Streaming Audio & Video Technologies

Streaming Audio & Video Technologies
RealAudio & RealVideo Prototypes Developed by
Dr. William C. Schmidt

SC Budget & Control Board
Office of Information Resources

Browser Plug-ins | Introduction | OIR Prototypes | Production Clips

Browser Plug-ins

The free browser plug-in, RealPlayer (version 5.0 or above), is REQUIRED to view the streaming RealAudio & RealVideo "shows," links to which are given below. RealPlayer can be downloaded here.

The free browser plug-in, QuickTime Player, is required to view the QuickTime movies used in several of the "shows" (Heimlich Maneuver, Protein Synthesis). The QuickTime Player can be downloaded here.

Introduction

About Streaming Audio & Video (available in Acrobat format)

Noise Reduction in Audio Files (not currently available

OIR Prototypes

Historic Columbia (SC) Homes:    RealAudio RealVideo (not currently available)
A brief overview of the 4 historic homes owned by the Historic Columbia (SC) Foundation, including the boyhood home of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the U.S. (~ 5 minutes)

USC - College of Library & Information Science
The USC College of Library & Information Science (CLIS) has a large Continuing Education program which is interested in integrating various Web-based materials, specifically including RealAudio-/RealVideo-synchronized presentations, into its curriculum. Such an approach would have the effect of both expanding its student base/geographic reach, while freeing up faculty time for other endeavors. Working with the CLIS faculty, Bill Schmidt/OIR has converted one of the more popular CE courses, Go for That Grant !! to the RealAudio-synchronized format, and this pilot will be made available to former CE students for final evaluation in the near future.    If this pilot is as sucessful as the CLIS faculty anticipates, many of the current CE courses will be moved to this format, and possibly new CE courses will be added to take advantage of the Web's wide geographic reach. Additionally, if successful, the appropriate portions of CLIS' Distance Education program will be migrated to this format as well.
This item contains the introductory/informational pages to the presentation, as well as that portion of the RealAudio-synchronized course which discusses how to get "Clever Ideas" for grants. (~ 8 minutes)

Downtown as a Classroom
Downtown as a Classroom (DAAC) is a collaborative partnership between the SC Department of Education, the SC Downtown Development Association, and the SCANA Corporation. The program focuses on the dual goals of generating community support for the needs and improvement of education, and of enhancing the economic vitality of rural downtowns, and accomplishes this by building relationships between "main street" and the local schools through the specific DAAC programs implemented. This RealAudio-based presentation describes 5 such programs. (For additional information on DAAC, contact the SC Downtown Development Association (Columbia, SC; (803) 799-9574.) (~ 8 minutes)

Heimlich Maneuver on a Choking Infant
A RealAudio- and RealVideo-based tutorial showing how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on a choking infant. The QuickTime movie on which these tutorials are based is also available. (~ 30 seconds)

How Proteins are Made
Bill Schmidt/OIR describes how proteins are made in this RealVideo-based tutorial. The tutorial ends with a QuickTime movie (460KB) which summarizes what has been said. (~ 6 minutes)

William Price Fox Readings
The distinguished southern author and University of South Carolina Writer-in-Residence reads several of his stories, Big Other Brother . . . and Death Row Inmates (3 min.), and The Frog Jump

RealAudio & RealVideo "in Production"

SC State Library - Grants Research Collection Overview
The SC State Library is beginning to provide RealAudio-synchronized tutorial on some of its collections.    The first such tutorials pertain to its Grants Research Collection.

   SC Dept. of Disabilities & Special Needs - 2 Training Items
The SC Dept. of Disabilities & Special Needs has significant training responsibilities throughout the state, responsibilities far greater than its budget currently allows for instructors and traveling to accomplish the required training.   In light of this, DDSN is very interested in the potential savings that Web-/computer-based training offers, and has worked with OIR to develop these 2 Web-based RealAudio-synchronized training modules to investigate the feasibility of Web-based training.

South Carolina Infrastructure Study
According to a study commissioned by the SC Budget & Control Board, SC governments have spent and will spend up to $57 billion to extend services to new development between 1995 - 2015. Board planner Phil Slayter discusses this study in a talk to the Government Finance Officers Association of SC (GFOASC). (~ 20 minutes)

Government Finance Officers Association of SC
The Government Finance Officers Association of SC (GFOASC) is primarily an educational organization with its large membership widely dispersed throughout SC and neighboring states. In order to provide educational opportunities to its membership, and based on several successful prototypes developed by Bill Schmidt/OIR, the GFOASC has decided to offer its members the opportunity to earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) by viewing Web-based RealAudio clips and RealAudio-syncrhonized presentations which it will create based on presentations at its luncheons and at its annual meeting breakout sessions..
This item is a RealAudio-based presentation of Dr. Charles Gould, President of Florence-Darlington Techncial College, who spoke to the GFOASC in October 1998 on the subject of "Change in Higher Education and its Impact on the Role of Finance Officers."    (~ 38 minutes)

Gullah Stories
This is a RealAudio-based "slide show" consisting of 4 short stories in the Gullah language, accompanied by their English translations. Gullah is an English-based language spoken by many blacks inhabiting the coastal districts of South Carolina/Georgia which contains vocabulary and grammatical elements from various African languages. Bill Schmidt/OIR created the "show" in April 1997 in order to demonstrate the potential usefulness of the streaming audio technology in education and tourism development. (~ 3 minutes)

USC's Modern Political Collections
The University of South Carolina’s Modern Political Collections has many audio and video clips in its collection and is currently investigating the feasibility of putting selected clips out on its Web site.   Some years ago the Collections had a 15 minute promotional video made which described the history and mission of the Collection, and also had 3 minute interviews with the late Rep. Floyd Spence, Sen. Ernest Hollings, and former Gov. John West.   The audio of that video is here in its entirety, along with the individual clips of the Spence, Hollings and West interviews.

SC Department of Archives & History
The South Carolina Dept. of Archives & History has placed on the Web four 30-second public service announcements created in 1995 by SC Educational Television which present important reasons for "preserving South Carolina’s documentary heritage".

Richland County Public Library - Childrens' Stories (Table of Contents)    |    The Stories themselves
The Richland County Public Library puts great emphasis on service to the community, placing particular emphasis on delivering programs for children.   Among the children’s programs are storytellers who are brought in to recite stories from all over the world.   Frequently, after the stories have finished, the children are asked to draw pictures giving their interpretation of the stories, and here are 3 such stories, accompanied by the childrens' drawings.


SC State Library - Childrens' Stories
World.wide.reading@your library is a vacation reading program for children in Georgia and South Carolina, and the program is sponsored here in SC by the SC State Library.   Any child can join the reading program at their local library and earn rewards for reading during the school vacation.   The 3 children's stories here are a part of this program.

Greater Columbia (SC) Chamber of Commerce
The Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce is one of the few Chambers in the U.S. which has a wireless (WAP) Web site. This is a 3 minute overview of the information on the site and the advantages to having access to a wireless Web site. (~ 3 minutes)

SC Arts Commission
The South Carolina Arts Commission has, in the past, had numerous audio clips on its Web site, and currently has several here.

USC's McKissick Museum - Folklife Clip
One of the major missions of the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum is to document South Carolina and Southern folklife. In this context, I have assisted the museum in beginning to digitize many of their audio holdings, and it is beginning to place some of them out on the Web.   At the bottom of the page to which this is linked is a short clip of Nick Hallman and the Nickpickers playing at the 1998 Fall Folklife Festival which was held at McKissick. (~ 3 minutes)

USC's Best Center - College of Library and Information Science
There are numerous ways of creating RealAudio-synchronized presentations. One of the more recent authoring tools from RealNetworks, RealPresenter, enables one to very easily create such a presentation from a PowerPoint presentation.   All one does is import the PowerPoint presentation into RealPresenter and narrate each slide.   A nice touch is that RealPresenter also creates a Table of Contents (TOC) to the presentation so that one can go to individual slides within the presentation without having to play the presentation until one gets to the slide(s) one wants to hear.   (As point of information, the TOC is implemented through SMIL, so it can be created by hand as well by a knowledgeable SMIL author.)   While use of this tool has several advantages, it has numerous drawbacks as well; these will not be discussed here.
This presentation was created by Jill Chappell-Fail of USC’s College of Library and Information Science using RealPresenter Pro, and describes CLIS’ Best Center. (~ 6 minutes)

SC Department of Education Teacher Quality Conference    (no longer available on the Web)
On June 24-25, 1999, the SC Dept. of Education held a "Teacher Quality Conference" in Charleston, SC. Many of the speakers/sessions were taped and are available through the Web in the RealAudio format.    Included are form er SC Governor and U.S. Dept. of Education Secretary, Richard Riley, and SC Superintendent of Schools, Mrs. Inez Tenenbaum.

SC State Museum -- Historical Interpretation    (August 14, 1999)
On August 14, 1999 at the SC State Museum, British actor Howard Burnham portrayed Frank Vizetelly, a writer and artist for The Illustrated London News. Originally with the federal forces, Vizetelly later began covering the war from the Southern perspective, and was the only journalist who accompanied Confederate President Jefferson Davis when he fled Richmond at the end of the war.
In the clips provided here, Mr. Burnham introduces the historical Vizetelly and gives several excerpts from his portrayal of Vizetelly, covering such subjects as the Trent Affair and Jefferson Davis' flight from Richmond.

SC State Museum -- Historical Interpretation    (August 12, 2000)
On August 12, 2000 at the SC State Museum, British actor Howard Burnham portrayed British General Sir John Lambert, Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (1772 - 1847), as he makes his report on the devastating British loss at
New Orleans at the hands of Andrew Jackson. General Lambert makes his report to His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, who is presiding over a Board of Enquiry at Horse Guards, British Army Headquarters in London.
In the clips provided here, Mr. Burnham, as General Lambert, tells the story of South Carolina-born "Old Hickory" Jackson and the stunning triumph of Jackson's "dirty shirts" over the redcoats at the end of the War of 1812.

SC State Museum -- Artifact Presentation G2 Version      Flash Version
The State Museum collection contains vastly more items than can ever be displayed due to space and time limitations.    The Museum's History Curator, Dr. Fritz Hamer, is investigating the feasibility of displaying such items, along with historical interpretation, using Web-based RealAudio-synchronized technology and Flash.
In this presentation, Dr. Hamer briefly describes 3 flags which were used by SC military units during the early days of the Confederate era.

SC State Museum -- Director's Report
Dr. Tony Ganong, the Director of the State Museum, delivers his quarterly report as it appeared in the Museum's Summer 1998 newsletter via this RealAudio clip.
Web-based audio/video presentations such as this provide state/local government leaders with a way of communicating with SC citizens (and other interested parties) in a far more personal and comprehensive way than the traditional venues such as press releases, news conferences, etc.   Further, audio/video clips such as this can be synchronized with the display of Web pages/images (e.g., PowerPoint slides) in the browser window thereby permitting the delivery of very "meaty" and sophisticated presentations.

SC Poets Reading Their Works (not currently available)
In celebration of National Poetry Month (April 1999), the SC Arts Commission sponsored public readings on SC Education Radio by 5 SC poets, including SC’s Poet Laureate, Bennie Lee Sinclair.

SC Gov. Beasley's 1998 State-of-the-State Speech
On Jan. 21, 1998, SC Educational Television (SC ETV) and OIR teamed up to broadcast SC Gov. David Beasley's State-of-the-State Speech live over the Internet using RealVideo technology. This was the first such broadcast by SC ETV and its New Media Group, and a first for a South Carolina governor. (~ 45 minutes)
During the speech, the governor showed a short clip highlighting the wilderness areas purchased by the state for permanent preservation during 1997.
The SC ETV New Media Group maintains a RealAudio/RealVideo archive available through its Home Page.

		The free browser plug-in, RealPlayer (version 5.0 or above), is REQUIRED to view the streaming RealAudio & RealVideo "shows," links to which are given below. RealPlayer can be downloaded here.
		The free browser plug-in, QuickTime Player, is required to view the QuickTime movies used in several of the "shows" (Heimlich Maneuver, Protein Synthesis). The QuickTime Player can be downloaded here.

Historic Columbia (SC) Homes: RealAudio RealVideo (not currently available)
	A brief overview of the 4 historic homes owned by the Historic Columbia (SC) Foundation, including the boyhood home of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the U.S. (~ 5 minutes)
USC - College of Library & Information Science
	The USC College of Library & Information Science (CLIS) has a large Continuing Education program which is interested in integrating various Web-based materials, specifically including RealAudio-/RealVideo-synchronized presentations, into its curriculum. Such an approach would have the effect of both expanding its student base/geographic reach, while freeing up faculty time for other endeavors. Working with the CLIS faculty, Bill Schmidt/OIR has converted one of the more popular CE courses, Go for That Grant !! to the RealAudio-synchronized format, and this pilot will be made available to former CE students for final evaluation in the near future. If this pilot is as sucessful as the CLIS faculty anticipates, many of the current CE courses will be moved to this format, and possibly new CE courses will be added to take advantage of the Web's wide geographic reach. Additionally, if successful, the appropriate portions of CLIS' Distance Education program will be migrated to this format as well. This item contains the introductory/informational pages to the presentation, as well as that portion of the RealAudio-synchronized course which discusses how to get "Clever Ideas" for grants. (~ 8 minutes)
Downtown as a Classroom
	Downtown as a Classroom (DAAC) is a collaborative partnership between the SC Department of Education, the SC Downtown Development Association, and the SCANA Corporation. The program focuses on the dual goals of generating community support for the needs and improvement of education, and of enhancing the economic vitality of rural downtowns, and accomplishes this by building relationships between "main street" and the local schools through the specific DAAC programs implemented. This RealAudio-based presentation describes 5 such programs. (For additional information on DAAC, contact the SC Downtown Development Association (Columbia, SC; (803) 799-9574.) (~ 8 minutes)
Heimlich Maneuver on a Choking Infant
	A RealAudio- and RealVideo-based tutorial showing how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on a choking infant. The QuickTime movie on which these tutorials are based is also available. (~ 30 seconds)
How Proteins are Made
	Bill Schmidt/OIR describes how proteins are made in this RealVideo-based tutorial. The tutorial ends with a QuickTime movie (460KB) which summarizes what has been said. (~ 6 minutes)
William Price Fox Readings
	The distinguished southern author and University of South Carolina Writer-in-Residence reads several of his stories, Big Other Brother . . . and Death Row Inmates (3 min.), and The Frog Jump

SC State Library - Grants Research Collection Overview
	The SC State Library is beginning to provide RealAudio-synchronized tutorial on some of its collections. The first such tutorials pertain to its Grants Research Collection.
SC Dept. of Disabilities & Special Needs - 2 Training Items
	The SC Dept. of Disabilities & Special Needs has significant training responsibilities throughout the state, responsibilities far greater than its budget currently allows for instructors and traveling to accomplish the required training. In light of this, DDSN is very interested in the potential savings that Web-/computer-based training offers, and has worked with OIR to develop these 2 Web-based RealAudio-synchronized training modules to investigate the feasibility of Web-based training.
South Carolina Infrastructure Study
	According to a study commissioned by the SC Budget & Control Board, SC governments have spent and will spend up to $57 billion to extend services to new development between 1995 - 2015. Board planner Phil Slayter discusses this study in a talk to the Government Finance Officers Association of SC (GFOASC). (~ 20 minutes)
Government Finance Officers Association of SC
	The Government Finance Officers Association of SC (GFOASC) is primarily an educational organization with its large membership widely dispersed throughout SC and neighboring states. In order to provide educational opportunities to its membership, and based on several successful prototypes developed by Bill Schmidt/OIR, the GFOASC has decided to offer its members the opportunity to earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) by viewing Web-based RealAudio clips and RealAudio-syncrhonized presentations which it will create based on presentations at its luncheons and at its annual meeting breakout sessions.. This item is a RealAudio-based presentation of Dr. Charles Gould, President of Florence-Darlington Techncial College, who spoke to the GFOASC in October 1998 on the subject of "Change in Higher Education and its Impact on the Role of Finance Officers." (~ 38 minutes)
Gullah Stories
	This is a RealAudio-based "slide show" consisting of 4 short stories in the Gullah language, accompanied by their English translations. Gullah is an English-based language spoken by many blacks inhabiting the coastal districts of South Carolina/Georgia which contains vocabulary and grammatical elements from various African languages. Bill Schmidt/OIR created the "show" in April 1997 in order to demonstrate the potential usefulness of the streaming audio technology in education and tourism development. (~ 3 minutes)
USC's Modern Political Collections
	The University of South Carolina’s Modern Political Collections has many audio and video clips in its collection and is currently investigating the feasibility of putting selected clips out on its Web site. Some years ago the Collections had a 15 minute promotional video made which described the history and mission of the Collection, and also had 3 minute interviews with the late Rep. Floyd Spence, Sen. Ernest Hollings, and former Gov. John West. The audio of that video is here in its entirety, along with the individual clips of the Spence, Hollings and West interviews.
SC Department of Archives & History
	The South Carolina Dept. of Archives & History has placed on the Web four 30-second public service announcements created in 1995 by SC Educational Television which present important reasons for "preserving South Carolina’s documentary heritage".
Richland County Public Library - Childrens' Stories (Table of Contents) \| The Stories themselves
	The Richland County Public Library puts great emphasis on service to the community, placing particular emphasis on delivering programs for children. Among the children’s programs are storytellers who are brought in to recite stories from all over the world. Frequently, after the stories have finished, the children are asked to draw pictures giving their interpretation of the stories, and here are 3 such stories, accompanied by the childrens' drawings.
SC State Library - Childrens' Stories
	World.wide.reading@your library is a vacation reading program for children in Georgia and South Carolina, and the program is sponsored here in SC by the SC State Library. Any child can join the reading program at their local library and earn rewards for reading during the school vacation. The 3 children's stories here are a part of this program.
Greater Columbia (SC) Chamber of Commerce
	The Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce is one of the few Chambers in the U.S. which has a wireless (WAP) Web site. This is a 3 minute overview of the information on the site and the advantages to having access to a wireless Web site. (~ 3 minutes)
SC Arts Commission
	The South Carolina Arts Commission has, in the past, had numerous audio clips on its Web site, and currently has several here.
USC's McKissick Museum - Folklife Clip
	One of the major missions of the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum is to document South Carolina and Southern folklife. In this context, I have assisted the museum in beginning to digitize many of their audio holdings, and it is beginning to place some of them out on the Web. At the bottom of the page to which this is linked is a short clip of Nick Hallman and the Nickpickers playing at the 1998 Fall Folklife Festival which was held at McKissick. (~ 3 minutes)
USC's Best Center - College of Library and Information Science
	There are numerous ways of creating RealAudio-synchronized presentations. One of the more recent authoring tools from RealNetworks, RealPresenter, enables one to very easily create such a presentation from a PowerPoint presentation. All one does is import the PowerPoint presentation into RealPresenter and narrate each slide. A nice touch is that RealPresenter also creates a Table of Contents (TOC) to the presentation so that one can go to individual slides within the presentation without having to play the presentation until one gets to the slide(s) one wants to hear. (As point of information, the TOC is implemented through SMIL, so it can be created by hand as well by a knowledgeable SMIL author.) While use of this tool has several advantages, it has numerous drawbacks as well; these will not be discussed here. This presentation was created by Jill Chappell-Fail of USC’s College of Library and Information Science using RealPresenter Pro, and describes CLIS’ Best Center. (~ 6 minutes)
SC Department of Education Teacher Quality Conference (no longer available on the Web)
	On June 24-25, 1999, the SC Dept. of Education held a "Teacher Quality Conference" in Charleston, SC. Many of the speakers/sessions were taped and are available through the Web in the RealAudio format. Included are form er SC Governor and U.S. Dept. of Education Secretary, Richard Riley, and SC Superintendent of Schools, Mrs. Inez Tenenbaum.
SC State Museum -- Historical Interpretation (August 14, 1999)
	On August 14, 1999 at the SC State Museum, British actor Howard Burnham portrayed Frank Vizetelly, a writer and artist for The Illustrated London News. Originally with the federal forces, Vizetelly later began covering the war from the Southern perspective, and was the only journalist who accompanied Confederate President Jefferson Davis when he fled Richmond at the end of the war. In the clips provided here, Mr. Burnham introduces the historical Vizetelly and gives several excerpts from his portrayal of Vizetelly, covering such subjects as the Trent Affair and Jefferson Davis' flight from Richmond.
SC State Museum -- Historical Interpretation (August 12, 2000)
	On August 12, 2000 at the SC State Museum, British actor Howard Burnham portrayed British General Sir John Lambert, Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (1772 - 1847), as he makes his report on the devastating British loss at New Orleans at the hands of Andrew Jackson. General Lambert makes his report to His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, who is presiding over a Board of Enquiry at Horse Guards, British Army Headquarters in London. In the clips provided here, Mr. Burnham, as General Lambert, tells the story of South Carolina-born "Old Hickory" Jackson and the stunning triumph of Jackson's "dirty shirts" over the redcoats at the end of the War of 1812.
SC State Museum -- Artifact Presentation G2 Version Flash Version
	The State Museum collection contains vastly more items than can ever be displayed due to space and time limitations. The Museum's History Curator, Dr. Fritz Hamer, is investigating the feasibility of displaying such items, along with historical interpretation, using Web-based RealAudio-synchronized technology and Flash. In this presentation, Dr. Hamer briefly describes 3 flags which were used by SC military units during the early days of the Confederate era.
SC State Museum -- Director's Report
	Dr. Tony Ganong, the Director of the State Museum, delivers his quarterly report as it appeared in the Museum's Summer 1998 newsletter via this RealAudio clip. Web-based audio/video presentations such as this provide state/local government leaders with a way of communicating with SC citizens (and other interested parties) in a far more personal and comprehensive way than the traditional venues such as press releases, news conferences, etc. Further, audio/video clips such as this can be synchronized with the display of Web pages/images (e.g., PowerPoint slides) in the browser window thereby permitting the delivery of very "meaty" and sophisticated presentations.
SC Poets Reading Their Works (not currently available)
	In celebration of National Poetry Month (April 1999), the SC Arts Commission sponsored public readings on SC Education Radio by 5 SC poets, including SC’s Poet Laureate, Bennie Lee Sinclair.
SC Gov. Beasley's 1998 State-of-the-State Speech
	On Jan. 21, 1998, SC Educational Television (SC ETV) and OIR teamed up to broadcast SC Gov. David Beasley's State-of-the-State Speech live over the Internet using RealVideo technology. This was the first such broadcast by SC ETV and its New Media Group, and a first for a South Carolina governor. (~ 45 minutes) During the speech, the governor showed a short clip highlighting the wilderness areas purchased by the state for permanent preservation during 1997. The SC ETV New Media Group maintains a RealAudio/RealVideo archive available through its Home Page.