Toronto college uses video podcasts to put documentary festival in the picture

Students at Toronto’s Centennial College will hone their new media chops next week when they begin podcasting the day’s events from the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival. Starting on May 2, student volunteers and one faculty member at the college’s Centre for Creative Communications will be working onsite at the festival and at the college to produce a video podcast of the day’s events, which will be available for free within 24 hours. Although the festival has offered audio-only records of its events in the past, the video experience is a new one. "We’ve been talking to Centennial about doing some manner of collaboration, and they had the technology to do this," says Brett Hendrie, managing director of the Hot Docs festival. Hendrie says the podcasts will "give people who weren’t able to attend the festival a way to access some of the knowledge in those sessions." However, those viewing the event at home obviously won’t have the benefit of asking questions or networking between sessions, he points out. With seating during Hot Docs’ industry events limited – and very costly – in-person attendance is more reserved for established documentary producers. "What we’re targeting with the podcasts is really emerging producers and film-makers who are really more beginning in their career," he says. Hot Docs will retain the rights to the podcasts, but has a policy of granting use of such materials for learning and professional development. "We have done a lot of outreach with other film educational institutions, both business and also more artistic and craft-based, to let them know about this and that they can use it in their classrooms and so forth as they see fit," Hendrie says. According to Chris Terry, professor of broadcasting and film at Centennial College, video podcasting "is not the next wave – it’s the current wave of broadcast technology." With that in mind, he’s approached the college’s educational review committee to get podcasting production added to the program. "We’re looking renewing our curriculum video delivery component to include this form," he says. Informally, however, students at Centennial have been dabbling with podcasting since late last year, when they began producing their own podcasts to cover the federal election. Before that, they were offering streaming audio over the Internet. The next step, Terry says, is a full "on-demand" portal incorporating video and audio content. "Then, you’ll be able to…download or watch live streams, there’ll be an archive you can search," he says. " not there yet, because we’re just building the front end, and that’ll be up at the end of May." The college will use two servers running Apple Computer Inc.’s OS X operating system and Quicktime Broadcaster software to host the podcasts. At roughly an hour per session, and approximately five sessions a day for four days, the Centennial team will be generating a considerable amount of data. "I think we calculated that it would probably be near a by the time we finish, maybe even more," Terry says, adding that he’s targeted a maximum file size of 40 megabytes to keep downloads manageable, meaning the video coverage of each session will likely have to be chopped into two or three separate files. Besides the festival, the organization also holds monthly documentary screenings and also produces a best-practices handbook for documentary film-makers. "These knowledge captures will really help to expand our website online so it becomes a resource for professionals throughout the year," he says.

Toronto college uses video podcasts to put documentary festival in the picture

News | 04/28/2006 4:00 am EDT

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