JISC Digital Media Blog Archive
October 2009

Finding and Hosting Videos

Posted by Karla Youngs on Friday 30 October 2009 at 9:19am
Tags: finding moving images | news | video

JISC Digital Media is pleased to announce the release of three new advice documents exploring the issues of using web-based services to host and find video resources to support institutional objectives related to teaching, learning and business and community engagement.

Firstly there is an overview paper, detailing how the research was undertaken for this suite of papers and also providing a brief introduction to why organisations may investigate these services for finding resources and for hosting resources.

Secondly, a paper looking at how effective web based services are for finding suitable video resources that will support teaching and learning.

Thirdly, a discussion of the issues relating to using the web-based services for hosting videos that will impact the decision making process of whether to adopt this model of working or not.

Another thrilling adventure…

Posted by Antony Theobald on Thursday 29 October 2009 at 8:28am
Tags: animation | digital preservation | migration | youtube

We love the second in a series of amusing cartoons promoting digital preservation from DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE).

You can watch the first of DPE’s animations in our earlier blog post, or go to DPE’s YouTube channel.

Winter tour of RSCs

Posted by Antony Theobald on Wednesday 28 October 2009 at 9:13am
Tags: e-learning | event | news

We will be visiting various JISC RSC (Regional Support Centre) events in the coming months.

Tomorrow (Thu 29 October 2009) we will be at RSC South East - e-Learning Fair: Making the Most of What You Have Got.

You can also come and talk to us at the following events:

• RSC Northern - The North East’s Got Talent, Mon 9 November 2009
• RSC South East - Servicing Your e-Learning Needs with JISC Advance,  Thu 3 December 2009
• RSC Scotland North & East - The JISC Winter Fayre, Tue 15 December 2009

Reduce RSS subscription clicks for Google Reader

Posted by Zak Mensah on Tuesday 27 October 2009 at 9:04am
Tags: e-learning

If you use Google Reader for your RSS subscriptions then this tip will save you time when subscribing to new feeds. If you’re not sure what RSS is, then our sister service JISC Netskills has a handy Introduction to RSS screencast to get you up to speed.

Jonathan Snook has a short screencast showing how to reduce the number of clicks when subscribing to RSS feeds using the Firefox browser and Google Reader.

If you have any RSS tips or a favourite RSS reader with useful features please let us know in the comments.

Find me an image that looks like this one

Posted by Antony Theobald on Monday 26 October 2009 at 8:54am
Tags: content-based image retrieval | drawing | finding images | flickr

UPDATE: The day after we posted this, GazoPa announced that it is now in open beta - available to the public without login. GazoPa is a new ‘similar image search’ service that finds images based on the visual content of any image you supply.

This means you can upload a photo from your computer, paste in the URL of any image online, or use a rudimentary drawing tool to create a basic sketch. GazoPa will then return a selection of similar images based on the colour, shape or layout of the image you supplied.

GazoPa is one of the newer sites experimenting with content-based image retrieval (CBIR) and is still in private beta, but if you are interested in trying it out you can request an invite by registering an email address - when I did this the request was accepted straight away. It is still in a beta testing stage but is now openly available to all.

Recent updates to the site include limiting search results to Creative Commons-licensed material from Flickr, with the option of filtering for pictures published within a certain time frame (e.g. ‘today only’, ‘within a week’, ‘older than a year’, etc).

Searching for images based on their visual content - instead of typing a term into a search box - is nothing new. There are several other examples of CBIR sites - some of which have been around for many years:

• Webseek - Columbia University’s system searches images and video from across the web
• The State Hermitage Museum - uses IBM’s QBIC (Query By Image Content) technology to search the collection
• iStockphoto - the Advanced Search options include search by colour and layout
• retrievr - lets you draw a sketch or upload an image and searches Flickr images only

The one thing they all have in common - and GazoPa is no exception - is the rather hit and miss nature of the search results. This can be frustrating, but can also lead to some interesting images that you may never have found using traditional text searching. Searching by colour often produces the most pleasing results, especially if your source image or drawing uses simple blocks of colour.

We talk about CBIR in a little more depth in our Review of Image Search Engines. Our review also points out that both Google and Exalead provide a form of CBIR with their face and colour recognition options.

Here’s what GazoPa made of my fine art skills - the red image at the top is my sketch and the images below are based on its shape:

Access all areas

Posted by Stephen Gray on Friday 23 October 2009 at 10:50am
Tags: accessibility | news | video

‘Accessibility’ applies to us all, all of the time. This is easy to say, but when we battle to watch a Flash movie online, only to find that we don’t have the correct plug-in or the admin rights to install it, it really rings true.

But of course digital audio or video needn’t always exclude people, it can be used to include as well.

Adding Closed Captions to Flash Video is the first of several how-to guides intended to get anyone started on the road to building accessibility into their digital media collections.

The document is intentionally hands-on and this will also be true of all the accessibility papers we have planned. The idea is not to provide wide-ranging advice (for this you could visit our sister service JISC TechDis) but to provide all the information needed to get started immediately.

One of the issues which came up during the researching of this document was that there are now literally dozens of ways to archive similar results. Adding Closed Captions to Flash Video assumes that users have already secured access to Adobe Creative Suite (CS) in order to create .flv files and so Adobe CS tools are used, but there are several excellent alternative opensource tools available.

If there are other advice documents you’d like to see which involve widening accessibility through digital media, or accessibility-related software tools you particularly like, please let us know.

Listen very carefully…

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Thursday 22 October 2009 at 11:09am
Tags: binaural

It has come to our attention that there is an interesting new gaming project in development which will approach the user from a new direction - their ears. 

Creating an immersive and interactive binaural audio world is the apparent goal of Papa Sangre, with no graphical interface at all. Sounds interesting… [enough audio puns already - Ed]

Just remember where you heard it first…

Choosing an Audio Interface - The Trilogy

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Friday 16 October 2009 at 11:06am
Tags: digitisation | equipment | hardware | interfaces | microphones | music | news | podcasts | sound recordings | surround sound

Three new advice documents designed to assist you in choosing an audio interface for your computer system.

There is a vast range of computer audio interfaces available, all of which seem to offer different capabilities and features - choosing the right one for your needs can be quite a challenge.

Our three new documents cover the key points of the audio interface, its audio performance, project suitability, and technical specifications respectively:

• Choosing an Audio Interface - Technical Considerations
• Choosing an Audio Interface - Project Requirements
• Choosing an Audio Interface - Unit Specifications

The audio interface - along with the computer itself - is the core element of a digital audio system, and whether you need a simple interface for podcast production or a high specification unit for audio archiving, or anything in between, you will find relevant information here to help you make the right choice.

Seminar slides now available

Posted by Antony Theobald on Thursday 15 October 2009 at 2:50pm
Tags: digital collections | digital preservation | event | news

The presentation slides from our two recent digital media seminars are now available.

Summaries and slides of each presentation, together with videos of the panel discussions are on the Digital Media Seminars page.

The two free seminars - Successfully Building and Managing a Digital Media Collection and The Digital Media Collection +100 Years - were funded by the Joint Information System Committee under the JISC ITT Workshops & Seminars: Achievements & Challenges in Digitisation & e-Content strand.

Second generation Flip Mino HD is here

Posted by Steve Hull on Thursday 15 October 2009 at 8:00am
Tags: video

Flip has just announced the second generation of their Mino HD camcorder.

It doesn’t appear to be on sale in the UK yet, but this is a moot point, as you can purchase it on the Internet.  The most significant changes are a bigger screen and the doubling of the camera’s memory to 8GB, meaning that 2 hours of HD video can be recorded.  Flip has also upped the design stakes, offering an optional brushed metal case.

And remember that, regardless of which pocket camcorder you own, you can find advice on how to get the best results with it in our new document, the Basic Guide to the Flip.

Blogs, wikis and photo sharing sites

Posted by Antony Theobald on Wednesday 14 October 2009 at 2:43pm
Tags: business & community engagement | delivery | digital collections | finding images | flickr | news | photo sharing | photographs

We’ve just released three newly updated documents in the Still images advice section.

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

• Photo Sharing Sites looks at the most common features offered by a number of photo sharing sites, highlights the pros and cons of using such sites, and offers some practical tips for both finding images and organising your own images.
• Using Blogs to Find and Organise Images provides an overview of blogs, considering how they can be used as both sources of images and as tools for managing and presenting your own images.
• Using Wikis to Find and Organise Images looks at ways in which you might use wikis as a source of images for use in your own work. It also provides an overview of how wikis handle images for those who already use or are thinking of setting up a wiki.

Crushing it - three tips for online success

Posted by Zak Mensah on Monday 12 October 2009 at 9:00am
Tags: e-learning | inspiration

People in my field of e-learning (e for electronic) often get asked by teaching staff/resource managers with regard to their online material: “Why is my online content hardly used/visible/visited?”

There are many reasons. However one of the things that is certainly clear to me and high on the list of responses is patience. Although the use of online material and interaction is not new, it’s still a new enough area for most creators and consumers. Particularly the even newer idea of social interaction with our material/brands/people.

In this sample chapter (PDF) from his upcoming first book, Gary Vaynerchuk highlights three key words that can help answer your question: authenticity, hustle and patience.

Gary is selling wine, and we as individuals/institutions are ‘selling’ our content/brand, but having followed Gary’s blog for a year or two, I can safely say that most of his suggestions translate to education. It reminds me that it’s important to look at what’s working well in other avenues than education for inspiration and answers. Thoughts welcome.

Photo credit Jason Michael

Performance seminar resources now available

Posted by Stephen Gray on Friday 09 October 2009 at 10:04am
Tags: digital collections | news

Following the success of our three-day seminar themed around the digital documentation of performance, we’ve made a whole host of documents available.

Attendees created, managed and delivered documentation of Paul Hurley’s performance Becoming-snail. A wide range of different documents were generated: from scanned diagrams and sketches to digital video, photographs and audio.

Many more are hosted by the Internet Archive, you can find these by searching the archive with the seminar hashtag of #jdmperform09 (don’t forget to include the hash!). We’re hoping this resource will continue to grow so please get in touch if you have any related documentation which isn’t yet included.