JISC Digital Media Blog

New advice on accessibility issues for digital media

Posted by Steve Hull on Wednesday 01 September 2010 at 10:05am
Tags: accessibility | news

JISC Digital Media has published a new advice document titled Basic Guide to Accessibility.

Not surprisingly, this guide looks at the issue of accessibility, including the concept of ‘reasonable adjustment.’ The advantages of digital media for accessibility are discussed,  followed by sets of guidelines and a basic accessibility check that can be performed on existing documents.

Note that this document is intended as a very basic introduction to the subject of accessibility. This vast subject is dealt with in depth by our sister service JISC TechDis. Pointers to various TechDis resources appear throughout our document: they should be considered a stepping-off point for exploration of the wealth of material TechDis supplies.

Read our Basic Guide to Accessibility.

Fixing it in the mix

Posted by Joel Eaton on Wednesday 25 August 2010 at 9:11am
Tags: audio editing | news | sound recordings

We have just published a new advice document on Audio Post-Production Techniques for Spoken Word.

Post-production covers the treatment of digital files once a recording has been done to help improve the audible quality and cover up any flaws from the recording stage.

This paper introduces the concept of post-production and discusses some of the most common techniques used to improve spoken word audio with screen casting tutorials and audio examples to help you get the most out of your recordings.

Photo by Gerrysan on Flickr - used under a Creative Commons licence

New advice on free online screencasting tools

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Wednesday 18 August 2010 at 9:30am
Tags: news | screen capture | screencast | web services

As part of our ongoing series of guides to free online media creation and editing tools, we’ve just added a new advice document Free Online Screencasting Tools.

Screencasting is a hot topic at the moment, with the explosion of digital video on the web, and this advice document looks at some of the free tools available online which will enable you to capture your screen, microphone and webcam, and start publishing simple screencasts online. These services are easy to use, and critically they don’t even require you to install any software at all beyond a web browser (which, if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you already have..)

Online services are also useful for experienced screencasters, as they’re accessible anywhere, on pretty much any machine, and they offer some quick and convenient methods for publishing and sharing your screencasts when time is of the essence, or resources are limited.

A musical minefield

Posted by Joel Eaton on Tuesday 17 August 2010 at 3:49pm
Tags: copyright | licensing | music | performance rights | recording rights | sound recordings

Anyone who has ever delved into copyright law and music (and came out the other side the same person) will know that simplicity and common sense certainly don’t have a place in this murky area.

As the music industry has evolved (and continues to) over the last decades, copyright law has been re-jigged, re-hashed with areas re-defined and bolted on the side. One company, who deal with music licensing, has mapped the mess together in this graph, a fitting tribute to the confusion which now abounds.

Follow this link for the full size version http://bit.ly/90CSJa

Image created by Wiggins LLP. Used with Permissions

Instapaper, Delicious and thinking about tools

Posted by Steve Hull on Tuesday 17 August 2010 at 12:01pm
Tags: usability | workflow

It’s interesting that, for a tool to be useful, it doesn’t need to do something new; rather, it can do something old, but in a new way.  That new way might be a bit simpler or a bit faster, or it might just be different, and that difference is all it needs to make it useful.

There’s a very simple service available on the Internet called Instapaper.  It works like this: you’re surfing the web and come across something you want to read but you don’t have time.  You click a “Read Later” button on your browser and the URL is stored on a list on your Instapaper account.  Later, on any device which has web access, you can log into your Instapaper account and click on the link you stored earlier and read away.

Now this isn’t a big thing and it’s not a new thing.  It would be quite easy to, for example, save a link in Delicious and give it a “Read Later” tag.  You could then log into Delicious wherever you are and type in Read Later into the search box and bring up an identical list.  So what’s the difference?

Two things: first of all, the Instapaper approach is a one-click system.  You don’t have to think at all, just hit the button.  But the second thing is perhaps even more important, and that’s this: the advantage Instapaper has over Delicious is that it isn’t Delicious.  It’s something different, and the task you do with it is a different task.

In the interface to the web that we construct in our minds and our browsers, we assign different roles to different tools.  For many of us, Delicious is the tool we use to organise the subset of the web that we interact with or intend to interact with over a longer period of time.  Filing a URL away so we can look at it later and then probably discard it is a different action.  We could (and some of us no doubt do) use Delicious for this action as well, particularly as it’s so similar to the actions we already use Delicious for.  But having a different tool underscores the fact that we are trying to do something different; it provides a structure for our thinking about our web content.  We may look at a site and say to ourselves, “Is this a site to add to Delicious or should I just Instapaper it?”  We may bring up a page we’ve stored on Instapaper and, after reading it, decide whether or not it warrants adding to our Delicious database.

It seems to me that the people at Instapaper have identified an activity that isn’t addressed by Delicious.  It could be – there’s enough space at the top of the Delicious sidebar to add a “Read Later” button – but until it is, or until someone comes up with a simpler way of addressing that need, there’ll be a place for Instapaper.

New training dates for Sep - Dec

Posted by Dave Kilbey on Friday 13 August 2010 at 11:01am
Tags: event | news | training

We’ve just pubished our new training programme for September to December.

Photo by ant.photos on Flickr - used under a Creative Commons licence

JISC Digital Media courses are run in small groups, giving attendees plenty of opportunity to discuss individual issues with the tutors and other participants.

The courses focus on providing vital hands-on training supported with well structured technical information to give attendees the skills, knowledge and confidence required to work with digital media (still images, moving images and audio).

The Training page has all the details.

Introduction to the copystand

Posted by Nigel Goldsmith on Wednesday 11 August 2010 at 9:49am
Tags: cameras | digitisation | news | photography | supports and stands

Digital SLRs are increasingly being used to capture 2D objects which until recently would have been digitised using a scanner. Recognising the increasing use of the copystand we have just published a new document which explains what it is and how to use it is used: The Copystand.

Copystand. Image courtesy of kaiser-fototechnik

Screencasting workshop - extra date

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Friday 06 August 2010 at 3:52pm
Tags: news | screen capture | screencast | training

We’re now taking bookings for our new Building Effective Screencasts workshop on September 16th. UPDATE: 16th Sep is now fully booked, but we have added an extra date Tuesday 12th October.

Creating successful screencasts requires a knowledge of the whole screencasting workflow, from planning, though production, to delivery. There are many elements that can go into a screencast, and in this workshop we’ll be looking at each stage of the process in turn, and how to maximise quality and consistency.

This is a hands-on session, and there’ll be plenty of practical exercises, guided by expert trainers with specific screencasting experience. If you want to know how to capture a voice-over narration, enhance your screen and highlight important elements, or tailor your screencast materials to your audience’s needs in any other way, then this is the workshop for you.

Workshop groups are small to enable more personal tuition, so places are limited.

If you’d like further information please email info@jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk, or you can book a place here.

The end of net neutrality?

Posted by Steve Hull on Friday 06 August 2010 at 2:24pm
Tags:

Google and Verizon, the largest telecoms operator in the US, are reportedly close to reaching an agreement which would give Google preferential treatment on the Internet.

Since the earliest days of ARPAnet back in the 1960s, the only factors determining how information was carried over the net were those concerned with such things as the most efficient path to take and the correction of errors. Aside from these concerns, any and all traffic on what has now become the Internet has always been treated equally. This is the concept which has become known as ‘net neutrality.’

There is currently great concern, therefore, that this situation may be about to change. An article in today’s Independent describes a situation where Google may be able to utilise more of the Internet’s bandwidth per unit of data than others. The result would be to speed up the transmission of Google’s data and slow down everyone else’s. The fear is that this is the first step towards an Internet where individual users and smaller organisations no longer have the same opportunity to communicate that larger, richer groups do.

Ths Internet is the only medium of communication I can think of (aside from Speakers’ Corner) where wealth and power have not had privileged access. Long may it remain so.

New online tutorials on finding video and audio resources

Posted by Antony Theobald on Thursday 05 August 2010 at 10:13am
Tags: finding audio | finding images | finding moving images | news | teaching

JISC Digital Media in conjunction with the Virtual Training Suite (VTS) have launched two new online tutorials: Internet for Audio Resources and Internet for Video and Moving Images.

The free-to-use tutorials have been designed to assist staff and students within the education sector to locate audio and video for use in teaching and learning.

Created as part of the Virtual Training Suite the tutorials have been funded by JISC Advance.

Internet for Audio Resources

Internet Audio Resources is a free online tutorial to help you learn how to use the Internet to find audio resources for your work quickly and efficiently.

Internet for Video and Moving Images

Internet for Video and Moving Image Resources is a free online tutorial to help you learn how to use the Internet to find video resources for your work quickly and efficiently.

Dave Kilbey, Training Coordinator at JISC Digital Media said, “the emphasis of the tutorials is on finding copyright-cleared resources, which are available free of charge; facilitating users with quick, hassle-free access to a vast range of online audio and video resources.”

These two new tutorials follow the launch 22 months ago of the very successful Internet for Image Searching tutorial.

Guide to GIMP image editor

Posted by Antony Theobald on Wednesday 04 August 2010 at 9:09am
Tags: composition | gimp | image editing | news | open source | photography | photoshop | software

Following our recent guide to free online image editors, we have updated our Introduction to GIMP Image Editing Software.

GIMP is a free open source image editing program that has a comprehensive set of tools comparable to those available in commercial software such as Adobe Photoshop.

Our guide shows how you can simulate a shallow depth of field to focus attention on a particular part of an image using GIMP’s Gaussian Blur filter

GIMP can help you with simple and advanced image editing tasks - this document looks at the GIMP features that are of most use to those wanting to edit images for use in teaching and research. Read our Introduction to GIMP Image Editing Software.

JISC Legal release copyright advice on lecture recording

Posted by Joel Eaton on Friday 30 July 2010 at 10:25am
Tags: copyright | moral rights | performance rights | recording rights | sound recordings | teaching

The hotly awaited paper from JISC Legal regarding rights issues and lecture recordings is now available to download from their website.

The document outlines and discusses all of the rights that are generated in a lecture recording, such as performance rights and recordists’ rights, as well as the rights of the intellectual property of the content.

Of particular relevance is the section on copyright exceptions and interpretation of the law in this area. More specific guidelines in the use of different types of media would be welcome, but overall this is a thorough guide that is currently much needed.

Image used with permission. Copyright J. Eaton. All rights reserved.