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

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

http://www.ahds.ac.uk/


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)


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

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/bias

http://news.bbc.co.uk/


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

http://www.podcastalley.com/


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)

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2006/news/#rss

http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/entertainment/kermode.shtml


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

http://www.bath.ac.uk/dacs/cdntl/pMachine/morriblog.php




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

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/


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>


Creating a Podcast (3)Some software now available


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


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


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


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


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


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"/>

….


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


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


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), …


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

podcasting & smil

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