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December 02, 2003
How It Works
Production:
Participating universities contribute videos of lectures, seminars, panels and/or interviews to a virtual pool of videotaped academic content. Participants produce their own content, under their own name. The University Channel provides the audience for events that many institutions are already videotaping for archival purposes, but not yet airing for lack of a distribution mechanism. While production values need not be as stringent as commercial TV outlets demand, UC can offer professional production advice to participants who want to improve the look of their product. Contributors are responsible for their own content and for clearing the rights to distribution.
Distribution:
The pooled video content can be distributed in two ways: (1) low-resolution over the Internet (for PC users looking for specific content) and (2) broadcast-quality over campus or community cable TV (to reach the conventional TV viewer). Distribution of programs can be as basic as the mailing of a videotape, or as advanced as a video file-share over Internet2, depending on the technical capacity of the participant.
- 1. Internet
The UC website will aggregate webstreaming events from member institutions into a unified portal and organize these events by editorial category. Visitors to the site can scan and compare all lectures on a single topic, and then link to a specific school?s site to view the streaming video. Besides straightforward viewing, these videos can be used as a teaching tool, or even a one-stop shop for conventional media outlets looking for who's saying what on current issues.
- 2. TV
UC provides academic programming for conventional TV outlets such as educational and community access channels. The webstreaming allows participating TV operations to preview any content they may wish to download for re-broadcast. Video events on UC will be made available to participating institutions in a higher-resolution format which TV stations can slot into their own programming schedule.
- 3. Archive
As the UC collection grows, it will develop into a searchable online video library. Current technology means the collection does not have to be hosted in one central place, but can be joined through a system of network accessed servers.
Posted by at December 2, 2003 12:57 PM