podcasting & smil

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

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)

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

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

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)

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

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

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)

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>

6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester

6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester

6th Sept 2006 Podcasting and SMILCombining the strengths of UMIST andThe Victoria University of Manchester

Creating a Podcast (3)Some software now available

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

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

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

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

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

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"/>

….

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

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

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), …

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