Media Streaming

(the image above comes from here but that is sort of the idea of streaming except for in our case it’s an audio input only for now)

As GLOBE f.m. being a portal to make available productions from Westminster College we need a scalable method to generate a stream containing scheduled content. The stream is really important for principal reason of Globe f.m. being advertised as a radio station. This does not take the importance of the on-demand content (Audio, video, text and photographic productions) available in the portal.

In this stream we will mostly be transmitting audio programs created by our students and professors, however we would also like to make the stream scalable and flexible enough for it to be able to stream audio when necessary.

CLIENTS SHOULD NOT BE REQUIRED TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING SPECIAL JUST TO ACCESS OUT STREAM.

The above statement is exactly everyone wants when they set up streams and want people to access it. Imagine you had to buy a new TV for every channel you watch in via Satellite TV. Would that be a downer for the TV industry?

Below is my ongoing research to decide on the best media encoder:

-          Audio must be encoded into a widely used formats:

• RealAudio (.ra, .ram) (RealProducer)
  • Propriety audio format developed by RealNetworks
  • Possible to stream  RealAudio using HTTP
  • Low-bitrate formats to high-fidelity formats
  • Web pages link directly to a .ram (real audio metadata) or SMIL (synchronized multimedia integration language) file containing the link to audio stream opened only by media player.
  • Compatible players: RealPlayer, MPlayer, RM Downloader, VLC media player, StreamBox VCR, HiDownload and Real7ime Converter.

• MP3 (MPEG layer 3: Moving Pictures Experts Group) (LAME, icecast)
  • Very popular because of its excellent sound quality
  • Open and accessible (wide spread industry support and compatibility), not a proprietary delivery system
  • More complicated than many streaming formats
  • Compatible players: RealPlayer G2, Beatnik, Shockwave, QuickTime 4, and Windows Media

• FLV : Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder
  • RTMP streaming
  • Client can access stream using just flash plug in (no need for any other stuff)
  • Very expensive to obtain and maintain Flash Media Server
  • Main focus is Video  (not such a great thing)
  • Not free

• WMA (Windows Media Encoder)
  • Free, Easy to install and maintain
  • Users WMA format to stream over http
  • Clients need plug-in to access Windows Media Player embed
  • Not very open at all

• MPEG-4 (QuickTime Streaming or collectively QuickTime Broadcaster)
  • RTP/RTSP protocol for stream there for light on client end (unlike HTTP)
  • Good for on demand content because of above
  • Needs specialized plug-ins and/or software on client side
  • Mainly for video streaming

Things to consider when deciding on an Encoder:

1. Audience
   1. OS and media players used normally (make experience more passive)
   2. Connection Speed (single bit rate or multiple bit rate)
2. Source formatting
   1. Depending on the source encoder might not be capable of capturing
3. System requirement for Encoder and Streaming Server
   1. The workstation on which encoder is installed on
   2. The streaming server  and encoder compatibility issues
4. Price
   1. Maintenance fees if any
   2. Purchasing price
   3. If free or open source; reliability

Interesting Links

http://www.orban.com/plugin/

http://www.streamingmedia.com/

http://all-streaming-media.com/

http://www.realnetworks.com/products-services/helix/media/realproducer.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/broadcaster/

http://lame.sourceforge.net/

http://www.icecast.org/

http://www.vorbis.com/

I teach computer applications in an adult ed independent learning classroom. I am using Camstudio to record both the screen and audio. Camstudio creates the files in avi format. I have had trouble getting the correct Codec installed on my classroom computers so I am looking at converting the files to wmv and mp4 formats.

Here is what I have learned about video formats – wmv is Windows Media Video and avi is Audio Visual Interleave.  Windows Media Player plays both avi files and wmv files.  mp4 is

Compression

I have used Any Video Converter to compress the avi files and it does a decent job. The color of the screen is gray and the video is not quite as sharp but considering the size of the file that is a decent tradeoff.  Also, the fast forward and rewind buttons are not enabled.

Conversion

If I use Any Video Converter to compress it to another avi file I still do not have the Fast Forward and Rewind buttons so I decided to convert it to another format.  I converted it to mp4 using AVC but there was more degradation and  a little more “gray” screen than I liked.  However, the compression was great – the original avi file was 73MB and the resulting mp4 file was 9.43 MB.
I used AVC to convert the original avi file to wmv format but the audio and video were not in sync – the video was too fast. I increased the sync by going to “Edit > Options > Video > Audio/Video Sync”, and then increased the sync to 4 but that was still not enough.  I’ll have to keep trying.

I used Windows Movie Maker to convert to wmv and I thought the video quality was not as good as when I used Any Video Converter.

Final thought: Record with Camstudio using Camstudio Lossless Codec v1.4 then compress with Any Video Converter using Original video codec.  I still did not get a Rewind or FF but the video was clear and the screen was not gray.  I will probably have to download the Camstudio codec on each student machine.  (When I used the xvid codec with Any Video Converter the video was very fuzzy and the screen was gray.  When I converted to mp4 format it was also very gray. When I used the camstudio codec and then used Movie Maker to convert it to wmv the screen was gray.)

I downloaded Windows Media Encoder and used it to convert the avi files to wmv.  The results were good – not great but good.  The nice thing about wmv files is that you get the fast forward and rewind buttons.

Video Hosting

My biggest frustration is in finding a place to host the videos.  I would really like to have the videos hosted on either teachertube or calaxy and then link to them on my moodle page.  For some reason I can never get them loaded to teachertube.  I either get an IO Error or it freezes at some point.  When I try to upload to my Calaxy account I get a message that the file was not accepted by the server.  I would really like to host them on either teachertube or calaxy and then link to them on my moodle page.

Youtube prefers videos in FLV, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 formats using H.264 or MPEG-2 codecs. I have embedded a youtube video on the moodle page and I will try to play it tomorrow from the classroom.

As a quality assurance component of an organization, there’s a pretty strong possiblity that you might be called upon to make a presentation of some kind.  No, I’m not going to give you some lame tutorial on using Powerpoint.  Life is too short.  Instead, I’m going to show you some tools to add to your toolbox.  Along with Cropper, which I have already showed you, here are some other tools that might help you put together a winning presentation.

ZoomIt (Presentation Tool)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

click on image to see the video demo of ZoomIT

ZoomIT is a nice tool to use during presentations. You can use it to zoom in and out on your screen, making unreadable items bigger. When zooming in isn’t enough to accentuate an item, you can also draw an arrow or circle an item. Yes, that’s right, ZoomIT makes your screen into your own personal John Madden console, allowing you to make on the fly notes during your presentation. Make a mess of your screen, simply hit “ESC” to clear off the junk. Something else that’s interesting is the timer feature. Need to give your presentation participates a ten minute break? You can start a timer, and it will count off the time in a full screen mode. It’s blatantly clear when everyone needs to return. Watch the video on youTube, try it out. One hint: to see all the commands, right click on the ZoomIT tray icon and click on “options”. But basically, it’s Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, and Ctrl-3 to Zoom in, draw, and start timer respectively.

Windows Media Encoder (video screen capture)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en

How did I record the above video for ZoomIT? I used Windows Media Encoder. It’s a decent video screen capture utility. You can capture one window, the entire screen, or you can drag your cursor and customized the area you want to capture. I think that there are better screen capture utilities than this one, but this is the one I use. It’s simple to use, and it gets the results I need. If you have a better one to recommend, please post it in the comments.

Well what I actually WANT to be doing this morning is making “snakes alive” for a Medusa I *imagine* I might be able to make a FRONTAL face for by merging and morphing mirrored profiles with Fantamorph…. I wondered if these hair-bound (if not <hare-brained>) hissers could be created with the “Springy” stuff in iClone 3…. Heh ! So I got as far as stretching the provided yellow ball into an elongated shape… but was then thoroughly distracted by Google 3D Warehouse-sourced “David”. I wanted to see if he could be springificated, 3D blocks also…

…ended up texturing the statue, wondering about lighting (is his back s’posed to be so DIM ?) and keyframing a manual (and wobbly) (down-the-pan) pan…

The original 320×240 film was a hefty 115MB – I reduced it to 4.28MB with Windows Media Encoder.

He loses part(s) of his head when he gets too close to the “Camera”.

Hmm… I wonder if there are any Plants available for iClone that could just be attached to serve as snakes…

Right – so I’ve discovered the wonderful world of panning (for gold) with the Beta Version of CamStudio 2.5 and now I wanna grab more all kinds of everything than you can shake the schtik of Dana at. I think I’ll limit future captures to a maximum of 8 minutes as this lengthier piece exceeded the gigabyte filesize that is YouTube’s upper limit for the massed minions.

This upload was a 32MB WMV 9 conversion and shows me noodling around in my favourite graphics application – Microsoft  Photo Draw 2000 V2.

In Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts, and Other Powerful Learning Tools for the Classroom, Will Richardson makes it sound so easy to create a screencast  that I just had to try it (p. 122).  I had to see for myself if it was as easy to create and publish a screencast as he said it was and after watching and using one this week to add social bookmarking widgets to my WordPress blog (thanks to Bruce, one of my fellow EDES 541 classmates who attached this screencast to his blog) I was pumped to get going.

My Screencast Plan

I already had a plan in mind for a screencast -  I was recently given the unenviable task of teaching 600 students and 80 staff members how to use our school division’s new student outlook web access – so what better way to show them how to activate their accounts than to create a screencast of all the steps involved.

So following Richardson’s instructions I embarked on my plan.  I downloaded the Windows Media Encoder  to my school computer, plugged in my microphone and was ready to “start encoding.”  It turns out that the recording session was the easy part.  The real learning (researching, planning, producing) came before and after the recording was made.

Like podcasting, I had to plan what I wanted to say and decide what order I wanted to say it in so it all made sense. This, I might add, required considerable thought on my part.  I decided to practice it a few times before I made the actual recording so I wouldn’t sound like a complete fool. 

Frustration Reigns Supreme

After the recording session is where Richardson and I parted ways.  After pressing the stop button and viewing my screencast (how cool was that!) I could not for the life of me figure out how to save my work.  I thought I saved it when prompted but when I went to open the file, nothing was there.  So, I tried the entire process again and was frustratingly greeted with the same problem. 

What to do?  I tried the Help function – no luck – it was way too technical for me.  I tried Windows Help – again, way too difficult.  I half-heartedly flipped through an 80-page Windows document on screencasting but I gave up thoroughly dejected.  I asked the technology teacher in my school if he had any ideas but he was not familiar with the program.  Next, I turned to our divisional IT department and so far, they haven’t gotten back to me.

The technology teacher in my school suggested I try a free Internet-based program called  SnagIt (the old version is free).   He said he had used it in the past to create customized screenshots and training screencasts so I gave it a try. This, in my opinion, is a far easier program for amateurs like myself to use than Windows Media Encoder and I would recommend this to teachers wanting to try screencasting for themselves and/or with their students.  I simply viewed the training screencasts (go figure!) and created my presentation in minutes.  SnagIt saved my screencast in a AVI. format and I was able to view it right away.

Unfortunately, my frustrations with screencasting weren’t quite over.  Similar to the problem I encountered with podcasts, I could not link my screencast directly to my blog without paying an extra fee and OurMedia.org  that Richardson suggests in his book could not upload such a large file (200 MB).  I knew from my experience with podcasting that FileFactory  or SpinXPress were not options so I decided to upload my file to TeacherTube. This didn’t work either – I’m assuming it was due to file size but I really don’t know (I tried TeacherTube twice with the same results).  I also tried to upload my screencast to blogger.com where I also have a blog and that didn’t work either.

SmartBoard to the Rescue

While all of this was happening, the technology teacher and I were trying to figure out if screencasts could be created using SmartBoard.  We had tried the previous week with no success but as luck would have it, SmartBoard 10 was just uploaded to our school computers by our IT department (I’m  glad they’re doing something since they didn’t answer my email about Windows Media Encoder) so we gave it another try.  Lo and behold – it worked and with a file size of only 7 MB – WHAT A DIFFERENCE TECHNOLOGY MAKES!!!!!

From there, I was able to convert the WMP. format of the SmartBoard screencast to an AVI. format and upload it to TeacherTube.  This only took about 15 minutes compared to the hours I was spending trying to upload my SnagIt file and I could tell a difference in the quality. 

So there you have it.  Was screencasting as easy as Richardson suggests? – not a chance.  I was totally stressed trying to figure the encoding and sharing process of the Windows Media Encoder and trying to upload my files.  Given the size of my original screencast file, I didn’t know if I was ever going to succeed in finding a media sharing site that would allow me to upload and store such a large file.   

Applications to the Classroom 

Before I discovered the SmartBoard option, I would have never have thought that the average teacher would be interested in using screencasts as a learning tool.  I could have envisioned technology teachers or teacher-librarians possibly using it as a training tool, but there just seemed like too many hurdles to overcome for those who are not “technosavy” to be bothered.

However, with the SmartBoard being so easy to use (all I had to do was click on the recorder to start, pause and stop and save the file which I did sitting at my desk because the SmartBoard software is loaded onto my computer) I have changed my mind completely on whether I think screencasts would be a valuable learning tool.  Whether created by a teacher or student, SmartBoard files can be accessed from My Documents and shown anywhere in the school.  If teachers wanted to share these files with other students, parents or anyone around the world, they could attach their screencasts directly to a blog (blogger.com allows you to do this) or convert the file to an AVI. format and upload it to TeacherTube or another video sharing service.

I think screencasts would be a great way for teachers and students to learn new technical applications or how to find things on the web (in fact, I don’t think I could have figured out how to add widgets to my blog without a visual demonstration). In fact, after our success with SmartBoard, the technology teacher and I are planning a series of screencasts to explain several Web 2.0 tools including blogs, wikis, podcasts, SmartBoards and RSS feeds to teachers.  The plan is to put these screencasts on our school’s shared folder so teachers can access them when they need them and as many times as they need them.

While teaching, classroom teachers could create their own screencasts (or find pre-existing ones on YouTube or TeacherTube) and attach them to their class blogs so students could refer to them later (home or school at their own time) or for the first time if they missed the lesson for whatever reason.    Where I can see screencasts being used quite effectively is in math where teachers could record what they are doing on the SmartBoard, upload the file to their class blog and then students can review and use the lesson to complete homework or for extra practice.  I know of a math teacher in my school division who is currently doing this with great success.

However, after creating my own screencast, I believe the real learning potential of screencasts comes when students are asked to create their own.  I found that creating my own screencast took a lot of thought and planning.  It was not easy and I really had to know my material before I was ready to start creating my product.  What better way to stimulate students’ higher level thinking and decision-making skills and creativity than screenscasts?  If they were working together, their collaborative skills would be enhanced, as well.  They could create their own training screencasts or virtual Internet tours on any subject imaginable for their classes or for future classes in their own school or anywhere around the world. 

Without new and improved technology, none of this would have been possible.  Who says technology is changing too quickly for us to keep up?  I’d say, “bring it on” and just watch our students flourish!

References

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful tools for the classroom.  California: Corwin Press.