Quality matters.

Ampex VRX-1000 - The first video tape machine.  Image Credit CC Rob Lee

I spent some time, last week, looking at some video, (sharing) services that may be of use to educators. The three were Democracy,  Zudeo and Brightcove, all of which have features that should be of potential interest for educators. Unlike YouTube or Google Video, (which still have an important role), they are not let down by poor image quality or the need to find value hidden amongst hundreds of performing cats and singing students.

I blogged about Democracy a while ago, and since then it it has become much faster and truly cross platform. It downloads and plays practically all  video formats, (thanks Miguel). It uses  RSS to access any channels that offer an RSS feed and offers a wide range of categories, (including Creative Commons) which makes it an ideal service for accessing and publishing educational content.  It is also open source and completely free of any DRM. Robin Good has posted a detailed analysis of Democracy here.

Zudeo is a (legal) P2P video sharing service from Azureus that uses BitTorrent client technology  to  download media files.  Zudeo offers fast downloads of HD content, which their CEO sees as a key market. There is not a huge amount of content  yet, (it was only released last week - but what is there is high quality).  I found the detail in the 24hr time lapse of San Francisco footage stunning on a 21" iMac.  Now that HD camcorders are becoming more affordable and available, and iMovie's HD capabilities are easy to use, there is lots of scope for educators, students and filmmakers to develop high quality educational content.  Some material such as Screencast tutorials, fast moving or natural history footage can be very difficult to watch on YouTube etc.

The third service, Brightcove; introduces an exciting and innovative business model,  for both  professional and amateur filmakers.  The quality of the videos are much better than many of the other Flash Video sites, and they are delivered through a slick and intuitive player.  Brightcove offers two options for  publishing: Network: upload your content for free whilst Brightcove will sell and place your ads on your page, but you keep half the Revenue! Your other choice is Platform: which is free of ads, but you can place your own and keep all the revenue. You can sell your content if you wish with either option.

Democracy and Zudeo require download of a client player applications, although in both cases they are quick and is simple to install. Brightcove is web based service. I look forward to seeing how the education community might become involved with some of these services.