Podcasting
Podcasting is an automatic mechanism by which multimedia computer files are transferred from a server to a client which pulls down XML files containing the Internet addresses of the media files. In general, these files contain audio or video, but also could be images, text, PDF, or any file type.
Podcasting is something of a natural fit for museums. We already offer audio tours to galleries, and a podcast is a way to make that content more easily accessible. Other people are even offering alternative audio tours to galleries.
Audio podcasts are just an RSS feed with one or more enclosure tags describing the attached audio. The real "magic" comes on the client side, with smart software such as iTunes automatically transferring new podcasts to the mp3 player.
The Walker is using a combination of podcast technology - our Art on Call cellphone audio tour project "podcasts" each new audio piece as it is added. This is not really a true podcast since it's not really time-based, we use it more as a convenient way for users to download the tours via a "push" scenario.
Radio mnartists.org
Women with Vision
Offcenter Audio Blog
- http://blogs.walkerart.org/offcenter/?cat=28
- hasn't proved as easy for us to keep up to date as we'd like
Vodcasting
Podcasting as a medium was first associated with, but never limited to, audio data. As use of RSS enclosures for video spread in 2005, podcasting of video data was called, among other things, "video blogging", "video podcasting", "vlogging", "vodcasting", or "vidcasting".
For Video iPod compatibility, these files should be M P4s? with H.264 as the codec: http://playlistmag.com/features/2005/07/howtovodcast/index.php Quicktime 7 now includes a "Movie to iPod" export setting that makes encoding to this codec dead easy. See Apple's tutorial for more info.
Our channel archives are now in ipod-ready format, we just have to change our feed so they work as a video podcast.
IPTV
The promise of IPTV has been around for some time, but has yet to play out in the way many people expect. IPTV has evolved into content being distributed to computers rather than set top boxes. Here's how it works
- User subscibes to a feed
- Feed links to a bittorrent file
- User's software downloads bittorrent file automatically
- User fires up torrent and downloads and shares video file
- Video file is played in media player
There are two applications that currently epitomize this type of distribution system:
- Democracy Player
- Free
- Open Source
- Open standards, anyone can set up a channel
- Beta
- Joost
- Free, ad supported
- Content controlled by Joost, major media companies
- Beta
The advantage of IPTV over Video Podcasts is that IPTV encourages HD formats. Because media sharing is done with bittorrent, bandwidth costs for this are not extraordinary.
