Streaming Media Resources

I was the one who initially put together the streaming media guide in preparation for some media classes for MCC faculty taught by Richard Felnagle of the English Humanities department and myself. The guide is horrendously out of date, but the class itself was fun class to teach, and I learned a lot. I really enjoyed teaching it with Richard who delivers a great portion of his own instruction for his on campus and distance-learning students via our Helix Universal Server.

There was quite a bit of research done at the time to facilitate his work in promoting the medium and is documented here. It is worth noting that much of the research was how to best support the college given the workflows and infrastructures at the time. A lot of that material is specific to our efforts to move MCC forward in instructional streaming media and still adhere to the model of how to provide an environment where faculty could learn to do it themselves.

During the time our streaming media class was going on, there was a study I participated in put on by two of the subscribers to the New Media Consortium’s primary email listserv, Dr. Edgar Huang and Clifford Marsiglio. In it they compared and contrasted the top streaming media formats available on the web at the time in the most complete format and extensive study I have seen to date.

Check it out here: http://www.iupui.edu/~nmstream/index.php

What’s really noteworthy about the study (besides the fact that it blows my research out of the water) is that it is fairly realistic as to what learners would use to view web video and what instructors would use to create it. Since it is unbiased, I think everyone should take a look.

What I really got out of it is a new reliable medium (to me anyway) of delivering video content using HTTP streaming. It’s called the VX30 Universal Platform. It is Java Based and seems to work fairly well. Check out their showcase here: http://www.vx30.com/Products/VOD/UniversalVideo/Showcase