Gary and Dennis are spot on in their opinions, 98% notwithstanding.
Close enough for /detente/. The quest for the perfect form in balance
with content.
The tension is that razor's edge of aesthetics and convenience. Well, on
second thought, maybe it's a blunt instrument, but at any rate .... The
film/video faculty at my school are struggling with this because
basically it's impossible to SEE film as it's meant to be seen. The
institutional support that Gary speaks of applies to classroom display
as well as streaming support. What projectors can handle an auditorium
or classroom size screen, and what image is going to be pumped through
that projector? Pixillation, color balance, resolution -- they are all
at play. And a whole myriad of other factors such as film shot as film
v. film shot as video, born digital, video for web, etc.
And yet, through it all, we manage to convey something of the meaning of
that opening shot in /Touch of Evil/, or "Are you ready for my close up,
Mr. DeMille?," or Watanabe-san, going back and forth on his park swing
in /Ikiru/. So, pedagogically, maybe all is not lost.
Randal Baier
[email protected] wrote:
Hi Amanda
Let me toy with your question a bit.
First of all, let's dispense with the whole issue of image quality.
Unless an institution is going to be storing and pumping huge chunks of
uncompressed video over the the wires (thus almost certainly bringing down
the network), there are limits to the quality of the image you're gonna
get via streaming--no matter which codec you use (see below). Performance
is another issue (i.e. how well your network can handle a large number of
concurrent users) In my experience, most institutional networks can handle
a reasonable number of concurrent streams of compressed video with no
problem at all. You test these things out by having a whole bunch of
people log on at one time, both on campus/in-building and off. Tech wonks
call this stress testing...
The bigger issues, in my view, are ones having to do with the encoding
standard used: Flash, H264, Windows Media, Quick Time,
java-based...whatev.
You have to make a decision re which of these is going to work best on
your particular network and work best for the largest number of users.
Which of these "standards" (they're really not standards at all) is going
to be around in five years (thus avoiding having to encode the whole
shebang all over again)
By the way, in my experience, students don't really give a two-penny damn
about image quality, in most instances. These are folks (like my
daughter) who will watch a 90 minute feature film on their iPhones. The
bigger issue for this crew is ready access at all times.
Gary Handman
This is a question for libraries that host streaming films, especially
feature length films, from their own servers. How do you assess the
performance and quality of streaming video and evaluate viewing
experience for the students?
Amanda Timolat
Media Librarian
Collection Management
Baruch College Library
151 East 25th Street
New York, NY 10010
646-312-1693
[email protected]
VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of
issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic
control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in
libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve
as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of
communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video
producers and distributors.
Gary Handman
Director
Media Resources Center
Moffitt Library
UC Berkeley
510-643-8566
[email protected]
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC
"I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself."
--Francois Truffaut
VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues
relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control,
preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and
related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective
working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication
between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and
distributors.
VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues
relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control,
preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and
related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective
working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication
between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and
distributors.
