Podcasting & SMIL

Podcasting & SMIL
ALT-C 2006
Adrian Stevenson
Internet 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

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

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

Accessing a Podcast
To 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)

Podcasting and [e-]Learning
The 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

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

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 Page http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/
W3C Accessibility Features of SMIL http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL-access/
Synchronized Multimedia On The Web - Larry Bouthillier http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/1998/09/bouthillier/
SMIL Scripting for Quicktime http://developer.apple.com/documentation/quicktime/Conceptual/QTScripting_SMIL/index.html
SMIL del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/bias/SMIL

Podcasting & SMIL

by Adrian Stevenson

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