BYU-Idaho Supports Online Learning with Automated Video Transcoding

Leila Meyer, technology writer summarizes, "Brigham Young University-Idaho has automated the process of converting videos created by professors into formats required for online viewing, and the system has processed more than 13,000 video assets in the last year and a half."

Photo: Campus Technology

Online Learning Strains Video Production Capabilities
BYU-Idaho currently offers four online associate degrees, 10 online bachelor's degrees and more than 100 online courses, and it's working to expand its online course offerings. Some faculty members are also using video-based tutorials, lectures and course materials to augment traditional face-to-face classes, and the campus is home to a large broadcasting facility. Professors create their own videos and send them to the university's in-house video production facility to be converted to the required format for online viewing, and the large volume of videos was straining the capabilities of the facility.

"It was becoming very apparent that the number of videos we were creating was just going to skyrocket, both for content for academic use and content for production use," said Michael Jeffs, media support specialist in the A/V Production and Broadcast department at the university.

Jeffs and the team at the video production facility began searching for a transcoding system that could easily convert large numbers of faculty-recorded videos to a format for distribution and viewing on a variety of device types.
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Source: Campus Technology