Podcasts, Vidcasts and Photofeeds Service

What is a Podcast, Vidcast and Photofeed

Podcast
(iPOD broadCAST), an audio broadcast that has been converted to an mp3 file or other audio file format, for playback in a digital music player or computer. The "pod" in podcast was coined from "iPod," the predominant portable, digital music player and although podcasts are mostly verbal, they may contain music.

In other words, a podcast is a collection of files (usually audio) residing at a unique web address or feed address. People can subscribe to this feed by submitting the feed address to an aggregator (like iTunes). When new “episodes” become available in the podcast they will be automatically downloaded to that user's computer. Unlike radio or streaming content on the web (for further details please see our Streaming Audio and Media service), podcasts are not real-time. There is no live broadcast of content, the material is pre-recorded and users can check out the material at their leisure, offline.

A podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated or subscribed to and downloaded automatically, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS.

Using the RSS syndication format, podcasts are made available to subscribers just like news feeds (Please see our RSS Feed service). The client's program captures the audio feeds and synchronises with the music player, this type of music player is known as a "podcatcher," such as Curry's own iPodder

Podcasting is not just for ongoing broadcasts, rather the term is used for recording anything and everything to be played back in a digital player. "Sound seeing" is the audio recording of a person's experiences when traveling.

Podcasting's initial appeal was to allow individuals to distribute their own "radio shows", but the system quickly became used in a wide variety of other ways, including distribution of school lessons, official and unofficial audio tours of museums, conference meeting alerts and updates, and by police departments to distribute public safety messages.

Vidcast
(VIDeo podCAST), a video clip designed to be viewed in a portable device. Also called a "vcast" and "videocast". A vidcast is the video counterpart of a podcast and uses the same RSS syndication method (Please see our RSS Feed service) for delivering material to users.

A vidcasting client may work with a separate or integrated player. One such example of the latter is iTunes, which is an unusual case of a web feed aggregator being added to a media player rather than vice versa.

Channeling of on-demand content has major benefits for both publishers and subscribers. Publishers can still bundle content for their audience. Subscribers can consume content on-demand and they don't need a keyboard or mouse interface to choose channels and items, similar to zapping through regular TV stations with new episodes showing up automatically, so the technology is ideal for on-the-go (portable media players and mobile phones) and living room mass media consumption.

Photofeeds
A photofeed is a web feed that features image (JPEG, GIF or PNG) enclosures. They provide an easy, standard way to reference a list of images with title, date and description.

Photofeeds are to images as podcasts are to mp3 files. A photofeed can contain all pictures in an online album, all images would be tagged with keywords such as “sunset”, a book wish list, a list of houses for sale or a list of specialist products so that searchers on image sharing sites like Flickr etc. can find relevant content easily.

A photofeed aggregator is a piece of software that accepts subscribable RSS syndication feeds (Please see our RSS Feed service) and downloads or precaches of higher resolution images (rather than thumbnails) for later viewing, such as when offline. There are not a tremendous amount of photo aggregators as yet. So far, we have iPhoto from Apple and ION.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Podcast, Vidcast and Photofeed

From a web server, a Podcast / Vidcast / Photofeed can be distributed as a file or a stream. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Downloading complete Podcasts / Vidcasts / Photofeeds in advance gives the user the ability to play them offline, for example, on a portable media player. A downloaded version can be watched many times with only one download, reducing bandwidth costs. On the other hand Streaming allows seeking (skipping portions of the file) without downloading the full Vidcast / Podcast / Photofeed, better statistics and lower bandwidth costs for the servers; however, users may have to face pauses in playback caused by slower transfer speeds.

Users have full control over what they listen to and where and when they listen. Audio files can be downloaded onto an mp3 players which visitors / customers can take away and listen to in their own time.

Unfortunately computers need sufficient bandwidth for downloading the audio / video files and podcasting is not designed for two-way interaction or audience participation. (for two-way video interation please see our Web Conferencing / Web Seminar service).

Another problem is the amount of space a Podcast / Vidcast / Photofeed can take up if you host the files yourself. Although a few megabytes of space seems minimal, if you produce regular shows, then you may find that your diskspace and your bandwidth may get used up more quickly than with a textual article.

What we do for you

We will set up a Podcast / Vidcast / Photofeed on your web site and an RSS feed (if required) so that visitors can subscribe. (Please note: the RSS Feed service is an optional extra).

We will also submit your Podcast / Vidcast / Photofeed to online specialist directories and search engines.

Please note: This service does not include the filming and recording of your Podcast / Vidcast / Photofeed. If you require this service, please speak to our designers who can help you in sourcing audio / media recording companies.

What we need from you

All we need from you is the type of broadcast medium you require and the content you want to have within it.

The Products

mp3 (for Podcasts)
(MPEG Audio Layer 3) an audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 specifications. mp3 compresses CD-quality sound by a factor of roughly 10, while retaining most of the original fidelity; for example, a 40MB CD track is turned into a 4MB mp3 file.

mp3 files are played via media player software in the computer, such as iTunes or Windows Media Player, as well as in countless iPods and other handheld players that use flash memory or hard disks for storage. mp3 sound quality cannot fully match the original CD, but millions of people consider it "good enough" especially because they can pack thousands of songs into a tiny pocket-sized player.

mp4 (for Podcasts / Vidcasts / Photofeeds)
MPEG-4 Part 14, is a multimedia container format standard. It is most commonly used to store digital video streams, especially vidcasts, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Like most modern container formats, MPEG-4 Part 14 allows streaming over the Internet.

m4v (for Vidcasts on Apple iPods)
MPEG-4 Part 2 is a video compression technology developed by MPEG. It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standard. Like the Audio part for MPEG-4, the video part is divided into several profiles that are aimed for use in several different standards.

There is no difference between mp4 and m4v file formats. The m4v format is a file format standard derived to distinguish between audio mp4 and video mp4 files.

WMV (for Vidcasts)
(Windows Media Video) A family of digital video compression technologies from Microsoft based on MPEG-4. Version 9 of the WMV codec was released to the SMPTE organisation and became the SMPTE 421M standard, otherwise known as VC-1.

WMV files are larger and take longer to download than mp4 or m4v file formats but they are not restricted to the popular Apple iPod aggregator. WMV Vidcasts can be played on Microsoft Windows mobile devices.

JPEG / JPG (for Photofeeds)
In computing, JPEG / JPG is a commonly used method of compression for photographic images. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG / JPG typically achieves 10:1 compression ratio with little perceptible loss in image quality.

JPEG / JPG compression is used in a number of image file formats. JPEG/Exif is the most common image format used by digital cameras and other photographic image capturing devices; Whilst JPEG/JFIF is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the Internet. These format variations are often not distinguished.

GIF (for Photofeeds)
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the Internet due to its wide support and portability.

The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel, allowing a single image to reference a palette of up to 256 distinct colours chosen from the 24-bit RGB colour space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colours for each frame. The colour limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing colour photographs and other images with continuous colour, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of colour.

GIF images are compressed using the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality. This compression technique was patented in 1985. Controversy over the licensing agreement between the patent holder, Unisys, and CompuServe in 1994 inspired the development of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) standard; since then all the relevant patents have expired.

PNG (for Photofeeds)
Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a bitmapped image format that employs lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve upon and replace GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) as an image-file format not requiring a patent license. The PNG acronym is optionally recursive, unofficially standing for “PNG's Not GIF”.

PNG supports palette-based (palettes of 24-bit RGB colours), greyscale or RGB images. PNG was designed for transferring images on the Internet, not professional graphics, and so does not support other colour spaces (such as CMYK).

PODCASTS, VIDCASTS AND PHOTOFEEDS COSTS £120.