JISC Digital Media Blog Archive
May 2009

New doc: Basic Guide to Videoing Groups

Posted by Steve Hull on Friday 29 May 2009 at 3:40pm
Tags: lighting | microphones | news | video

A new video document has just been published.  The Basic Guide to Videoing Groups is a basic guide to—well, to videoing groups.

Companion documents soon to follow include the Basic Guide to Videoing Interviews, the Basic Guide to Videoing Lectures and the Basic Guide to the Flip.

Report from Enhanced Digital Cinema Event, BFI

Posted by Stephen Gray on Friday 29 May 2009 at 10:01am
Tags: digital preservation | video

EDCine Event, British Film Institute, London May28th 2009.

EDCine (Enhanced Digital Cinema) is a European funded project, now approaching its conclusion. The aim has been to address that dull sinking feeling many archivists get when attempting to accession a batch of wonderfully diverse, even disparate, digital video files (as well as the much more acute sinking feeling caused by embarking on film or video digitisation projects).

The EDCine team consists of both academic research partners and those with commercial interests. Their aim has been to create a working model of the film archive of the future.  The EDCine system, is now unveiled and (to a greater or lesser degree) works. The system consists of an off-the-shelf PC, running UNIX or Linux operating systems. There is some fairly beefy hard drive storage attached, but essentially the PC is standard system in all ways. It’s the software and file handling which has been the focus and it’s this that the team is hoping to acquire the funding to develop further. They can see a day when every moving image collection, regardless of size, sector or budget, will be using EDCine tools.  So what does the system do? Actually quite a lot, and all based around open source and open standard technologies.

‘Digital cinema’ (the team’s preferred term but mostly interchangeable with ‘digital video’) is ingested into the system via a nice web-style front end. From here it is wrapped up into a Master Archival Package (MAP). If the video is not already in JPEG2000 format (and it probably isn’t) it is losslessly transcoded into that non-proprietary format, audio and metadata is separated out and stored alongside.

All these pieces of data are stored in an MXF (Media eXchange Format) wrapper and the digital asset has entered the collection.  Metadata is also copied and synched to a central database for quick searching. The system allows for several copies of this MAP to be automatically produced and stored either online (i.e. on hard drive) or offline (e.g. on digital data tape) depending on collection policy and budget. The MAP is used to create an Intermediate Archival Package (IAP) which is lightly compressed at a resolution less than that of its MAP parent. The intention is that this IAP is then used to spawn a whole host of access copies in different formats, while the MAP is locked away, safe and secure.  All this happens behind the scenes; all you do is get the video in and chose the secondary formats you need.

The roll call of open standards employed in the system is impressive:  the whole system is built around the DSpace digital management system, it’s OAI (Open Archives Initiative) compliant, JPEG2000 is an open source ISO standard as is MXF while metadata whizzes around in XML (eXtensible Markup Language). In fact it could be said that (putting aside some sleek interplay between the different parts of the system) that the whole system could be replicated by downloading and configuring a small collection of software already freely available. And it could. But this view loses sight of some of the valuable (if subtle) refinements made by the EDCine team. Firstly they’ve adapted DSpace to handle huge video files, to stream video and to display low-res previews of anything within the collection. Anyone who has watched DSpace fall over if asked to handle anything over a few hundred megabytes would agree that these are valuable developments.

But the software system isn’t the teams’ greatest success.  The ISO (International Standards Office) is almost certainly going to accept EDcine’s flavours of JPEG2000 as official extensions to the JPEG2000 standard aimed squarely at the archival user. With these profiles defined and tagged with words like ‘preservation standards’ we could at last be looking at a consensus across film archives, academic collections, libraries, museums and galleries. Fingers crossed there will soon be an agreed upon set of video file formats which have been given the ‘thumbs up’ by ISO as best suited to long-term digital video preservation.  This would be a great accomplishment and the EDCine team should be suitably proud; the sinking feelings of many an archivist are starting to abate already.

Updated advice on vector graphics

Posted by Antony Theobald on Thursday 28 May 2009 at 2:30pm
Tags: animated graphics | file formats | illustration | illustrator | image editing | news | svg | vector graphics

We’ve just released four fully updated advice documents on vector graphics.

• Introduction to the Vector Image Format
  Digital image formats fall into two main categories: raster and vector. The raster format lends itself to continuous tone images such as photographs. This document introduces the vector image format which is more suited to the defined lines, curves and shapes of charts, logos, web graphics, technical drawings, cartoons and fonts.
• Vector Graphics Resources
  The links listed here have been gathered to provide a useful collection of vector graphics resources.
• Vector Drawing Software
  If you need to create your own diagrams, illustrations, logos or other graphics, there are a number of programs to choose from. This document looks at the main applications as well as some more specialist programs. It also highlights the main points to consider when choosing software.
• Vector Graphics Illustrated Glossary
  An alphabetical list of commonly-used terms in vector graphics. Each term is defined and accompanied by one or more illustrations.

Demo - Apple Podcast Producer

Posted by Zak Mensah on Thursday 28 May 2009 at 9:30am
Tags: e-learning | podcasts | software | sound recordings | video | workflow

Last week Rich Belson from Western Computer in Bristol came in to our offices to give us a demo of Apple Podcast Producer, with specific focus on its use in education. Its premise is to support the recording, uploading, file management and delivery of podcasts using audio, video and/or screen capture.

With the continued rise in interest in podcasting, and this year’s increase in educational usage of the Apple iPod Touch and iPhone, we wanted to find out how well the software worked.

Podcast Producer - free with the Apple Xserve server, or available to run on many other Intel Macs - sits on an Apple OSX 10.5 server, which manages the encoding, storage and delivery of the content. Every end user (that’s you) has software on their computer to allow recording and submission of content.

The Podcast Capture recording software supplied with Podcast Producer works only on Apple Macs, but luckily Apple also provide a web interface which Windows and offsite users can access via their browser to upload content produced on any other OS with tools such as Audacity or Camtasia.  We had a quick play with both the Podcast Producer and Capture applications on an laptop, and they were quick, easy and intuitive to use.

As the community - including many of us - primarily use Windows computers, we used the web browser version of the software for much of the demo. Rich also showed us some of the options available within Apple Workgroup Manager to integrate with you institution’s LDAP directory, and manage access rights and permissions.  Just ahead of the demo we asked our Twitter followers if they had any questions regarding this product and they came back with four. Now can you see the value of twitter? ;)

Q1 - Does the web version of the software have comparable functionality to the desktop software?

A - No, it only allows uploading of content already produced, and some limited video capture facilities

Q2 - Using Podcast Capture, and a single account, are multiple podcasts possible?

A - Yes, you can record/upload as many as you like, and the Podcast Capture software can be put on as many Apple computers as you like (OSX 10.5+ required)

Q3 - Does Podcast Capture work across the internet or only on an internal network? If not then how do you use remotely?

A - As long as your network permits access to the podcast server, then you can use the web based version anywhere on the internet. As before, simple video capture and file upload only are available through the web portal.

Q4 - Why is it when uploading podcasts via the web (blog) interface, do they not appear in iTunes (ie not in RSS feed)

A - They did in our test. I suggest that you contact Rich if you are having an issue.

Verdict

If you produce a lot of podcast content, want it stored separately to other media, and want to allow RSS/iTunes subscription then this could be the solution for your institution.  Podcast Producer is easy to use for end users and the management of all your podcasts using one tool is attractive.

The varying workflows that it supports produce streamlined productivity for users, and the software is free to those who purchase the server.

The recording software integrated into it is currently Apple only; Windows users must use other software for the recording. That said, most institutions already use suitable Windows recording software, so will not see this as an issue.

The server end may take some setting up but this should be balanced against the benefits to the end users, and relatively low cost.

If anybody is already using this software, please add a comment about how you and your institution are fairing with it.

Full Apple details, including screencasts 

Thanks to Richard Belson of Western Computer, Bristol for his in-depth demonstration.

Free-to-use historic photos via Flickr

Posted by Antony Theobald on Wednesday 27 May 2009 at 2:38pm
Tags: digital collections | finding images | flickr | metadata | photo sharing | photographs | teaching

In the 16 months since Flickr launched The Commons, the photo sharing site’s partnership with publicly-held photography collections has seen close to 30 institutions signing up.

Jack Delano’s photo of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lyman, Polish tobacco farmers near Windsor Locks, Connecticut (LOC)

Initially a pilot project with the Library of Congress, The Commons now hosts thousands of images with ‘no known copyright restrictions’ from a wide variety of international collections. The most recent additions are small selections from the Getty Research Institute and the National Library of Wales.

There are two main aims of the project. Firstly, to increase awareness of and access to photographs held in public collections around the world. And secondly, to encourage people to share their knowledge and contribute their own information about the photos (via comments, notes and tags), thus enriching the collections’ own catalogues.

Another benefit these collections provide is an excellent source of images that can be used free of charge for any purpose.

Last week the Library of Congress uploaded a selection of photos documenting life in America during the Great Depression and World War II. Included among the 10 most frequently requested photos from the FSA/OWI Collection (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information) is Dorothea Lange’s famous ‘Migrant Mother’ portrait of Florence Thompson and her children from 1936:

Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’ - Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California (LOC).

While nearly half the institutions represented in The Commons are from the US, France’s Bibliothèque de Toulouse, the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands, Portugal’s Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and the Australian War Memorial are among those helping ensure an international balance.

Last time we reported on The Commons, no UK collections were involved. In August last year the National Media Museum appropriately became the first and has since been joined by the National Maritime Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the aforementioned National Library of Wales.

If reports from Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum are anything to go by, these museums and galleries should be seeing a large increase in access to their images - according to Seb Chan, the Powerhouse Museum’s Web Services Manager:

“In the first 4 weeks of the Commons we had more views of the photos than the same photos in the entirety of last year on our own website. It wasn’t as if we made the images on our own website all that hard to find - they were well indexed on our own site by Google, they were made available to the national federated image search/repository Picture Australia, and they also existed in our OPAC. Still, that was no match for Flickr.”

There is now a Flickr Commons group and indicommons - a blog set up to “broaden knowledge of The Commons among the public and civic institutions around the world and to increase participation by the public in the Commons.”

As I write, Lange’s celebrated photograph has been viewed over 10,000 times since it appeared on Flickr less than a week ago and nearly 1,000 Flickr members call it a ‘favorite’. This is all great news if it means more people will be exploring the immense online collections of the Library of Congress, and even better news if some of the less well-known collections receive new visitors. However, I’m not sure many of the comments people have added beneath Migrant Mother do much to ‘enrich’ the collection… and as for the notes that appear when you move your mouse over the image…

Another way users can add potentially useful - or exceptionally trite - information is via tags (keywords). Given the number of visitors and comments, surprisingly few tags have been added to the Lange photograph so far, but words such as ‘poverty’ or ‘despair’ not used in the Library’s own description certainly help make the image more findable to those searching by theme or concept.

It would be interesting to find out what sort of impact The Commons is having on participating collections, and also to hear from people who have used any of the images.

Feeds available

Posted by Zak Mensah on Thursday 21 May 2009 at 2:00pm
Tags: news

Just a brief announcement to the community that we have just opened up our advice documents to RSS and Atom feeds.

What is RSS and Atom?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom (Atom Syndication Format) allow content providers to share content with their audiences and offer an additional way of keeping up to date with their websites. Using RSS readers, you can subscribe and receive our content in your chosen feed reader.

Why use Feeds?

Its usefulness by way of example:

As an e-Learning Officer, Zak Mensah of JISC Digital Media is primilarly interested in our Cross-media content. By subscribing to the Cross-media RSS feed (available on all pages in that section) Zak will automatically be notified when an advice document is published or updated.

Interested?

If you are interested in using RSS or Atom but are not sure how to go about using it, please get in touch via our helpdesk or contact your IT support. We are always looking at how we can provide our content to you in ways that best suit you. Comments welcome.

List of RSS feeds

• Blog RSS feed and Atom feed
• Training RSS feed and Atom feed
• Still images advice documents RSS feed and Atom feed
• Moving images advice documents RSS feed and Atom feed
• Audio resources advice documents RSS feed and Atom feed
• Cross media advice documents RSS feed and Atom feed

The answer to your camera-mounting dreams…

Posted by Steve Hull on Thursday 21 May 2009 at 1:22pm
Tags: equipment | photography | tripod | video

Ever been shooting still images or video and wondered, “How can I possibly provide a steady support for my camera here?”

Now there’s an answer—perhaps I should say now I know the answer.  Gorillapod was blogged here a few years ago but I’ve only just discovered it—and it now comes in a wide range of sizes, from MP3 player all the way up to prosumer camcorder.  It looks like a mini-tripod, but the legs are far more flexible than normal mini-tripods and they’re covered with rubberised rings and feet so they’ll grip to most things.  Think of it as three tentacles growing out of the bottom of your camera.  And the large size even has a panning arm…

Futuresonic Conference 09

Posted by Zak Mensah on Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 2:11pm
Tags: e-learning | event

Last week, 13th – 16th May 2009 I attended the 4th Futuresonic Conference in Manchester at the Contact theatre. It’s a conference centred around social technologies and attracted a healthy range of industries including education.

You can read much on this event so I will not labour much on the individual talks as this has been done exhaustively elsewhere. However I wanted to share a few things about the conference and why it’s worth the Fe/He sectors attending, face to face or online.

The keynote presentation from Stowe Boyd titled “Social Tools: The Shape of Future Culture” was informative and I now have a backlog of over 10years of Stowe’s reading to catch up on.

The takeaway point for me from the conference was that social tools (coined by Stowe Boyd I believe) were already impacting us in a great way and that this is the future, there is no going back. Social tools of present and future affect us as people and as stakeholders in business (from our own businesses/departments to the businesses we use). At present, many see social tools as a fad but Stowe demonstrated how it’s already infiltrated mass culture and the sign of things to come.

We as a service for example, already automatically search for comments on blogs/twitter about our service provisional and use it as an indicator of performance and to shape future delivery.

Two separate sessions from BBC speakers were thought provoking and showed some direction that the BBC is heading towards regarding supporting community engagement.

The first by Phillip Trippenbach, a BBC journalist with social media and gaming interest described how games are very educational and where digital media/social media fits in. This was talk that really excited me and he has described it in full in his blog, linked at the end of this entry.

Second was a more technical focused talk by Simon Cross and Ben Smith, Web Developers at the BBC with a social twist around the semantic web. They explained plans to use RDF to begin to give social context to the BBC site. For example, “Who of my friends has watched HEROES?”. This type of ability in the future will be extremely valuable and would help large organisations like JISC to have improved (by community) searchable content.

Encouraging real time interaction

The organisers and speakers encouraged the use of live blogging and twitter. This was output on screens around the event. If you do a twitter search for #futr09 you will be able to read many peoples thoughts during the events.
If anybody from FE/HE will be attending next year please give me a heads up as I’d love to meet you and enjoy the event all over again.

Event in one word: Motivating.

If you have attended any non FE/HE directly related conferences let us know in the comments as we are always on the look out for great thought provoking events.

Elsewhere

Futuresonic 2009 website

Stowe Boyd’s blog entries

Phillip Trippenbach’s “why-we-must-use-games-for-good”

Simon Cross interview and links to more about his projects

*UPDATE - NME review the live events that took place around the conference

Updated digital camera document

Posted by Nigel Goldsmith on Monday 18 May 2009 at 12:27pm
Tags: cameras | news | photography

To reflect recent developments in digital camera technology we have updated the Digital Camera paper.

The new paper looks at all cameras from consumer compacts through to medium format and large format camera systems.

New video metadata paper

Posted by Stephen Gray on Monday 11 May 2009 at 12:09pm
Tags: metadata | news | video

OK, so metadata may not be everyone’s favourite subject.

The sensual curves of a well turned out XML structure may not appeal to all (not sure why) and the curvaceous beauty of a perfectly selected schema just doesn’t do it for everyone but our new Metadata and Digital Video document aims to please. Used in conjunction with the other new metadata advice documents on the site, this paper should provide a thorough grounding in ‘data-about-video-data’ from telling you what it is, to suggesting why you might want to know.

Cartoon promotes digital preservation

Posted by Antony Theobald on Wednesday 06 May 2009 at 11:31am
Tags: animation | digital preservation | metadata | repositories | youtube

An excellent short animation from DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) aims to spread the word about digital preservation in an easy to follow format.

This is the first in a series of animations from DPE which will be available on DPE’s YouTube channel.

Free webcast on digital copyright

Posted by Antony Theobald on Wednesday 06 May 2009 at 9:58am
Tags: copyright | finding audio | finding images | finding moving images | news | teaching

Steve will be giving a short talk as part of JISC Legal’s free live webcast this afternoon.

JISC Legal, one of our sister services, is hosting the free-to-view live webcast Digital Copyright with Confidence from 2pm this afternoon.

Steve is on at around 3.15 to talk about sourcing resources. Tune in from 2pm to watch all the speakers and discover how digital material can be used legally for teaching and learning.

The full programme is available from the page where the live stream will take place.

Video, image and audio resources

Posted by Antony Theobald on Tuesday 05 May 2009 at 12:10pm
Tags: digital collections | finding audio | finding images | finding moving images | news | teaching

We’ve just released a new advice document: Links to Video, Image and Audio Resources.

The links we point to give access to a wide range of digital media resources (images, video and audio) covering many subject areas.

We have divided the links into several categories: stock images, architecture, the arts, current affairs, history, maps, science and medicine.