How Transcoding Helps Make Video Content Available to All
Behind the scenes is a complex process known as transcoding, which enables creators to allow quality adjustments to fit different devices and connection speeds. The benefit is that learners or viewers don’t have to miss out regardless of how they consume content.
Figuring out the Basics: First, the system looks at the details of your file, including the file type, how clear the picture is, and what kind of technology was used to create it.
Choosing the Right Translator: Then, it picks the best way to translate your file for what you want. This process could be compared to choosing the right language translator for a specific conversation.
Making the Translation: Next, the file is translated using the chosen method. During this process, unnecessary data is removed to make the file smaller, but the quality remains good.
Creating the New File: The system then puts together a new file that’s ready to work on the device or platform you want to use. The new version will be a perfect fit for where you want it to play.
With transcoding, you have a new file with the right settings needed for a great viewing or listening experience.
Transcoding is constantly happening in the background, which allows viewers to have a good experience, free of things like continuous buffering. If you’re live streaming or provide video-on-demand, transcoding improves performance by creating multiple versions optimized for devices and network conditions. It adapts video content to suit the viewer’s device, network conditions, and preferences, optimizing the user experience.
It provides:
- Quality Adjustment: Transcoding allows you to adjust the quality of your video to suit different viewing scenarios. You can create high-quality versions for big screens and lower-quality versions for mobile devices or slower internet connections
- Reduced Buffering: By adjusting the video’s bitrate in real-time based on the viewer’s internet speed, transcoding minimizes buffering and ensures a seamless viewing experience. This is especially critical for live-streaming events where buffering can lead to missed moments.
- Content Delivery: Transcoding can be used to prepare your video for efficient delivery through content delivery networks, allowing viewers worldwide to access your content quickly and reliably.
- Storage Savings: Transcoding reduces the storage space required for your video files. You can store a single high-quality master copy and generate lower-quality versions on the fly when needed.
Five Advantages of Asynchronous Learning
While both models have their place in education, today’s focus is on asynchronous learning and some of its benefits to students. Asynchronous learning offers a number of benefits.
Students Have Control of Their Learning
Learners have full responsibility for their education. Because they decide when and where they’re going to learn, students are active participants in their education.
Asynchronous Learning is Flexible
Flexibility is particularly important for students who have a myriad of other responsibilities during when lectures would usually be scheduled. Materials are available in a specific place, so students can log in and complete learning modules when they have the time. When learning is made convenient, students are more likely to stay on course, active and engaged.
Students Can Learn at Their Own Pace
Students have time to reflect on their learning before answering questions, joining discussions or taking a test. Additionally, students can read and review materials, take notes, skip ahead or go back as frequently as they need to before moving on to the next lesson.
“One of the most empowering benefits of asynchronous learning is that it is respectful to each student’s learning pace.”
Interactivity Can Be Built In and Encouraged Through Asynchronous Learning
Just because asynchronous learning isn’t in real time doesn’t mean it can’t be interactive. YuJa video enterprise solutions has features like in-video comments that allow users to share their thoughts and see other comments as they view; video quizzing in which if a student answers wrong the content is recapped; and interactive assessment capabilities within the video experience including creating video quizzes, inserting related documents, and making interactive comments.
Use Case: Colorado Community College System
Colorado Community College System is one institution making full use of YuJa’s interactive video feature. With the ability to seamlessly embed quiz questions within a video, instructors found that they can not only improve classroom assessment, but can convert students from passive to active learners as they learn remotely.
Asynchronous Learning Helps Remove Technology Barriers
It would be a mistake for institutional leaders to assume that all students have access to reliable, high quality internet. Solutions like YuJa have accounted for this, creating a strategy to ensure all students can take advantage of asynchronous learning. Technology like adaptive bit-rate streaming and allowing students the ability to download content when they have a solid internet connection and then watch it later are just some of the strategies universities can use to ensure student success. Instructors also can revoke permissions to content, which will then automatically be deleted from devices where it’s downloaded. This ensures content remains managed and secure.