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Webcasting 101: TV on Your PC
by Kendall Callas
Sorry, but your feet are going to get wet as we wade ever deeper into the topic of streaming video in the legal community. Each month we look at law firm and law school “webcasts” — audio/video over the World Wide Web. This month we expand our topic to include our first look at webcasting in the courts.

WHAT’S ON TONIGHT?

The Michigan Courts and the State Court Administrative Office faced a burdensome task in 2003 when a web of rate and law changes took effect in Michigan. To promulgate the details, they chose webcasting, via the facilities of a webcasting service cutely named You-niversity.

“Michigan Judicial Institute”
[play
button] http://www.you-niversity.com/affiliates/mji/feescosts.html

The “Fees, Costs, and Assessments” webcast series offers information in 5 short videos:

  • Probate Court (10 minutes)
  • Collection and Transmittal of Fees (15 minutes)
  • Circuit Court and Family Division (8 minutes)
  • District/Municipal Court (22 minutes)
  • Jury Fees (7 minutes)
The content of these webcasts is not likely to be of interest to my readers; what is interesting about this site, however, is the choice and use of webcasting to distribute this type of information — detailed, irregular, and number-heavy. Very legible text slides with synchronized audio and video provide an especially good channel for learning.

SLIDES+AUDIO+VIDEO

The web service utilized (You-niversity.com) provided an effective medium for delivering training and disseminating detailed information. It worked smoothly to deliver text slides with accompanying audio/video, with a nice a Table of Contents menu to allow one to skip around within the topics in the presentation, and buttons to allow skipping between slides, backward or forward.

The system detects your connection speed and transmits only the level of media your computer can handle: Broadband connections receive audio, video, and text slides. Slower connections will get only audio+slides, really slow connections get only slides. My 56K test was apparently too slow to transmit video; I heard the audio track but was sent only text slides.

Generally, I was impressed, but my disappointments are two:
1) You can’t watch video at dial-up speeds; and 2) the delays are bothersome while jumping between slides or topics.

Requires Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player; it also uses proprietary player software, so a short download initiates access.

For more details about the Michigan experiment, including Q&A and supporting documents, go to http://www.courts.mi.gov/scao/resources/other/fcawebcast.htm


Too many webcasts, not enough time. If you see streaming audio or video you think would be of interest to our readers, please URL and description.
Has your firm produced a webcast? We want the details!
If you'd like a clickable list of the web addresses from this and past columns,
Kendall Callas, , is president of American Webcast and a 20-year veteran law office technology consultant.


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Copyright (c) 2011 by Kendall Callas   All rights reserved.