Introduction

Webcasting
  What is webcasting?
  Different from Video Conferencing?
  What are the drivers?
  Key market technologies

Key Elements
  Preparation
  Capture
  Delivery
  Reuse

ProLearn Live Trails
  ProLearn Summer School 2006

Summary

References

Articles
  Basic audio-visual equipment for webcasting
  Audio-Visual Webcasting Tips

Once an event has finished making a replay of the event available is common practise and extends the reach of the event. Encoders can often record the live feed to disk, and placing this file on a streaming server is typically a simply task, and some integrated streaming solutions will do this for you. Publishing replays is similar to live events, again content management systems can help. Appendix 4 includes details of how the replays for the Prolearn Summer School 2006 was processed through the XO Backlot CMS for Prolearn TV.

There are also a variety of alternative publishing options. Podcasting is perhaps the most popular technology at present and there are many tools for converting media files into audio or video Podcasts and publishing them to existing Podcast services. XO Backlot also allows Podcasts to be added to events, at present this is limited to audio Podcasts, however there remain issues of how to handle limited access events since RSS, the mechanism used to publish Podcasts does not include any authentication capabilities.

Lecture or seminar style events often include slide presentations, or other media content that is not easily capture as part of the video feed. Incorporating these slides after the event is possible through various methods, the XO Editor (another KMi Stadium Technology) for example allows slides to be synchronized to video and subsequently published as a combined presentation. DatMedia’s products allow recording of slide changes during the event to occur and these are automatically included in a web page based replay, however this requires the presentation files be made in advance of the event, and software installed on the presentation PC. Products such as Capture Station by Accordent (2006) provide greater flexibly by capturing the VGA output of any presenters PC, by intelligent motion detection they create a series of slides which can be broadcast live in parallel to the video stream and automatically incorporated into replays.

Contact: Kevin Quick