I have been conducting some of my classes in Elluminate virtual classroom.  I recorded the sessions so that students could access them for review and also for action research purposes.  I can view the recordings online but how can I convert these web recordings for further use offline?

Elluminate web conferencing recordings are stored online by our hosts at Naval Post Graduate School through their Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE) portal.  Before you can convert a recording you will need two things:

  • The Elluminate Publish application [Download and install: Elluminate Publish].  Elluminate Publish will allow you to convert your web-based recording into file formats you can use offline such as .mp4 or .mp3.
  • The recording [.jnlp] file for the recording you want to convert.in the CLE.
Access your Elluminate recording file
Once you have downloaded and installed Elluminate Publish, you need to access your archived Elluminate recording and locate the .jnlp file for conversion.  To do this:
  1. Login to NPS CLE https://cle.nps.edu with your ‘non-NPS’ user account.
  2. Click on “Sandbox_MIIS” to enter the MIIS bridge environment.
  3. Click on “Elluminate Live” in the left hand navigation bar.
  4. Next, click “View Recordings,” then, “View Past Year,” to view a list of recordings from the last year.
  5. Search for the session and date of the recording you are looking for and click on it.
  6. Next, click “Launch.”  This will prompt the download of a small java or [.jnlp] file called “recording.jnlp.”  Think of this file as the key that unlocks your access to the recording file that you want to convert into a video + audio [.mp4], or audio only [.mp3] file for offline use or archiving.

You should now have a “recording.jnlp” file in your downloads folder.  If not readily visible on your computer desktop, do a quick search for it.

Initiate the File Conversion Process

To start the actual conversion of your recording, follow the following steps:

  1. Launch Elluminate Publish.  This will prompt a file conversion dialog box.
  2. Click “Browse” to locate your “recording.jnlp” file.  This is the file that you downloaded from the NPS CLE site.
  3. If everything is working, Elluminate Publish will begin indexing the recording file. You may see a status bar that reads ‘Copying VCR file.”  This may take a few minutes.
  4. Finally, select the types of files that you want to produce from your recording.  Select “Create Multimedia Files” if you would like to capture the whiteboard as part of your converted file.  To include an audio track, select “Create Audio File,” as well.
  5. You can de-select the final three checkboxes, unless you would also like a text file of your chat session as part of your file conversion.
  6. Finally, click “Convert” to initiate the actual file conversion.  This process will generally occur in real time, meaning that you should let the process run in the background.  Your converted files will typically be saved in a directory or folder on your desktop.