Kenyon: Media and podcasting

Almost every single stakeholder we spoke with at Kenyon expressed the desire to post streaming media— audio, video, or podcasts— on their sites. The request has come up so frequently that it is incumbent upon White Whale to propose a solution, even if issues of technological implementation reside somewhat outside our planned scope.

After talking amongst ourselves and with Kenyon’s technical staff, we have a recommendation that we think will work for your needs.

Here are the primary issues and challenges, as we see them, regarding the implementation of media on the Kenyon site

1. Although Kenyon IT has the capability to host media on its own servers, there are major concerns about the media server’s ability to deliver the required bandwidth if a video becomes popular. There is a very understandable worry that while Kenyon might be able to host a few videos here and there, the potential campus demand for streaming media greatly exceeds Kenyon’s capacity to host it.

2. The videos currently on the Kenyon site (which appear to be streamed by a third-party hosting provider) are in RealPlayer format, rendering them unviewable to many users (including a few of us at White Whale).

3. Flash video has emerged as the de facto standard, thanks in large part to the success of YouTube. In fact, many schools are using YouTube to host their media content. However, that isn’t desirable for Kenyon, as YouTube’s branding, and public display of videos hosted there, is inappropriate. (Plus, the quality of YouTube videos is notably low.)

4. Given Kenyon’s need for high-quality video streams, without advertising or branding, it seems more sensible to look for a reasonably priced solution for media hosting and streaming rather than a free solution that would shackle Kenyon to another company’s marketing goals.

There are a few elements to the solution we’re proposing, which correspond to the steps required to get a video file out of a digital camera and, eventually, onto a Web page. We’ll look at these in reverse order, starting with the finished product.

Media player

Clearly Flash video is the way to deliver video in 2007-08. Virtually all browsers have Flash pre-installed, meaning videos can play seamlessly without installing (or, ideally, upgrading) software versions.

With this in mind, we are recommending a media player that streams Flash video files (.flv) without branding or other funny stuff: Jeroen Wijering’s JW Media Player, for which a sitewide license can be purchased for 15 euros, and an unlimited license for 100 euros. (See, we’re not talking big dollars here.) The JW Media Player supports playlists and RSS, and can create streams or slideshows of images, mp3s, and Flash video files.

The JW Media Player (like most Flash video players) is a .swf file that lives on your server and plays a video from a separate video file (a .flv file). So when you’re watching a YouTube movie, you’re looking at two files: the player, and the video that is loaded into it. This is our next topic:

Hosting media files

Kenyon needs a reliable, high-bandwidth server solution for hosting these videos. As we’ve said, Kenyon’s own servers may not be up to the task of hosting a highly trafficked video. Fortunately, there is a solution that we think will do the job nicely: Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Service. S3 takes advantage of Amazon’s massive network to allow quick load times and high traffic threshold. And unlike a conventional hosting service, you only pay for what you use: S3’s pricing is very reasonable.

Converting digital movies to Flash video format

Most digital cameras capture videos in QuickTime format; the rest use Windows Media or proprietary formats. Streaming these movies as Flash video (.flv) requires an additional step of conversion that currently isn’t as easy as it ought to be.

One of the reasons YouTube has a stranglehold on the online video market is because their service includes a tool to convert that .mpeg file from your digital camera into a .flv file suitable for streaming.

There are as yet no consumer-friendly tools for converting QuickTime media into Flash video format. So we propose to build a simple video upload and conversion tool that would do the following:

• Accept uploads of QuickTime/Windows Media/MPEG/AVI files;
• Convert these movies to Flash video format (using the FFMPEG encoder called from a PHP application)
• Store converted movies into a dedicated storage space;
• Provide a link for embedding the stored Flash video file on a Web page.

We would charge a small fee (under $5K) for building this uploading and file conversion tool. We can likely build the uploader on Chi, Kenyon’s PHP server. The tool could also be hosted on White Whale’s servers (for uploading and conversion only; permanent file storage would be in space owned by Kenyon)— in that case, a small monthly hosting and support fee might apply.

The following movie file was uploaded and converted using a proof of concept tool we built for this purpose; stored on our own servers; and streamed using the JW Media Player.

(We’re working on the audio component. So if the sound doesn’t play right now— that’s why they call it a ‘proof of concept.’)

With the intense interest in audio and video at Kenyon right now, it makes sense to think, in a long-term sense, about strategies for media content development. Here are three preliminary ideas for getting this done economically.

Research portraits

Kenyon offers Summer Research Fellowships that put 35-40 Kenyon students to work over the summer doing scientific research. We propose that Kenyon bring a videographer to campus for perhaps two days, at the end of the program, and shoot perhaps a one to three-minute video of each student talking about what he or she has accomplished during the fellowship (or generally about scientific interests). These videos should be shot in the lab or other research context. Other than basic cleanup and quality enhancement, no editing or cuts are required— the fact is, edits and jump cuts aren’t really necessary on a YouTube-sized video. The goal should simply be to let students talk about their research.

Quick interviews

We’ve suggested in another recommendation that Meet Kenyon People (MKP) features ought to be enhanced with short video clips. This can be accomplished very quickly and effectively by setting up an interview environment— a comfy chair, a white background, good lighting— and then bringing in MKP subjects one by one, putting them in the chair, and asking them each the same questions. What did you think of Kenyon when you first came here? What’s your favorite place on campus? What would you tell a prospective Kenyon student? Etc.

Find out what’s already out there

There are a lot of people already making videos about Kenyon. Some of them are sophomoric. Some are hilarious! (Next Halloween, you ought to feature “The Undertaker,” a gothic horror film set in Gambier.) It would be smart to contact some of these young filmmakers, either to borrow or license their work or commission new work.