to create an ad hoc recording with Universal Capture.

 

Recordings in Moodle

You can now embed existing recordings and start new ones from the Moodle text editor. Click the Echo360 button in the HTML editor toolbar (highlighted in green, below).

This makes it easy to create new recordings, or embed existing ones, in any place you can enter text, for example in a Forum post.

 

Network and bandwidth limitations

When recording using the Universal Capture application your recording may be impacted by network and bandwidth limitations which could interfere with your recording performance and uploading to Eco360 cloud. This guide provides tips and advice to help you address the issues.

  • Check your Wi-Fi connection on your device, if your Wi-Fi signal is weak, move closer to the router or use a wired network connection. You could also restart the router as this helps to clear its memory and resets tasks that might’ve stalled.

  • Close down all applications and browser tabs that are not required for your recording to limit their internet usage.

  • If you have other devices such as tablets and smartphones that are connected to the same Wi-Fi and not in use during your recording, you could disconnect them as sometimes they run updates in the background and consume a lot of bandwidth.

  • We recommend switching Universal Capture to ‘Working offline’ mode to prevent the automatic publishing of a capture right after recording especially if you are connecting with an unreliable or inconsistent network connection. When working offline, the application will not attempt to upload any recordings until you manually switch to working online again (or log out). There is an upload progress indicator that indicates the number of recordings being uploaded and % progress for each recording. The upload to Echo360 cloud is a background process and so does not require the UC application to be open.  If interrupted, it will automatically reattempt upload as soon as a stable network connection becomes available.  Further details on working offline can be found here.

Switch between Working Offline or Working Online:

  1. Launch Universal Capture

  2. Click into the Universal Capture menu:

    • Echo360 Capture on a Mac.

    • Help on a Windows machine.

  3. Click Work Offline or Work Online.