Paul Riismandel

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I moderated a panel on educational video at the Streaming Media West conference this past November, and video of that session is now up for viewing online at ScribeMedia.org. I was very impressed by the panelists, each of them bringing a unique perspective on the question of what makes effective online video for education. I already knew John Tubbs, who also works at the University of Illinois. I invited him to participate because of his passion for good quality audio and video. Beyond aesthetics, John has been researching the physiological reasons why good audio matters and why bad audio might impair comprehension and retention. He brings up some of his research in this session. I shared a panel last year with Richard Bloom, who is the coursecast administrator for the excellent Webcast site at the University of California - Berkeley. I was glad Richard could make it because Berkeley is really emphasizing the value of publicly sharing their videos along with using as many open source tools as possible. I met Chuck Allen from CSU San Marcos and Scott Szczurek from the CME Group in Chicago for the first time the evening before the panel. Chuck has the distinct privilege of having built the media capture and distribution infrastructure at San Marcos, since the university is less than twenty years old. He shares some choice wisdom based upon his experience there. I was glad to have Scott on board for the panel to bring us the perspective of someone producing video for internal training and education, demonstrating that educators of all stripes share a lot of the same challenges and can benefit from sharing solutions.

I think 2008 is going to be a big year in educational video, where more forward-looking universities and colleges will be devising and implementing campus-wide media strategies. Key to such strategies are production and ingest, and commercial course-capture systems are one way to simplify this.

The downside to course-capture systems, like Echo360, Tegrity, Mediasite and Accordent (to name just four) is cost. Depending on which system one chooses there can be a pretty signficant initial capital outlay on equipment and software, followed by annual license costs. However, compared to sending out an army of undergraduates armed with camcorders across a campus, course capture systems are a cleaner, often more scalable solution.

Where even just two years ago online video was seen as something mostly in the domain of distance education, increasingly it’s being used to supplement and enhance traditional in-class, brick and mortar instruction. Today’s NY Times has an article on the rising use of these systems to provide in-class course lecture videos to students as streams or podcast, focusing on big universities like Perdue and Kansas State, in addition to commuter schools like El Centro College in Texas.

Like smart clasrooms and learning management systems, the time is very near where students and faculty will come to regard course-capture as an expectation rather than a nicety. Being able to review course lectures will be a factor in choosing a college or university for an increasing number of top students.

Many top-tier institutions would like to think that course-capture is mostly for lazy students who want to cut class or for lower-achieving students who need all the help they can get. On the former, I think they’re wrong. My experience is that the students who will cut class because they think they can make it up by watching the video are inclined to cut class anyway. These are the students who jam my department’s servers the night before an exam thinking they can somehow watch and digest a half-semester of biology in one night.

In fact, what I think we’re finding is that it’s the motivated student who benefits most from being able to review course-lectures, since they allow her to check the accuracy of her own notes by going right to the source. The student already prepared to do well will only further excel when given additional tools and resources. The student who is struggling but wants to do well will also benefit by using videos as a virtual tutor and a way to jog her memory.

Now, course-capture is not suited to every sort of course. Small enrollment classes that focus heavily on discussion and interaction with the instructor may not prove as valuable on video. But large lecture courses with a dominant lecture component are ripe.

There are a lot of ways to go about course-capture. But I think the university or college that doesn’t start working on a strategy now is going to find itself struggling as peer institutions charge ahead.

My latest education column for Streaming Media Magazine is now online:

You’re watching an online video. The scene is dimly lit. There’s just a single harsh light on our subject’s face in extreme close-up. The sound, while understandable, is full of popped Ps and distorted peaks.

Is this a sequel to the Blair Witch Project, or a video podcast for Political Science 101? Or is this the future of educational video?

The do-it-yourself approach to video has taken the internet by storm, and more instructors and students are taking up the call to use digital media to enhance learning. As both a media producer and educator I think this is a great trend. Yet, like a weary English teacher at a slam poetry competition, I can’t help but think that the quality could be a lot better with some attention to the basics.

Read more at StreamingMedia.com…

Unfortunately, the entry price is over $6000 MSRP. But if you’re a video pro or a very serious indie journalist/documentarian you might consider saving your pennies and golden dollars for the just announced Sony HVR-Z7U. The specs on this thing really sound like Sony has been paying attention to what serious video makers want in a “prosumer” camera. The most exciting spec is that it records DV and HDV video to plain old compact flash cards, just like you use in a digital still camera and other devices. CF cards have recently hit 16 GB, which will store 72 minutes of video. Those cards average about $200 or so, which is a bargain compared to one of Panasonic’s proprietary P2 cards, which cost more like $900 for 16 GB. While it’s surprising for Sony to adopt such a common standard rather than going proprietary (16 GB Memory Stick anyone?), I think it’s a good move that sets an example for where camcorder technology has to go. And, unlike AVCHD and other MPEG-2 based codecs used on other (admittedly lower priced) hard drive and flash memory camcorders, DV and HDV is ready to import an edit in any major NLE without any transcoding. The second cool spec of the cam is that it takes interchangeable lenses, like its competitors the JVC GY-HD110 and the more expensive Canon XL-H1. With an adapter it even uses lenses from its Sony Alpha line of digital SLRs (previously known as the Minolta A mount). Of course, $6k is a lot to drop on a camera and I haven’t seen the thing yet. My hope is that these ideas trickle down into lower priced cams, especially CF card support. I don’t see any reason why CF card writing can’t be added to one of Sony’$1000 HDV cameras, especially since CF wouldn’t require any moving parts. I’d be one of the first in line with my debit card if that appeared in my local electronic shop. You can throw all the whiz-bang psuedo-features at me you want and I won’t jump. But give me simple, relatively inexpensive recording to a memory card (or hard drive) in a standard codec made for editing, and I’m there.

I’m in San Jose, CA for Streaming Media West, an online media conference, which begins tomorrow. I’m very interested in hearing tomorrow’s keynote by Ashwin Navin, President & Co-Founder of BitTorrent, who is talking about how a commercial P2P network can be used to distribute legal audio and video content. I hope he’ll address the recent revelation about Comcast interfering with its customers BitTorrent traffic and how that might be affecting his company’s business model. I can’t imagine he can ignore the issue — otherwise it’ll be the 900 pound gorilla in the room (and I’ll ask the question myself). My experience in the online media industry is that network neutrality is the issue nobody wants to talk about too much, both because regulation is rarely a popular issue, and because there is the real hope that it isn’t needed. Unfortunately, Comcast’s interference with BitTorrent traffic–regardless of whether the shared content is permitted to be shared or not–is the single most clear example of a non-neutral network in action. So I’m very curious what BitTorrent thinks about Net Neutrality now. I’ll be sure to blog this keynote the best I can (delayed a few moments due to the fact there’s no wifi in the presentation rooms themselves).

I’m very excited to organize another panel at Streaming Media West. This year its focus is on “Making Effective Online Video for Education.” This topic is near to my heart because I think the issues of quality and effectiveness too often get lost in the rush to get video onto the ‘net. It’s not snobbish to say there’s a real role and value to producing video that looks and sounds good, in addition to conveying important, useful content. The bottom line is quite concrete: if you can’t hear or see what’s going on clearly, then how are you going to understand it?

The session is in a pretty prime slot, on the first day of the conference, Tuesday Nov. 5, at 1:45 PM. It’s still not too late to register for the conference.

This will be my fourth SM conference and I’m looking forward to it. I find the SM conferences to be big enough to have a diverse lot of online media professionals, but small enough to not feel overwhelmed. The folks who attend the SM conferences are serious about online video and audio; they’re not hopping on a trend. I recommend them to anyone working in the field of online media. I especially recommend these conferences to educators because you’ll get exposed to some ideas from outside the ivory tower that are useful and innovative. Frankly, too many educational technology conferences are more faddish and insufficiently focused on the quality of experience which leads to effective instruction.

If you want to do anything remotely related to serious video work, it is arguably the most important jack to have on a camcorder: the mic input. Why? Because unless you’re shooting in a phone booth, or super-extreme-close-up, your camera is farther away from your subject than you want your mic to be. If you use the on-camera mic you get good picture, but crappy echoey audio that picks up too much background noise. Unless you’re shooting something silent, you want your mic as close to your subject as possible, even if it’s a $30 lavaliere from Radio Shack on a long cord. But mic jacks have been disappearing from camcorders under $1000. So, I’m just as frustrated as Film Flap’s Eggleston, who is trying to find a decent new camcorder with a mic jack:

This recent development leads me to a bit of a rant. Why has the mic input (and its brother the headphone jack) become scarce? How much money and camera size is really saved by eliminating these very useful connections? Could it be a steady diet of crappy clips has desensitized the public to quality? My guess is that most people don’t care. Joe Six Pack never used that little hole anyway, so why start now? So, when looking for a camera to buy or borrow, make sure you get a mic input. The “fast-cam” is great for shooting spontaneous stuff, but would be even better if you could interview someone without having to jam the camera up their nose so you can understand what they are saying. A cheap external mic is better than the most expensive built-in one.

I continue to be intrigued by these little “Hi-Def” camcorders (scare quotes intentional) by Sanyo, even if not enough to acquire one. I haven’t been able to get my hands on one because I don’t know anyone who has one and no local stores carry them. When they first came out last year reviewers gave them so-so marks for not being not quite as hot as advertised. Yet, they seem to have garnered a decent following amongst video bloggers and other indie video producers, which tells me that they must be worth something, even if they aren’t a threat to a Sony or Panasonic HDV camcorder. A gushing hands-on preview of the newest Sanyo HD mini-cams by Akihabara News has been making the rounds. It’s not terribly informative, though they say picture quality has improved over the previous generation. The Xacti XD-HD700 and HD1000 record to H.264 MPEG-4, rather than using the newer, but hard to edit AVCHD format used in hard-drive, DVD and flash memory cams from Panasonic and Sony. Indeed, I think that’s really where the rubber hits the road. H.264 has been supported by Apple Quicktime for a couple of years now. As a result it’s pretty easy to import directly into iMovie, Quicktime Pro or Final Cut Pro for editing without a lot of transcoding slowing things down. You make some sacrifice in overall hi-def quality for speed. That’s where I can see the value for a video blogger or anyone producing short pieces for the web. Instead of having to mess with capturing miniDV tape in real time you get close to the same quality with all the convenience of recording to flash memory, which copies right to your hard drive. I have to get my head out of the big claims of being HD and think more about good utility at reasonable and usable quality. Heck, I’ve even used a cheap (as in $35) little handheld Aiptek DV “camcorder” to shoot some footage to Windows Media MPEG-4 simply because it was easier than digging out the comparatively bigger miniDV cam and dealing with tape. And while the Aiptek’s video can’t hold a candle to any miniDV camcorder, in good light it’s not bad at all — certainly better than a webcam — and it’s size, price and convenience make it the right tool for some jobs. Please don’t tape my tepidly enthusiastic reconsideration of these flash memory cams as an indication that I’ve given up on my criticisms and concerns. Rather, I’m willing to see these things in a new light if indeed their utility as tools. Maybe one will turn up in a local electronics store so I can give it a whirl.