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Richard Jones-Nerzic

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Everyone at the Toulouse meeting will have been very conscious of the video camera and close microphone that recorded (almost) every word of the conference. Having spent a little time looking at the tapes (ten of them), I am more than happy with the picture and sound quality.

The worst quality tape was the last one of Andrew Field's remote seminar. It was the worst because I hand-held the camera, shot film into the light and unplugged the external microphone. Despite this, as you will see, the film is still usable.

The question is, at what quality should I create the final film for web-streaming? The two choices I am considering are at approx. 350 kbps or 700 kbps. The smaller size creates a file of about 2mb per minute of film, the bigger one about double that.

Ideally, for accessibility we should go for the smallest file size but is the quality of the smaller size good enough? Of course, I can make both (and DVD quality if we require it!), it is simply a question of time, server space and bandwidth.

Video samples:

Small

Big

What do you think?

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The 'smaller' seems more than good enough to me. If you are streaming files you'd want to make them stream as quickly as possible. I'm on a fast connection and even this one did take quite a while to load up. I think any larger files would be even more prohibitive. This one is fine.

What you could also offer is the ability to download the presentation to watch, as well as viewing it online.

Aside from technicial issues might I raise a question about the purpose of the videos. From the one I've seen above, this appears to show people watching, and gradually falling asleep to a presentation :):) I think you could achieve just as much with a few stills and perhaps have the link to the actual presentation?

Obviously presentations that were given directly during the event will be of much more direct use.

Edited by Andrew Field
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Aside from technicial issues might I raise a question about the purpose of the videos.  From the one I've seen above, this appears to show people watching, and gradually falling asleep to a presentation  :)  :lol: I think you could achieve just as much with a few stills and perhaps have the link to the actual presentation?

Not nodding off to sleep but nodding in an agreement... I think.

If we can achieve as much with a few stills and the text of the presentation then that's what we'll do. This part is a bit of an experiment.

I intend to create short (5 minute) tasters of the presentation key points, which act as an encouragement to read more. But many of the presentations did work better live than on paper. Many of the speakers were quite animated, Walker and Faithorn, for example, interacting in teacher-student mode has to be seen to be believed. People generally illustrated their presentation with images, software and video, which it is quite useful to see them demonstrating or commenting on. I hope to cut visuals from the presentation into the film in an attempt to recapture this.

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Not nodding off to sleep but nodding in an agreement... I think.

If we can achieve as much with a few stills and the text of the presentation then that's what we'll do.  This part is a bit of an experiment. 

I intend to create short (5 minute) tasters of the presentation key points, which act as an encouragement to read more.  But many of the presentations did work better live than on paper. Many of the speakers were quite animated, Walker and Faithorn, for example, interacting in teacher-student mode has to be seen to be believed. People generally illustrated their presentation with images, software and video, which it is quite useful to see them demonstrating or commenting on.  I hope to cut visuals from the presentation into the film in an attempt to recapture this.

Sounds like the ideal solution - video will obviously be ideal for the presentations that actually took place on the day. You simply need to find the best balance to enable an individual who wasn't present to gain as much as possible. You will be establishing the new 'standards' for things like this so it will be good to explore the range of possibilities.

One thing you might like to look at is Breeze software - http://www.macromedia.com/breeze - this is soon to be used by exam boards in the UK to disseminate information. This would produce presentations a little like my one, but recorded at the time. It could perhaps be used to enable an online meeting to take place as some sort of follow up to an event.

Edited by Andrew Field
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  • 2 weeks later...
Everyone at the Toulouse meeting will have been very conscious of the video camera and close microphone that recorded (almost) every word of the conference. Having spent a little time looking at the tapes (ten of them), I am more than happy with the picture and sound quality.

The worst quality tape was the last one of Andrew Field's remote seminar. It was the worst because I hand-held the camera, shot film into the light and unplugged the external microphone. Despite this, as you will see, the film is still usable.

The question is, at what quality should I create the final film for web-streaming? The two choices I am considering are at approx. 350 kbps or 700 kbps. The smaller size creates a file of about 2mb per minute of film, the bigger one about double that.

Ideally, for accessibility we should go for the smallest file size but is the quality of the smaller size good enough? Of course, I can make both (and DVD quality if we require it!), it is simply a question of time, server space and bandwidth.

Video samples:

Small

Big

What do you think?

I think the smaller one is fine; they are both clear enough for it to be no problem for the viewer,

Terry

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  • 2 months later...
I intend to create short (5 minute) tasters of the presentation key points, which act as an encouragement to read more.  People generally illustrated their presentation with images, software and video, which it is quite useful to see them demonstrating or commenting on.  I hope to cut visuals from the presentation into the film in an attempt to recapture this.

One of things I want to show in the June Toulouse meeting is how I hope to produce videos to go with the written presentations for the e-Help website.

Having worked on these for a while now, I am fairly convinced we can go beyond the agreed '5 minute' taster and use something (a little) more substantial. I don't want to show the whole presentation but perhaps the essence and the key points in about 10 minutes. This video of Terry's presentation illustrates very well what I have in mind in terms of cutting PowerPoint slides with video and stills.

Video broadband 384k

Because the original tape is such good quality (sound in particular is outstanding) the heavily compressed version is more than watchable. The film of Terry is 25mb, just over 2mb per minute. In the final version I will probably use Flash which will compress the video still further.

What do people think?

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