To a newcomer, the world of webcasting may seem a lot like web conferencing.  It’s true that some of the features overlap.  So does it follow that the two technologies might be more or less interchangeable?  Well as you may have guessed already, we’re here to tell you that’s not always the case.

So how do you decide when to use one technology over the other? Consider this the top 10 reasons why webcasting is different from web conferencing, and how it would apply to your specific needs.

1. Meetings vs. presentations.

   The primary concern for conferencing technologies are small, highly-interactive meetings.  Webcasting tools on the other hand focus on presentation capture and streaming (e.g. for lectures and seminars).  As you can imagine, the two have rather different agendas.  Web conferencing centers on real-time interactivity and collaboration (i.e. heavy two-way communication). Webcasting on the other hand gives priority to scalability for delivery to a large number of viewers – as well as to video quality, on-demand recording, publishing and post-production.

   

2. Transparency to speakers.

   In webcasting, speakers do not need any special software or specific training to be able to present.   This is beneficial because the people presenting tend to be such a diverse group, each with different levels of comfort with technology.  With webcasting technologies like ePresence, they can just plug in their laptop and present as they normally would.

3. No special software for viewers.

   Some web conferencing providers require viewers to download proprietary software in order to participate in conference sessions.  Possible compatibility issues aside, this is another task that is placed on the viewer. Webcast providers tend to utilize browser plug-ins instead (e.g. Flash, Silverlight), which are used by many other applications. ePresence, for example, currently uses Flash, which most viewers already have installed on their systems.

4. Picture and audio quality.

   Some web conferencing systems stream in lower resolution video to reduce the bandwidth load on participants.  Again, because of the heavily two-way nature of web conferencing the priorities are different: since everyone streams to everyone, bandwidth is a limited resource. Webcasting technologies deliver one stream to many viewers. In turn it can afford to deliver much higher quality audio and video – including HD. Audio quality is also a factor to consider. Often phone conferencing or VoIP will be used in web conferences to accomplish communication.  Although perfect for small-group discussion, VoIP can be unreliable and not production worthy, making it less than satisfactory for important presentations.

5. Reliance on Internet connectivity.

   A connection to the internet is not always guaranteed.  Unfortunately it often seems that network stability conspires with Murphy’s Law to come crashing down right when you need it most.   Webcast hardware cannot control your connection to the Internet, but it can offer a backup.  While the presentation is being streamed live to your viewers it is also being captured locally, even when your connection to the Internet drops.  Once Internet access is regained you can resume streaming your presentation, then publish a seamless archive for on-demand viewing. If the Internet drops during a web conference, not only are there gaps in the live presentation, but in the resulting archive as well.

6. Media content ownership.

   When you subscribe to Software as a Service (SaaS) solution such as web conferencing, you often rely on that vendor’s storage for access to recordings.  If you are no longer willing to continue with that vendor you can lose those presentations.  With webcasting solutions such as ePresence, there is always the option to own the system and therefore own your content – so if you leave ePresence your content leaves with you.

7. Scalability.

   Webcasting is one-to-many, which means it’s designed to grow – both with the number of capture clients that can be used simultaneously, and with the number of viewers that can access the webcasts at the same time.    Web conferencing is a many-to-many streaming technology, so bandwidth consumption can increase exponentially with each additional participant. Therefore costs seem to rise significantly along with the number of viewers.   Even when the web conferencing provider can offer hundreds of ‘seats’ they still tend to fall short of the goal, with the stream becoming unreliable after 20 or so people.

8. On-demand media repository.

   Meetings don’t often need to be edited or easily searchable.  However both those features can be quite helpful with presentations.  Webcasting solutions often offer a searchable repository of your content along with some form of a post-production tool. In addition, webcasting technologies focus on the ability to easily publish high quality archives of live sessions, so those that missed out on the live webcast can catch it on-demand.

9. Automation.

   If you often need to stream, record and publish recurring events you can benefit from having an automated deployment. Many of the more popular webcast providers, including ePresence, offer an “automated-mode”, in which you may pre-schedule event sessions and have the webcast stations execute automatically – no manual interaction required.

10. Pricing models.

    One of the most attractive aspects to web conferencing solutions are their relatively low entry price points.  However, what is inexpensive up front does not always translate into what is inexpensive always.  The initial cost for webcasting technologies are higher because you are purchasing to own, i.e. buying hardware and software.  This will save money in the long run though – especially with increased use and larger participant numbers.

In the end it is up to you to decide what it is that you need.  One technology is not better at everything.  Another equally valid post could look at all the situations where webcast solutions fall short for your online delivery needs.

Often the best solution to encompass all your needs is to use a little bit of both: web conferencing for collaborative small meetings, and webcasting for scalable presentation delivery.

Please be advised that Thursday, July 1st, is Canada Day, a statutory holiday in Canada. Support response will be limited to urgent requests only. Regular support hours will resume on Friday, July 2nd.

ePresence will be exhibiting at the ED-MEDIA 2010 conference, being held in Toronto, Canada, from June 29 – July 2, 2010. Please drop by! We’d love to meet you and show off our latest and greatest developments.

ED-MEDIA 2010 Showcase Demonstration: ePresence Interactive Webcasting for Lecture Capture
(ID: 29628)

Place: Room #15, The Westin Harbour Castle – 1 Harbour Square, Toronto
Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Time: 5:30 pm – 7:30pm

Abstract:
Originally developed at the University of Toronto, ePresence (http://epresence.tv) is a complete solution for streaming, capturing, and publishing rich media content. Used globally by leading universities, hospitals, and businesses, it is designed to fit a variety of production scenarios – from remote webcasting to fully-automated room deployment. Learn how ePresence is currently being used at various universities for lecture and content capture, how the system integrates with Moodle and Blackboard to seamlessly publish course content, and how to create a hybrid Webcasting + Video Conferencing solution to bring a wider audience to meetings. Presentation includes full demonstration of the ePresence system.

About ED-MEDIA 2010:
ED-MEDIA – World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications – is an international conference, organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications on all topics related to multimedia, hypermedia and telecommunications/distance education. For registration and program information, see: http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/.

This is a quick note to let everyone know that our support line may be affected by the G8 and G20 summit, as our office is located close to Toronto’s Downtown “Red zone” and we rely on wireless connectivity for our voice services. Please try using the support email support@epresence.tv for tech-related inquires for the remainder of the week.  Our services are not expected to be interrupted otherwise.

Peter Wolf,  CEO

A week long examination of the present and future of technology is coming to Toronto starting next Monday. Net Change week is being held by SiG@MaRS from June 7th to the 11th.

This unique conference will highlight the intersection between social change and technology, the only event of its kind in North America.

Some 2000 people are estimated to be attending the five day event. If you’re unable to partake in person though, there’s some good news – this is the second year for the conference but the first time that we at ePresence will be able to help bring it to the rest of the world. You can check out live webcasts on key events all throughout the week at http://www.netchangeweek.ca.

While Net Change week will emphasize Toronto’s role at the leading edge of social and technological change, the conference will also address the wider impacts of the web. One panel discussion will attempt to map out the future of the web and its expanding role in our lives. To get to the future, however, one must survive the present. Here another panel discussion including Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, will delve into shady side of the net – examining how secure our information really is, our susceptibility to cyber-attacks and much more.

More information about those discussions along with the many others can be found again at http://www.netchangeweek.ca.

ePresence on iPhone?

It didn’t take too long before another round of the media format war begun.  After pushing Windows Media, Real and QuickTime off the Web, Adobe established a de-facto monopoly in this market.  We waited for two more years and then, after learning that non-Flash presentations are no longer produced by vast majority of our customers, we decided to retire the legacy encoders and focus our efforts on user experience, building the UI around Flash.  I must say that after releasing Flash-based ePresence v.6 we are getting nothing but positive feedback. The video quality has improved dramatically, the UI got much faster and sleeker, and a single encoder Capture application became more reliable and user friendly.

Of course, it would be foolish to expect that Adobe’s competitors would just let Flash dominate without a fight. Apple has made it very clear that Flash will never play on their mobile devices. Google has introduced non-Flash version of YouTube (now in beta) and also promised a new video codec (VP8) for Chrome soon.  Microsoft has endorsed h.264 support for the future version of IE, and, of course, SilverLight. Clearly, these companies will try to join the efforts around HTML5 and change the situation.

How does this affect the ePresence development roadmap? Well, we have been in similar situations before, when IE was fighting Netscape, .NET tried to beat Java, Windows Media pushed away Real, etc.  We have managed to deliver a reliable multi-channel presentation capture solution before and we will definitely succeed in the future to bring a product that just works, making the competition among technology vendors transparent to our customers.  Therefore,  we recently made a decision to support HTML5 in the future. We are also working on supporting Apple mobile devices. We are determined to stay and deliver, whether there is a format war or peace.

Peter Wolf, CEO.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

We are very excited to announce the immediate availability of a new “Premium” Hosting plan for heavy users, as well as a significant bandwidth quota increase for all existing subscription plans.

Starting today,  bandwidth quotas are doubled for Starter Hosting 1 year plans and tripled for Standard Hosting 1 year plans — both for new and existing customer plans.  The following changes are taken into effect:

• Starter Hosting: 10 GB of free traffic and 50 GB of free storage – $75/month
• Standard Hosting: 30 GB of free traffic and 100 GB of free storage – $100/month
• Premium Hosting: 100 GB of free traffic and 200 GB of free storage – $200/month

As you know, we are constantly working to drive our costs down and become more operationally efficient. As a result, we hope more customers will benefit from our new hosting options.  Please see the pricing section on our website for more information.

Thank you, as always, for your support.

ePresence Services Team

I’m happy to report that ePresence 6 has been a big success. Most of our users have upgraded and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. There are some quantitative measures such as tech support request ratio and usage stats that also suggest that ePresence 6 demonstrates improvements in both usability and reliability.

ePresence Uploader

Because of the improvements we’ve made to the reliability of streaming, recording, and publishing in ePresence, our team has had a chance to start development on some useful tools and secondary features that many of our customers have requested in the past.

Now in Beta: ePresence Uploader

This application allows you to publish any FLV or MP4 (H.264) video to your ePresence site. It is currently in beta, free for everyone with an ePresence server or hosting subscription, and is available for download here. The publishing process is very straight-forward:  select the video file, give it the title, specify the layout and folder and click Publish.  Easy!

New to ePresence 6: PPT upload to Producer

Since version 6, our post-production tool, ePresence Producer, has been moved online and now works as an ePresence Server extension in the admin area of the site. In the latest micro-release of our Server software, we have added the ability to upload PowerPoint files directly to ePresence Producer. Along with the new Uploader application, this allows you to manually create rich media presentations with your own video synchronized with any PowerPoint presentation.

Of course, ePresence Capture provides the easiest way to make online rich media presentations, but with the combination of Uploader and Producer, it’s now possible to create presentations from scratch, using any video you may have. This feature is now available free for all customers on ePresence 6.0 with current support coverage.

Sneak Peak: ePresence Exporter

This application will allow you to convert rich media presentations to flat MP4 videos. This opens up a number of new options for content distribution, such as:

• Upload your presentation to 3rd party video sites such as YouTube.
• Create RSS (podcast) feeds
• Create DVDs
• Play your presentations back on mobile devices, such as the iPhone

This is still in the very early stages of development, but if you own an ePresence Capture Station, and are interested in this feature, let us know, and we will be sure to include you once the development reaches beta. We plan on releasing this application free to all of our customers.

I hope you’re as excited as we are about the current and upcoming developments!

Peter Wolf

See ePresence 6.0 in Action

Please join us online at www.sig.uwaterloo.ca beginning Wednesday, January 27 at 7PM EST (GMT-5), to watch the live webcast of the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation featuring Adam Kahane.

The team at ePresence is delighted to be working with SiG@Waterloo to deliver this highly anticipated lecture to hundreds of viewers online.

An internationally acclaimed social innovator, once praised by South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Adam Kahane will deliver this year’s Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation and will present new ideas on how to achieve significant, durable social change for pressing and increasingly complex social problems. In the lecture, Kahane will draw on his extensive experience working with business, government, and civil society leaders from around the world to help them address their toughest challenges. The lecture, entitled “Power & Love”, will explore the role that these seemingly opposing forces play in affecting positive social change.

Download the Brochure

The ePresence team is very happy to announce the release of ePresence 6.0.

This release is focused on the end users’ experience as well as the UI improvements for the event producers. The list of fixes and improvements is long, but here we’ll mention just a few important ones:

• The Presentation Player has been re-designed using Adobe Flex technology. In addition to the look being completely refreshed for 2010, there are also some exciting new features. Users can watch presentations in full screen, switch between different layouts, and share it with others in a variety of ways. Embedding live and on-demand presentations to any 3rd party web site or CMS has never been easier. Any presentation can be embedded in practically any size.
• Screen capture in ePresence has been re-developed from the ground up. Whether the presenter is simply playing a simple PowerPoint animation, or showing a full-screen DVD, ePresence 6 will do a better job capturing dynamic content than ever before. A new feature in this version is a new “Screencast” mode, specifically designed for software demos. In this mode, the presenter’s audio is embedded into the screen video, ensuring perfect synchronization at all times, both live and on-demand.
• Our Capture Station software has been completely re-designed. This software is built around the H.264 video codec, for both the camera and presenter’s screen, ensuring the highest quality media playback at the lowest possible bandwidth requirements.
• ePresence Producer has been moved from the Capture Station to the Web. The administrator can now edit slide titles and chapters, move them around, trim the start- and end-times of the video, and revert to previous versions. It is no longer necessary to do all of the post-production before publication – our new online tool can be used at anytime.
• Scalability was another focus in 6.0. A lot of features have been optimized for deployment on Cloud Computing infrastructures, which enables the support of many thousands of concurrent connections.

We hope you’ll enjoy the beauty, ease and reliability of ePresence 6.0.