Background
From about 2009 the Learning Technologies team were aware that a number of staff were recording their lectures (with a variety of technologies) and making those recordings available to students via the Vula site for the course. In addition it was noted that students were also employing a variety of technologies to DIY record their lectures. Questions regarding lecture capture were incorporated in to the 2010 Educational Technologies survey. 98 (out of 176) respondents stated that they did not record their lectures but when asked what proportion of their lectures they would like recorded IF the process could be automated 30, 24 and 29 respondents answered "some", "most", "all"  23 respondents stated that they would not want to record any of their lectures and 15 respondents said the question as "not applicable"  One respondent commented
 

"One of the great frustrations I experience is that undergrad
students do not attend lectures regularly or consistently. This
means that we can't easily build up a class discussion that
really challenges conventional modes of teaching. I asked
students what to do about this and the suggestion, strongly
endorsed by all students present, was that lectures not cover
course materials and be free-floating in style,without catchup'
lecture notes. Many of the students feel that they are
being babied (much as they also want to have the lceture
notes etc available!). So there's a narrow line here: too much
and the students then don't need to contribute to class
discussion, too little and they complain!"

 
The Learning Technologies team believe that this comment speaks to the current dilemma experienced by many academics at UCT. This understanding comes from ongoing and adhoc contact with academics whom are striving to teach large classes (sometimes having to provide the same lecture a number of times in the day/week) and seeking a technical "addition" to their teaching that would address the issues noted in the comment.

What is Lecture Capture
Lecture Capture refers to a set of technologies that allow recordings of presentations (including lectures) and to make available those recordings, in a number of set formats, automatically to a given audience.

The value of lecture capture is that it
1) Closes the knowledge gap (ie; gives the students a "second bite" of the cherry)
2) Enables broader learning approaches (independent and self-regulated)
3) Promotes peer review
4) Supports accessible content
5) Encourages reflection

Funding
The funding for the pilot project was made available at the end of 2010 and was an outcome from the "1 student 1 laptop" funding application. ZAR400,000 for lecture capture hardware was made available from the ICTS capex fund to equip 15 - 20 of venues on upper, middle and health science campuses. Other offshoots from the 1 laptop 1 student funding application that received funding from the VCs fund was for increasing wireless coverage at all campuses and increasing the number of Adobe Connect (an online virtual teaching/learning/meeting/conference technology) licences.

Pilot Venues
The process used to identify the venues for the pilot phase of the project included; nominations, site visits, feasibility assessment (technical, integration with existing infrastructure), seating capacity, cross faculty use,
 
The equipping of venues is a ongoing process which can be followed here https://vula.uct.ac.za/wiki/opencastdev/pilot%20venues.html

Reference
University of Bath (online) 5 reasons to capture your practice