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TechTalks Event

Streaming Video Applications: Planning and Delivery

with guest expert Bob Taylor

January 25, 2001
[Audio (MP3) | Transcript]�

Consumer gadgets like digital videocams and even small digital cameras that can shoot 60-second videos are increasing the demand for institutions to be able to serve streaming media. Every savvy user will soon be able to create and edit all sorts of media. And, of course, students, faculty, and other staff will expect our institutions to be right on that leading edge. Ira Fuchs says: "I predict that within the next six to eighteen months, virtually every machine that your students buy or bring to school will have a built-in video camera." (See resource link, below.) How do you plan for and deliver streaming video applications in light of a fantastic likely demand?

Bob has shared with us a bonus list of hyperlinks to related online resources, some of which he may refer to during the Tech Talk. They are at the bottom of this Web document. You can scroll down past our other referenced hyperlinks or click here to go there at once.

Plan now to send in your questions to expert@cren.net and join Technology Anchor Howard Straus and Co-Host Judith Boettcher on Thursday, January 25 at 4:00 pm Eastern time as they quiz guest expert Bob Taylor about what he knows that you need to know about streaming media.

Guest Expert

Bob Bob Taylor, of Northwestern University, is Director of Academic Technologies. Bob's role is to support Northwestern faculty in the implementation and adaptation of technology towards instructional and research goals, providing training and one-on-one consulting to faculty members and managing the University's electronic classrooms and computer lab/classroom facilities. He was a Guest Expert on Tech Talk a year ago, when we examined Networked Digital Video

Co-Hosts

Howard Strauss (above, left), Manager of Academic Applications at Princeton University, is TechTalk's Technology Anchor.

Judith Boettcher is the Executive Director of the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (CREN).

Together, Howard and Judith will ask the really tough questions—and relay the questions you email to them at expert@cren.net.

Background & Resources

One of the very best ways to get background on an issue is by reviewing the audio, transcript, and resource list from any related Tech Talks which have been previously broadcast and are now fully archived. Serving various media, including streaming video, is of great interest to the CREN constituency. Earlier related Tech Talks include, most recently, Managing the Convergence of Data, Voice, and Video Streaming with James Jokl last December 14. and Networked Digital Video with Joel Mambretti and Bob Taylor on February 3, 2000. Both of those previous events' Web documents have substantial lists of hyperlinked resources.

Shared by Bob during the event is this metasite for MPEG-7 resources.

And shared by Howard after the event is this resource, which he says represents darned fine acting, if it is acting.

Recently shared with us by a listener are some pertinent tutorials about video from Media and Technology Services at California State University-Hayward.

Can't not have a link to Real Networks, and one to its How to get started documentation. A commercial streaming media news site is here.

The Educational Applications of Streaming Audio: Accessible, Do-It-Yourself Multimedia by Grover Furr is a must-read. He finds that with current pipelines, streaming audio is often a better tool, but a lot of what he has learned is applicable to video as well.

The high-end of the curve is explored by Robert S. Dixon in Internet Videoconferencing: Coming to Your Campus Soon! (pdf), in the latest EDUCAUSE Quarterly. In the same issue, addressing more generically the "planning" part of this event's title, is Planning for IT in Higher Education: It's Not an Oxymoron (pdf) by John W. McCredie. An earlier issue contains the very useful Lessons from a Videoconferenced Course by Ira Nayman�

At the University of Minnesota, UNITE Instructional Television is offering selected science and engineering courses over the Internet using streaming video technology.

And here's how the University of Washington School of Engineering does it.

Exploring all sides of an issue is important, here are a couple of Commentaries from The Technology Source in which first John Hibbs and then Stephen Downes explore why it is that people who advocate distance learning technologies have this need to get together for face to face meetings.

Teaching, Learning, and the Impact of Multimedia Technologies (pdf) by Tony Bates both answers and asks some of the same questions as does Ira Fuchs in Multimedia is Coming . . . Get Ready!: "What can we do to stimulate people on our campuses to think about video as the new great technology and not just the latest fad that we need to suppress?"

For an "insider"" perspective at the University of Wisconsin, enjoy its Streaming Digital Video Statement of Direction from 1999 - we wonder how much has changed! This page allows comparisons of various streaming technologies.

And now, BONUS links! Our guest expert has prepared the following list of hyperlinks and annotations to supplement our earlier list. Thanks, Bob!

Videoconferencing

Some Video Applications in New Distance Learning Efforts
  • Fathom is a consortium by some top-ranked universities to join forces in offering for-credit, online courses. Many of the courses use on-line video clips to add dimension to the course content and to bring well-known experts as resources to the learning environment. Members of Fathom include Columbia University, the University of Michigan, the University of Washington and the University of Chicago. Visit Fathom at www.fathom.com. Search on "armstrong" to get an interesting hour-long video by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch on Louis Armstrong.
Video Applications in Distributed Learning Environments at Universities
  • The CIC universities have developed an online resource of lab techniques for Chemistry instructors and Chemistry students. The online handbook features streaming videoclips of the most common laboratory operations required of students in the wet labs. Visit dvaction.northwestern.edu/linktodvaction.html and browse the microscale techniques.
  • Ohio State University and Northwestern worked with the American Political Science Association to put specialty courses from APSA conferences up as online video. Visit these graduate student seminars at http://www.northwestern.edu/polmeth/.
  • An exhibition on Art and the Holocaust has been released by the Block Museum at Northwestern University. The exhibition features over 12 hours of MPEG-1 video for Intenet2 delivery by scholars of the Holocaust. 300Kbps Windows Media versions of the video clips will be added later next month, for delivery to lower bandwidth connections.
Video Programming from Research Universities Internet2 Activites in Digital Video Online Video feeds from Media Broadcasters
  • C-SPAN high bandwidth feed. C-span.org is developing public affairs programming on the web. To reach large simultaneous numbers of higher education broadband users, they are experimenting with multicasting of their MPEG-1 video feed over Internet2 networks. If your pathway to your desktop machine is Switched-Ethernet and your campus has enabled multicasting, try this experimental feed: cspan.icair.org.
  • NASA TV
  • PerKinet is a portal of more than 100 television broadcast stations providing feeds to the Internet. Check out WGBH (boston) and some of the international TV stations. Most of these stations are at web-cast rates of 100kbps or less.
Some Primers on Digital Video Databases of Online Video Projects

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