Academic podcasting:quality content delivery</title> <date>2009-09-23</date> <descri>Our weekly department seminar has been available as streaming video for several years. Streaming video depends on a reliable, broadband connection for the entire duration of viewing for consistent video quality. Even users with faster internet connections have reported poor video quality at times. A new system for distributing the seminar was developed that takes advantage of content syndication technology. Podcasting is a form of web syndication whereby multimedia content is made available for use by other applications. By making the seminar available as a podcast, some of the problems related to streaming video broadcasts are resolved.</descri> <a></a> <type>text; image</type> <transc>Academic Podcasting: Quality Content Delivery Jacob S Tripp BS1, Scott L DuVall BS1, Derek L Cowan2, Aaron W C Kamauu MD, MPH, MS1 1Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 2Spencer S Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Feed Reader Checks for and Downloads Attend any New Files Seminar Watch Live Broadcast Watch Streaming Video Create Downloadable Video Create Streaming Video Retrieve Downloadable Video Browse to Live Internet Streaming Video Broadcast Watch Downloaded Video Transfer to Portable Device Watch on Portable Device Record Update RSS Feed Introduction Our weekly department seminar has been available as streaming video for several years. Streaming video depends on a reliable, broadband connection for the entire duration of viewing for consistent video quality. Even users with faster internet connections have reported poor video quality at times. A new system for distributing the seminar was developed that takes advan-tage of content syndication technology. Podcasting is a form of web syndi-cation whereby multimedia content is made available for use by other appli-cations. By making the seminar available as a podcast, some of the problems related to streaming video broadcasts are resolved. In addition to be available as a live webcast, department seminars are recorded in AVI format, converted to Real Media streams, MP4 video and MP3 audio formats, and stored on the Eccles Health Science Library multimedia server. We developed a database-driven web application to input and store seminar metadata and automatically generate files that conform to Really Simple Syndication (RSS) 2.0 (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss), an XML schema that defines machine-readable descriptions and links to media in a web feed. These RSS files also contain specific tags that allow the feeds to be published in the iTunes Music Store Podcast Directory. End users can subscribe to video and audio feeds through web-based podcast listeners or desktop-based feed aggregators that support file enclosures. The podcast is indexed in several podcast directories including Apple Computer's (Cupertino, CA) iTunes Music Store Podcast Directory. iTunes is unique in that it combines a web-based podcast directory with the desktop-based feed reader. Discussion Podcasting is quickly gaining popularity. Podcasts can be transferred to por-table media devices allowing for viewing away from the computer. By making the seminar available in this format, viewers experience an improved viewing experience at a convenient time and place. Only a small fraction of existing podcast would be considered academic. The University of Utah Bio-medical Informatics Seminar is one of only two podcasts listed in the iTunes index on the topic of Medical or Biomedical Informatics. This seminar is an approved source of CME for live viewing, either in person or remotely. This presents the possibility of the podcast also becoming an online source for CME credit. Acknowledgements This research was supported by National Library of Medicine Training Grant T15 LM007124. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"> <channel> <ttl>60</ttl> <title>University of Utah Biomedical Informatics Seminar - Full Video</title> <link>http://uuhsc.utah.edu/medinfo/index.cfm?Content=Seminar</link> <copyright>(c) 2006 University of Utah - Biomedical Informatics</copyright> <pubDate>Tue, 11 Apr 2006 14:06:37 MST</pubDate> <lastBuildDate>Wed, 09 Aug 2006 08:49:47 MST</lastBuildDate> <description>A Weekly Video Podcast of the Biomedical Informatics Graduate Seminar Series from the University of Utah School of Medicine. </description> <itunes:author>Biomedical Informatics</itunes:author> <itunes:subtitle>A Weekly Biomedical Informatics Graduate Seminar Series from the University of Utah School of Medicine</itunes:subtitle> <language>en-us</language> <itunes:category text="Health"/> <itunes:category text="Science"/> <item> <title>Utah Health Information Network Health Information Exchange (HIE) | Institutional Repository