podcasting & smil
DESCRIPTION
Given at ALT-C 2006 with Brian Kelly and Scott WilsonTRANSCRIPT
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Podcasting & SMIL
ALT-C 2006
Adrian StevensonInternet Services
University of Manchester
Some slides in this presentation are based on original presentations produced by the JISC-funded QA Focus project provided by UKOLN and AHDS
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
RSS
• What is RSS?
– “RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs” – from xml.com
• What does RSS stand for?
– Several different views:
• Netscape called it Rich Site Summary (v 0.92)
• W3C felt it should be based on RDF/XML to provide extensibility and called it RDF Site Summary (v 1.0)
• Dave Winer (& others) valued its simplicity and developed an alternative called Really Simple Syndication (v 2.0)
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
RSS Viewers
Ways of accessing RSS feeds:
– Blog – eg. bloglines
– Web pages
– Bookmark interfaces –Mozilla Firefox ‘live’ bookmarks
– Browser plug-ins - Sage
– Email clients - Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird
– Mobile Phone
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Podcasting - What is it?• RSS and Podcasting:
– Podcasting is an application of RSS 2.0:
It is simply the syndication of audio, typically mp3 files, instead of text (RSS news feeds)
You can schedule the download of the mp3 files and listen to them offline e.g. on a portable mp3 player such as an Apple iPod
– Very easy for the end user and relatively easy for the publisher
– Can be difficult to do well –it helps to have some sound recording skills
• Many Podcast directories http://www.podcastalley.com/, BBC
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Accessing a PodcastTo access a Podcast:
• Install Podcast software e.g. iTunes, Juice, Jager, Blogmatrix, …
• Add the URL of RSS file to the podcast software
– IWMW 2006
– BBC Film reviews
• Various configuration options are usually available
Scheduling for downloads
The download location of mp3 file
• Transfer files to portable mp3 player such as an iPod (using e.g. iTunes, Winamp)
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Podcasting and [e-]LearningThe University of Bath provides a highly-regarded e-learning Blog, Auricle
– http://www.bath.ac.uk/dacs/cdntl/pMachine/morriblog.php
Auricle has now added some Podcasts:
– Skype interviews
Stanford ITunes very successful
However, Podcasting still fairly new to HE sector
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Creating a Podcast• Make the recording:
– Eg. Using audio recording software e.g. Audacity
– Best to use good quality microphone and a PC
– Recording usually delivered as mp3 file
• Upload the recording to a web server and create an RSS file for the recording
• Possible problems
– Speaker moves about
– High level of background noise
– Interference
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Audio Processing
• Editing – pauses, coughs
• Equalisation
• Amplification - normalisation
• Pitch change
• Volume Compression
• Filtering
– Noise reduction (Steinberg Cleanup)
• File Compression (typically to mp3)
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Creating a Podcast (2)Early adopters approach – copy & edit an existing RSS file
<item><title>Podcast 1 For IWMW 2006</title><link>http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/…podcasts/podcast-iwmw-2006-01.mp3</link><guid>http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/…/podcasts/#podcast-01</guid><description>This introductory Podcast describes what a Podcast is and ….( 2.5 minute long MP3 recording, ~1.6 MB).</description><enclosure url="http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/…/podcasts/podcast-iwmw-2005-01.mp3" length="1575770" type="audio/mpeg"/><pubDate>Sun, 12 Jun 2006 ...</pubDate></item>
<channel><title>IWMW 2006 Podcasts</title><link>http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/podcasts/podcasts.xml</link><description>Podcasts About IWMW 2006</description><language>en-gb</language><copyright>Creative Commons - Attribution and Share-alike</copyright><pubDate>Wed, 15 Jun 2006 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Creating a Podcast (3)Some software now available
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Podcasting Usage Scenarios
• Podcasting is not a replacement for the ‘real thing’ – the live lecture theatre experience
• But it means you can …
– access lectures, conference presentations etc. after the event – Stanford ITunes. Some examples now in the UK.
– Provide some support in case of problems (e.g. couldn't attend talk), conflicts (parallel sessions), …
– Provide a 'taster', helps in marketing, addresses additional areas (e.g. social activities), …
– Keep informed of developments elsewhere
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
SMIL
• W3C Specification
– ‘Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language’
• SMIL presentations can integrate audio and video with images, text or other media type
• Syntax and structure similar to HTML
– SMIL 2.1 released Dec 05
– SMIL 1.0 released 1998
• Examples
– Customers, Suppliers and the Need for Partnerships – Stephen Emmott
– State of the Web 2005 – Molly Holzschlag
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Creating a SMIL presentation
• Record and process audio
• Create the image files
– Assuming based on a Powerpoint presentation
• Write SMIL code
• Make SMIL code accessible
• Add other optional features
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Process Powerpoint slides
• Export from Powerpoint
– ‘Save as’ PNG – every slide
– Can look a bit messy:
– http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/trieste-2005/talk-2a/
• Process image files in graphics program such as Macromedia Fireworks
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
SMIL code
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/Language" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<layout>
<root-layout height="450" width="750" background-color="white"/>
<region id="main" title="Main" width="600" height="450" fit="fill"/>
<region id="nav" title="Navigation" width="150" height="450" left="600"/>
</layout>
</head>
<body>
<par>
<audio src="emmott.mp3" />
<img id="image_1" src="Slide1.jpg" region="main" begin="0"/>
<img id="image_2" src="Slide2.jpg" region="main" begin="1:25" />
<img id="image_3" src="Slide3.jpg" region="main" begin="2:06" />
<textstream src="nav.rt" region="nav" begin="0s" />
</par>
</body>
</smil> Example Demo
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Accessibility
• ‘alt’ and ‘longdesc’ text attributes
<body>
<par>
<audio src="emmott/emmott.mp3" alt=“recording of a talk by Stephen Emmott called Customers, Suppliers, and the Need for Partnerships" longdesc="emmott/emmott.txt"/>
<img id="image_1" src="emmott/Slide1.jpg" region="main" begin="0" alt="Customers, Suppliers, and the Need for Partnerships title slide"/>
<img id="image_2" src="emmott/Slide2.jpg" region="main" begin="1:25" alt="Copyright and credits slide"/>
….
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Accessibility
• Captioning
– Makes SMIL accessible to those with difficulty or who are unable to hear
– SMIL audio track improves accessibility for those with visual impairments
– Requires a transcription of the spoken content (plus any important non-spoken sound), and associated a timestamp
• Add a textstream to the SMIL code:
– <textstream src="emmott/transcript.rt" region="text" begin="0s"/>
• Example
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Issues
• Technical Issues– Not many SMIL editors
– Audio recording quality
– Users have different SMIL players (or no SMIL player)
• Mixed media problem
– Difficult to capture complex elements of a presentation
– No control over a users audio and video settings
– Large files sizes (can be solved by streaming)
• Non-Technical Issues– Time consuming – Flash and Quicktime easier?
– IPR
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
SMIL Usage Scenarios
• A SMIL presentation is not a replacement for the ‘real thing’ – the live lecture theatre experience
• But it means you can …
– access lectures, conference presentations etc. after the event – eg. IWMW and this ALT-C workshop today
– Provide some support in case of problems (e.g. couldn't attend talk), conflicts (parallel sessions), …
– Provide a 'taster', helps in marketing, addresses additional areas (e.g. social activities), …
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6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester
Some references
• W3C SMIL Pagehttp://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/
• W3C Accessibility Features of SMILhttp://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL-access/
• Synchronized Multimedia On The Web - Larry Bouthillierhttp://www.webtechniques.com/archives/1998/09/bouthillier/
• SMIL Scripting for Quicktimehttp://developer.apple.com/documentation/quicktime/Conceptual/QTScripting_SMIL/index.html
• SMIL del.icio.ushttp://del.icio.us/bias/SMIL