Gimme Five: Rich Media Presentation Systems for Education and the Enterprise

On the other hand, out-of-the-box Mediasite is a Windows Media-only system. However, Sonic Foundry offers a podcast utility to create audio MP3s of a Mediasite presentation, in addition to offering the third-party MediaLandscape Converter that turns presentations into Flash. Both of these conversion options require an additional workstation for all of that transcoding work.

Delivery: The Browser & Player
All of these systems use the browser as their delivery application, leveraging standard media player plug-ins and, in the case of Tegrity, Java. Browser compatibility is important since it has to match up to your userbase. While this was a bit of a sticking point a few years ago when some products were pretty much Internet Explorer-only, multibrowser support is the standard today.

All of these systems advertise support for the two major browsers, IE and Firefox/Mozilla, which should cover more than 90% of most users. Tegrity also advertises Safari compatibility on the Mac.

Sorry Mac users. It is a Windows world. And none of these systems have problems playing in Microsoft’s backyard. When it comes to Linux and Mac users, things get a little dicier. Echo360, in particular, makes a point of its compatibility across all three platforms, presumably by utilizing Flash and MPEG-4.

All of the other systems claim Mac compatibility, though only Tegrity supports QuickTime specifically. Accordent achieves Mac compatibility with Real or with Windows Media via the Flip4Mac QuickTime Plug-in. With Mediasite, Flip4Mac is pretty much the only route for Mac users to view your presentations.

Of course, one way around the OS restrictions is to publish presentations as podcasts. Tegrity, Echo360, and Mediasite all offer some sort of podcast solution, although at present Mediasite’s is audio only.

There’s always the lingering risk of a viewer who either has a rotten internet connection, antiquated hardware, or simply a bizarre system. Echo360 offers a useful solution for those users. Its video presentations can be offered with only audio and slides, putting less strain on hardware and connection.

Chaptering and Navigating
All of these systems provide for some kind of chaptering in order to make it easier for the viewer to navigate through presentations using thumbnails of slides and graphics.

Mediasite, Accordent’s Capture Station, and Echo360 all create chapters on-the-fly, and so their accuracy varies. They all work to some extent by detecting when slides change and then creating new chapters at that point. In practice they can be fooled by animated transitions or on-screen motion, resulting in extra, spurious chapter points. However, all three systems offer some ability to delete or move chapter points in post.

Accordent’s PresenterPro is the least likely to produce spurious chapters because it’s actually integrated with PowerPoint—so it isn’t easily fooled. Of course, the drawback is that it won’t capture a presentation from a different application, like Apple’s Keynote.Editing
All systems provide editing tools for their presentations. Accordent’s and Mediasite’s are the most full-featured. Both allow slides/chapters to be cut out and replaced not just deleted or changed. Mediasite even boasts the ability to cut and paste segments between presentations.

But if you need that much editing power, you might be better off with a more conventional video production workflow. The point of a lecture capture system is to automate workflow as much as possible from recording to publishing with minimal human intervention. At this point any NLE, even iMovie, is going to offer more editing flexibility than anything included in a lecture capture system.

Adding It All Up
Choosing one of these systems is something that should be done carefully. Each platform has very specific features that suit particular needs, and it’s not necessarily easy to switch systems. Despite using similar media platforms, the bundled final presentations are more or less proprietary. Mediasite’s server isn’t going to know what to do with an Echo360 presentation, and vice versa. Therefore, when you choose a lecture capture system, you’re making a choice for the long haul.

All four of these companies focus on serving the education market, while only Sonic Foundry and Accordent also emphasize the enterprise. So if you’re not in education, you may have two fewer choices, depending on your needs.

The only way to really know if any of these platforms will serve your school’s or company’s needs is to try them out. Since none of these systems are inexpensive, any one of these companies will be glad to give an interactive demo. You can also watch sample presentations at their websites.

I recommend trying more than one system too, since you might find out that a feature you never considered before is the one that turns out to be the most valuable. I also suggest talking to other enterprise and higher education customers who use the systems that you’re considering. Go to any of these companies’ websites to find a list of their customers. Look for an institution that’s similar to yours and drop them a line. In most cases these solution providers will be glad to help put you directly in touch with someone at a client institution.