Pentimento : non-sequential authoring of handwritten lectures

Abstract

Pentimento is software developed under the supervision of Fredo Durand in the Computer Graphics Group at CSAIL that focuses on dramatically simplifying the creation of online educational video lectures such as those of Khan Academy. In these videos, the lecture style is that the educator draws on a virtual whiteboard as he/she speaks. Currently, the type of software that the educator uses is very rudimentary in its functionality and only allows for basic functionality such as screen and voice recording. A downside of this approach is that the educator must get it right on the first approach, as there is no ability to simply edit the content taken during a screen capture after the initial recording without using unnecessarily complex video editing software. Even with video editing software, the user is not able to access the original drawing content used to create video. The overall goal of this project is to develop lecture recording software that uses a vector based representation to keep track of the user's sketching, which will allow the user to easily editing the original drawing content retroactively. The goal for my contribution to this project is to implement components for a web-based version of Pentimento. This will allow the application to reach a broader range of users. The goal is to have an HTML5 and Javascript based application that can run on many of popular the web browsers in use today. One of my main focuses in this project is to work on the audio recording and editing component. This includes the working on the user interface component and integrating it with the rest of the parts in the software.