FTLComm - Tisdale - Thursday, September 20, 2001

Though it may not be all that obvious, Ensign was begun in May of 1998 to see what could be done in providing local content on the web, that would be educational, informative and perhaps entertaining. Over the past three and half years there have been a number of experiments to test various types of software and technology to advance the way we dish out content and how we can make it more palitable and easier to consume. Many of these attempts have been outright failures, while others have taxed the limits of the web and the patience of Ensign visitors. We have experimented with a variety of visual techniques including QuickTime VR panoramas which are now a standard feature of this publication. We have tried using sound, also using QuickTime to a limited degree of success and projects like this will continue. The most ambitious project to date was the attempt yesterday to do a history lesson, the same sort of briefing that would be given to a high school social studies class, on the basic historical components of the conflict between the United States and the Islamic terrorists of the Middle East. From the outset it seemed that this story needed to be told, rather then put in print for a visitor to read. This meant that we could use audio, or a full video production. The decision to go with full video was reached and work began yesterday morning on the project. Many times in the past we have made some video clips for use in a story, but never before have we set out to create the whole story in video. Because it was likely to be about twenty minutes in length, it was decided to cut the lesson into segments so that the viewer could decide to see some, none, or all of the parts. Around 11:30 the topic list had been prepared and the basic structure established and I was ready to start shooting. It took more than an hour to sort out microphone connections with a couple shots at soldering up a plug then abandoning that cable in favour of another. This is not unusual with technological projects, things like a simple electrical connection can eat up to 20% or the project's time. Once the technical stuff was out of the way the segments were shot, dutifully checking each portion as it was done and just after 2:00 it was time to digitise the video tape and edit it for the page. Mysteriously the video that had been shot vanished, it was gone, no way of determining what caused the error, but it took a full hour of hunting through the tape to see if it wasn't hiding somewhere. But alas at 3:00 it was decided that it was lost forever and the whole thing had to be done again. By the time the third segment was finished rain was approaching and things had to be bundled up and moved inside. The shooting finished, it was back to digitising. But just as on the first take, many segments had to be done several times because the camera missed the subject. The lesson learned from this project was that to shoot a project like this without a camera man was pure folly, the sound problems, the video loss problem and the reshooting because of missed targeting, all would have been avoided. As the project was digitised and edited it was discovered that two segments had audio failure and they had to be redone. The project involved this process. The video tape was fed into the computer using an ATI Xclaim VR card to convert it to digital signal. Each segment often three or four hundred megabytes long was stored on the hard drive as QuickTime movies then using QuickTime the parts were roughly edited. Once edited they were compressed using Sorenson software for the video and Qualcomm Pure voice for the audio so that a 42 second segment would go from 300MB to 179K. The size of the image and frame rate were cut to the minimum to make each piece as small as possible. Then using Adobe Cyberstudio GoLive the page was assembled with each video segment set up to play with a button on the bottom. By 9:10PM the whole project, 4MB long was on the web and it was then that the discovery was made that few Windows type computers would be able to access the page, but would crash because all four megabytes would load when you went to the page. It was time to call in technical help. Andrew looked it over and set to work modifying the page. He created thirteen QuickTime movies that had only one picture. When you click on that picture it in turn is replaced with the movie segment in the same place on the page. This way the page loads easily and the goal of the user having the option to view or not to view, was achieved. Now that the project is finished, it is important to write this summary of what was done and how it was done, because this is what we do here at Ensign. We practice what we preach, learning must be ongoing and we must continuously push back the frontier. Distant education is not going to be print and pictures for all time, but the dynamics of an emotional person, expressing their views on a topic, have a great impact on a viewer. Unlike television, the view can consider, review, omit, or see only portions of a lesson, as needed. I wish that I had obtained a camera man to help me with the project so that I could have concentrated on the content and not had to flip back and forth from technician to lecturer. Perhaps next time. For, indeed there will be a next time. This media needs exploration and it also needs your feedback, if you looked over the project I really need your impression and thoughts about the technique and how it worked on your system.