New Media Center

Even though it is summer time, we have not forgot about the starving students taking those summer classes. So in celebration of summer time and summer food we bring to you some digital media recipes.

Over at digitalmediacookbook.com you’ll find all sorts of helpful “recipes” to indulge in and perhaps you’ll even hold on to a couple of those recipes for future use. Every recipe comes with a video demo (screencast), ingredients, and directions. The creator of the cookbook, UMW’s New Media Specialist Andy Rush, has made it very easy to follow the recipes, even you digital media novices out there have nothing to fear.

Andy Rush is always working hard to find and create new recipes for this cookbook. So if you like what he has to offer make sure you send some comment or link love to let him know you want more recipes. Just as any good chef likes to recieve compliments, our new media specialist needs some lovin’ too.

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When you need a technology gadget for your computer, or for creating digital media, where do you start? Well, we in Teaching and Learning Technologies recommend you start at Cnet reviews. Cnet is a technology website and they do accept advertising, but they are very independent when it comes to their reviews. If the readers at Cnet don’t agree, there is a user review section that will provide some possibly alternate viewpoints. The best thing about Cnet is the one stop shopping resource. You look for the category of device that you want, like digital cameras. Then we recommend you start with the editors picks (ex. Editor’s Top Digital Cameras). You can then drill down into types of devices within the category (Best Compact Cameras). Once you have a few candidates to choose from you can read the individual reviews. From there you can also see how the aforementioned users feel about the device. Cnet will also provide links to vendors who carry the product so you can purchase it right away. How much easier could it be? Well, it’s true you need to know what to look for and whether features are worth the money, but Cnet’s reviews generally spell this out for you. They also provide a “buying guide” for many types of products that will help you sort out the terms (ex. Digital Camera Buying Guide). Cnet’s review site is a great place to start your electronic shopping spree.

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Mark Cuban has lots of ideas. His best one was back in the late ’90s when he decided to create a webcasting business that was ultimately sold for millions of dollars to Yahoo! Cuban may well have another great idea to save Internet video, but I’ll leave commenting on his ideas to a possible future post. Mark should know something about HD video. He is the Chairman of HDNet, a cable television network that broadcasts exclusively in high definition (HD).

HDNet is one of the few networks that has original HD programming, and by that I mean an independent network broadcasting exclusively in HD. HDNet’s Dan Rather Reports is an example of original HD programming. Depending on who your cable provider is, you may or may not have HDNet available to you. Without getting into the sordid details about why, you likely will have either HDNet or a network known as Mojo available with your cable or satellite provider, or with fiber-optic systems such as Verizon’s FiOS, or AT&T’s U-verse.

So Mark Cuban started a business and is one of the leaders of a company that produces HD video. It is with that knowledge that makes this statement so confusing:

100pct (sic) of the internet video that you see offered on the net as HD, is not HD. Plain and simple.

He then offers the following definition (of sorts):

What is HD video ? HD Vidoe (sic) is video you can watch on a screen of ANY size and say…”that looks good, almost as good as it can get “.

My purpose here is not to picks nits, but if that is his definition of HD video, then by who’s standard do we define “looks good” and “as good as it can get”? Look, there are lots of sites, services, and networks trying to distribute HD video on the Internet, or at least what they self-define as HD video. I should also point out that high definition video on the web is mostly a buzzword, and Cuban’s definition doesn’t help.

Here, let me define HD video. It is digital video that is represented by the minimum dimensions of 1280×720 pixels (720p). Now was that so hard? You can also take a look at the Wikipedia entry for high definition video for many more details. Having tendered those definitions, it should also be said that like all things digital, there is a quality factor that can affect how good HD video looks.  It is generally represented by what is known as bit rate. It is also something that most directly relates to the fudge factor that gets used on some supposed HD video sites. Again, the details start to get way too complicated in terms of what makes good (and bad) HD video, so let’s just stop before we hurt ourselves.

What makes Cuban so wrong is that there are good, and successful, attempts at providing HD video through the web. The screen grab at the top of this post is from one of these Internet TV networks called Revision3. The show is called Tekzilla, and by every measurement that I know of it is high definition. The basic specs of the video are, 1280×720 pixels (again 720p), h.264 video codec, AAC audio. It’s video quality that I’ve raved about before.

There’s a great way to check out more HD content by using software called Miro. It is similar to iTunes, but geared toward online video, and it provides good quality HD programming. If you check out their Miro Guide, you can check out some of the HD choices. I use it on my home theater PC which is connected to my Pioneer Plasma and it looks good, almost as good as it can get. Oh, sorry. That definition is taken. So what’s with Cuban’s 100% not HD statement? Is it because it’s not Blu-ray quality? Well, it will be a while before we are downloading 20GB files to watch on our HDTVs. Is it because it isn’t the same quality as HDNet? Well, no, Tekzilla probably doesn’t use XDCAM HD (cameras that still sell for over $20,000). However, it looks as good as a lot of the broadcast HD content out there, because it not further compressed by the cable or satellite company. All of this technology (do I have to say it?) is constantly improving. Codecs are being developed that will surpass what we have today that will deliver higher quality at equivalent bit rates. Cuban’s standard sounds like something that we may never achieve, and when it comes down to the basic definition of HD video, he’s wrong.

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I thought about several ways to begin this post, and I was hoping the title wouldn’t scare people off thinking that I was going to vent. No, it’s not that kind of air. It’s actually Adobe’s AIR, or Adobe Integrated Runtime (yes, I’ll just use AIR from now on). AIR has actually been around for well over a year now. I first used it at the 2007 Faculty Academy here at UMW for a program called Twittercamp, which is a program that would aggregate “tweets” from Twitter and display them on a screen (preferably a large flat panel screen). Alan Levine and I have been using it for the conferences we’ve been involved in the past two years, including this year’s Faculty Academy and the NMC event in Princeton. AIR programs function like Flash programs do on the web, only you download them to your computer. You first need the Adobe AIR “runtime” program, then you can install and use all of the AIR apps you want, even use them simultaneously. There’s no need to open a web browser to use these programs.

The question for a while now has been is it worth downloading the AIR “player” and then installing the individual programs? Is there anything compelling out there to use? I can now say that it’s a definitive YES! The point of these programs is that they are small, and quickly installed. To use the programs, they require that you have a live connection to the Internet, but they function on the idea of working “in the cloud“. So after you get Adobe AIR installed on your computer, go install the following programs:

TweetDeck - I’m getting the feeling that this is going to be the next “must have” program, next to using Twitter of course. TweetDeck is one of the many (thousands?) Twitter intermediaries that pull in Twitter posts (tweets) and display them in a unique way. It’s still in early beta (0.151b as of this writing), but it already has some uniquely great features. It allows you to get a handle on how tweets get viewed. TweetDeck sets up as many columns as you need to view your tweets how you want to. The first column is usually the “all tweets” column, but you can move the columns around. You can set up groups by picking individuals that you follow and giving that group a name. Then you see their tweets in another column. You can create another column that is a search term. I used the term “edupunk” and now I get a column that updates automatically with tweets that have the word edupunk in them. You can have still more columns with replies to you, or direct messages. A recent new feature is the ability to collapse the view to a single column. I expect great things from this program.

Adobe Media Player - Now you might be saying, “who needs another media player?”, and you’re right. However, this is well done, and if you use Adobe software on a regular basis, there is enough Adobe content to make it worth it. Add to that clips from TV shows and some “HiDef” content, and it makes for a worthwhile download.

Destroy Flickr - OK, I don’t get why there’s the hostile name because DF is all about a pretty interface for viewing Flickr photos. Photos just look better on a dark neutral grey background, as opposed to Flickr’s all too white web page. Again, it’s a quick install of an Adobe AIR program and you have the many viewing options, called canvases. It remembers where you have been and saves those views in a history, called workspaces. You also have control of uploading and downloading photos to and from your Flickr account.

If you want to check out other AIR applications go to freshAIRapps and see just what the potential for the AIR platform is. Note: Because of a current negotiation with Adobe of the use of AIR in their website’s domain, another location for the FreshAIRApps may be at Refreshingapps.com.

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I just got done re-watching Sir Ken Robinson’s terrific TED Talk on creativity in education. Here is an update that expands upon creativity by talking about the power of innovation, and how we systematically suppress it in our classrooms. There IS an education revolution taking place and it is was makes my job one that makes me excited to go to on Monday mornings. I’ll have more on these ideas of creativity and innovation soon (with thoughts of the neonatal EDUPUNK movement), but I wanted this video to make the rounds as soon as possible.

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I’ve talked about Professor Michael Wesch and his Digital Ethnography class at Kansas State University a couple times in the past (here, and here). His class, and especially the videos that have been produced as a result are a wonder. The good professor’s latest post is a wealth of information related to putting together a YouTube mash-up. There is so much good information here, and it starts with a link to a great tutorial on Web 2.0. More great resources include the article Recut, Reframe, Recycle from American University’s Center for Social Media. He mentions one of my favorite tools, Video DownloadHelper, a Firefox plugin that assists you in grabbing/downloading YouTube videos (and other media!). He puts a plug in for a video conversion site called Vixy.net that does media conversion. I’ve used that one, but I’ll put in my vote for another site called Zamzar that performs a similar service and adds, document, image, and audio conversion as well. He also mentions using music with a Creative Commons license, and provides Jamendo as a good place to find some CC tunes.

Read the post to see all the resources, and some of the videos that were produced in the past. Watch the video above to see a fine (and funny) example of a "movie trailer mash-up" (based on one of my favorite movies, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles). Thank you, again, Professor Wesch.

Original post by Andy Rush

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Photo by paperdog2005

Memories from NMC 2007 are somewhat faded, but one of the most interesting sessions for me was the IUPUI presentation on “Searching for an Ideal Live Video Streaming Technology”. A promise was made to publish the detailed results of “the search” by the end of the summer. Well, it’s been delivered, and let’s give a huge round of applause to VLC! What is VLC? Well in a bit of Jim Groom style hyperbolic flare, it’s only the best program ever. I’m only half kidding. VLC stands for VideoLAN Client and it is a multi-purpose media player. The list of its capabilities is truly staggering.

First off it is completely cross platform. Windows (including Vista), Macintosh, AND Linux versions exist. Jim Groom highlighted this program in a post about Mac video tools a while back, so he can vouch for the viability of using this program on OS X. An interesting side note is that this program was actually developed as a student project in a Paris, France school, so it was literally born in the education world.

I promise a full article on all of its talents, but here is a short list. It plays virtually all of the media formats, audio and video, that you could think of. More importantly it plays files very efficiently. I have seen in the case of some high bitrate DivX files, DivX’s own player stutter with the playback, while VLC handled the same file with aplomb. The only major exception to format compatibility is the Real Media format, which is perhaps for licensing issues. That format is pretty dead, though UMW certainly dabbled in it. VLC also can function as a DVD player, playing discs back with full menus. It also has a great playlist feature (we employed at our recent freshman student orientation presentation). Throw it a directory of files, again video or audio, and it will play them back one-by-one. I use it to play DivX and FLV (like YouTube) files, my two favorite formats.

Finally, as the title of this post suggests, you can stream from your computer live video. That’s right it’s both a client and server program for live streaming video. As you can see, IUPUI thought very highly of it. Now how much would you pay for it? Did I mention that it was free? It’s versatility is unmatched and you will hear me speak of it often in my role as New Media Specialist here at the University of Mary Washington. The multi-faceted VLC.

Original post by Andy Rush

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If you haven’t seen this site already, drop what you’re doing and go to makeinternettv.org. This is a fantastic site with soup to nuts coverage on what it takes, well, to make Internet TV. The site is broken into chapters that are titled, Equipment, Shoot Video, Edit, License, Publish, and Promote. There are videos and screencasts of equipment and software that can be used in the creation process. It is certainly the most complete and well organized resource on the subject I have seen so far, and the wiki will only further the value of this material. Superb!

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