Centralized Media Management for User Created Content

Centralized Media Management for User Created Content
Colin McFadden
College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota

presented by the EDUCAUSE Enterprise Information and Technology Conference, Chicago, IL, May 2008

Notes:

McFadden discussed the rise of user created media from 5 areas:

• Students producing videos for class and for fun - non tech and tech
• Lecture capture
• Event capture
• Research - faculty using video and other media
• University marketing and promotion

Issues

• University wasn't able to capitalize on having the increased content available and students would either take their creations with them, or delete them, when they graduated.
• Distribution was difficult and there was little efficient technology in place to lower the threshold for simple production. Compression is complicated and expensive and they had few editing stations. Likewise there was not a good method to distribute the content.
• Another issue was bandwidth limits. If you ran over your limit you'd need to wait until next month to complete the project.

While there are commercial services, like YouTube, there are not services that can protect the content. The quality is less than ideal and the content is limited in duration. In addition, there is not a process to archive and work with an original copy via YouTube

Most universities have lots of bandwidth and no need to be profitable (though they should recover costs) In addition, a university has a finite user base.

A first question for a university system was to consider long term storage - essentially unlimited storage for all users as long as they stay with the university. They wanted it to have ongoing access to original content and quality metadata to mine the archive. This was modeled on library indexing of physical media. They wanted to create a tool with easy compression, high quality, flexibility, that was fast and unbiased.

Distribution included:

• Podcasts
• Blogs
• Direct links
• Authenticated access

The demo included

• Creating a video
• Drop and upload
• Media Mill (web interface) with an unprocessed video section and processed section

Meta data was a first priority and it was web driven

• Includes transcripts
• Can create different versions (flash, windows media, etc) just by a click
• Original and new versions are archived

Other Functionality

• Can add to a blog, put on YouTube, download, send link, etc.
• Can redo metadata
• Can edit on the web after it has been uploaded
• Sub clip capable -

Advance level

• Edit for podcast and create RSS feeds
• Everything web driven
• Share with authenticated access

McFadden said the key was to have an archive mentality and be as flexible as possible with the content. There are more than 12 input formats available and 3 output formats: Flash, Quicktime, Windows media

Accessibility

• DFXP captions are dynamically inserted
• Searchable transcripts are made available
• Direct assistance and tutorials are available as well.

Copyright
Content is tied to individual users.
"Safe harbor"

No take down requests in the two years they've been doing it

Behind the scenes

• Basic php/mysql buzzword compliant
• Gradual evolution
• Very responsive

Software

• Powered by Apple Compressor - which is scalable, and doesn't cost to scale up
• Custom applications are tied to Quicktime
• Custom API

Hardware - highly scalable

• Cluster of Apple Xsevers
• SAN
• Internet cloud <-> web front end

Results since implementing Media Mill
Two months development time and they now have

• 7000 original videos
• 25,000 derivatives
• 250,000 downloads
• Growth by a terabyte each semester
• 10 terabytes used to date

More powerful features and incidentals:

• Used to pass media around within a project management but now they have personal pages with "My Videos" and "My Projects." They can add to the project at any time and the system has an email notify function as well
• Front end to an FTP client to push data quickly at 70 bytes per second.
• Users select their own metadata. There are concerns about the future since these taggers are not professional curators.
• All communication goes through the API
• Graphic designers did the front end while others were doing the back end

Q & A

When content creators leave the institution the creation stays but they can't add to it anymore. They have considered deleting originals only if the original creator hasn't used the system in 6 months. Creators can go in after graduation and download originals.

Storage is doubling every semester and they use a robust backup system which does a complete backup over a month's time as well as pick up changes every night to catch new things. They have 40 terabytes and unlimited storage and rates will be the norm.

They do not treat university content differently than student content.

The system is utilized by faculty and students. The original plan targeted the students but they did a soft launch in the summer when students were not around so faculty jumped in and began creating.
Faculty tape libraries can be added as well and there is support for this.
Students now turn assignments via a :link: instead of a video

RE class projects - These can receive special treatment if they are part of a grade but it depends on how the class operates and where video is processed. Once a student has submitted/shared content then s/he can't take it back. Student videos are archived as a part of the faculty members "project" in the system.

New directions include integrating with existing services both university and commercial - like iTunes, YouTube, etc. They want it to be a major collaboration tool and to integrate with the course management system.

No major research work is being done at this time but multi-cast request for Internet2 may mean it's in a future plan.