Using Video CDs For Education

Phil Shapiro writes: "Video CDs offer one of the lowest-cost ways of distributing training and instruction. They can be duplicated much faster than VHS videotapes, the media is much cheaper and the postage costs are much cheaper. Learn how and why we ought to be exploring the educational potential of this new media."

Comments

Watch out for CD-R VCD in older DVD players

[benwaggoner]

One great thing about VCD is that they work in standard DVD players (NTSC and PAL VCD discs only work in players for the respective formats, of course; a limitation not seen on computers). However, lots of older DVD players can't read CD-R media, because of an incompatibiliity with the DVD laser. Duplicated VCDs on normal CD media work just fine, of course. All DVD players in the market today should work, AFAIK.

Re:Watch out for CD-R VCD in older DVD players

[Verizon Guy]

One great thing about VCD is that they work in standard DVD players (NTSC and PAL VCD discs only work in players for the respective formats, of course; a limitation not seen on computers).

Bzzzzzzt... and bzzzzzzt!

When I was DVD player shopping (not less than a year ago), I came upon a few DVD players that specifically said they would NOT play VCDs (a Sanyo, IIRC). BTW, my Apex and Daewoo DVD players play both PAL and NTSC VCDs without a hitch. There is a button on the remote labeled P/N that will switch the output. You can also set the output to NTSC only in the setup; the conversion is done dynamically in the DVD player!! (You may lose a few horiz lines when watching PAL VCDs tho, they are chopped off due to the format differences.) That's the bonus about those "cheapo" Chinese brands... they play everything under the sun, CDRs, MP3s, and let you disable Macrovision to boot!

Re:Watch out for CD-R VCD in older DVD players

[sfe_software]

I've had a lot of Sony products that piss me off in that respect. I bought a newer-model car CD player that won't read most CD-R's; yet my $25 "Lennox Sound" portable will even read CD-RW audio CDs.

OTOH, I have a Pioneer DVD player I picked up in 1999 that plays VCDs, and will read any media I can throw at it. I picked that model specifically because it mentions VCD on the front panel, and at the time I thought that was a pretty unique feature.

I personally like the 8mm CD-Rs. They hold about 24 minutes of audio or VCD, and are perfect for typical 30 minute shows (minus commercials == 22 minutes). They're much more convenient than the 12mm discs IMO.

Re:Watch out for CD-R VCD in older DVD players

[ncc74656]

I personally like the 8mm CD-Rs. They hold about 24 minutes of audio or VCD, and are perfect for typical 30 minute shows (minus commercials == 22 minutes). They're much more convenient than the 12mm discs IMO.

I'd like to know from what dimension you're getting an 8mm disc that holds nearly half an hour of video. :-) (I think you meant 80mm, or 8cm).

On a more serious note, 80mm discs wouldn't be bad for some things if they weren't so much more expensive than 120mm discs. Economies of scale have favored the larger discs. (In any case, the shows I burn to SVCD are "1-hour" shows that get trimmed down to ~45 minutes. The smaller CDs wouldn't work for that...and note that I'm using SVCD, which is a better format than VCD (SVCD is MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-1, and it uses higher resolution and higher bitrates).)

New Media?

[DeepZenPill]

VCD's aren't exactly new media. They've been used for years, just mostly in asian markets. Advocating their use now just delays even bigger acceptance of DVD's. Instructional use is one thing that could further drive the DVD format, and even more importantly, set a real demand for recordable DVD's. Sure sticking with CD's might seem good now, but it just hurts the impact of media designed for such video uses.

vcdhelp.com

[metatruk]

A good place to learn how to convert various media to burnable (S)VCD format can be found at http://www.vcdhelp.com

More access to learning opprotunities?

[dakoda]

The article starts:

The education deficit in this country and others occurs because the quantity of student learning needs boosting. Students need access to more learning opportunities.

More access to learning opprotunities? What they need is more of a will to use the opprotunities they have. The unfortunate truth that I have at least witnessed is that most students don't care to learn. those that actualyl do want to learn often find their own means when their opprotunities aren't enough. agreed, some do not, but i believe a far greater number simply do not care.

They go on to say how video is the best way to learn? haha, i don't think so. interaction is needed for real learning. and then, the cd's only hold 70 minutes. what can one really learn in 70 minutes? a lot for some things, but almost nothing for others. a lot of subjects are either a lot of practice (calculus, for example), or just a lot of material (french language). because this offers no interaction (practice/ Q&A sessions), the only application would really be subjects that are volumnous, and those may not fit all in 70 minutes...lots of cd changing is in your future =)

i dunno, it just seems like a waste to me. not that the current education system is anywhere near perfect (indeed, i feel it is far from it), this doesn't seem to me like it would enhance it much. anyone get to watch those science laser disks in science class? interesting pictures and demonstrations, but most of the actual content of the class was drawn on the chalkboard.

Re:More access to learning opprotunities?

[FattMattP]

I can't believe that your post got modded up. You sound like some privileged, middle-class kid from America who's never left his country. The original article, which you quote, states that he's talking about not only his own country but others as well.

You begin to make sweeping statements that students need to have more of a will to use the opportunities that they already have. Please, tell us about those opportunities that they have in, say, poorer parts of India, Brazil, or even the United States. Why do you feel those opportunites are enough? Don't you think that choice is good? Don't you think that having more educational options available to people is a good thing? Do you think that everyone has access to the same materials that you do? That the libraries throughout the world or even your country have a wealth of materials such as the ones you have access to? You know, there's a lot of places in the world where quality education isn't ubiquitous.

You also make the mistake of thinking that education can only be gained by sitting through a lengthy class and not from watching a 70 minute video. Who says that one VCD, or many, have to teach you French or calculus? And why do you think they can't? Sure, interaction is important, but haven't you ever sat down with a book and learned something from it? There's plenty of people who've taught themselves things from reading a book on how to do it. I learned how to draw and paint from reading a book. I also learned to program Perl from a book. There's no reason that a video makes it any different, it's just a different medium.

Thankfully, there are people such as ADUni that continue to make quality educational programs accessible in spite of your defeatist attitude. Not only do they provide the videos but they also provide the materials so that people can learn by practicing.

quote:

i dunno, it just seems like a waste to me.

There are a lot of less foutunate people than yourself who are quite thankful that others in this world such as Phil Shapiro do not share your views.

Re:More access to learning opprotunities?

[FattMattP]

Why do you think a school that can't afford books can afford a VCD player?

Since you didn't pay attention to the original article, I'll quote this part for you:

An interesting angle to the video cd story is that in the next year or two most of the laptops entering the donation stream will have built-in CD-ROM drives. Law firms, corporations and government offices that upgrade their laptops will pass along to charities and the nonprofit sector a very usable, portable multimedia access device.

Remember that each book is expensive to produce and duplicate. Digital media, by contrast, is cheap to duplicate. If you combine this with royalty free content you create educational materials that are far easier to multiply among students than books alone.

Goodbye VHS, Hello VCD

[silentbozo]

Just like how VHS replaced 16mm film (do any teachers know how to thread a reel these days?), the VCD should replace VHS. The reasons why:

VHS tapes get chewed up with use, VCDs don't degrade with repeated playback and if they are damaged, just burn a new copy from your master.

VHS tapes need rewinding, placing wear and tear on capital equipment (VCRs), VCDs don't suffer from this to the same degree.

VCDs can be played by individual students, using a donated computer - no need for those bulky media labs.

VCDs are cheap to mail, so you can trade a bunch of instructional media for less than a dollar.

The only caveat is that the cheapest VHS players are less expensive than the cheapest DVD players (at least, as far as I've seen.)

An additional plus is if this takes off, we can add ANOTHER arena of fair use that uses the "evil" blank CD that the RIAA wants to continue to tax and regulate. The more legit uses we can find for blank CDs, the stronger the argument for banishing the CD tax, and tossing out any notion of regulating recordable media.

At home, I'm spec'ing out a project to convert all analog media that I have (video tapes, audio tapes, etc.) to digital equivalents (VCDs, CDs), and storing copies of them on a big LAN server (MPEGs and MP3s) for my personal library. I expect my tapes to completely degrade in another ten years, so this is one way of safeguarding my investment. On a related topic, does anyone know if there are archived copies of periodical articles, like you can find on microfilm, but on CD?

Cart in front of the horse

[RobertFisher]

The author of this article has some good technical points. Yes, VCDs are much easier to deal with on older and less expensive hardware. However, he is neglecting a critical issue : where will one get the content in the first place? Although there are thousands upon thousands of active open source projects out there, only a handful have good free written documentation, much less freely available video tutorials! And while there are a handful of oustanding science and mathematics video series ("The Mechanical Universe", "Cosmos", "By the Numbers"), they are almost always owned by the university or broadcast station which produced them.

So, if you are going to distribute video content, either you are going to have to purchase it, or produce it yourself. It doesn't take much to do a quick-and-dirty video shoot with your vidcam in your bedroom with poor lighting and sound, but to really put together an outstanding series like "The Mechanical Universe" takes a lot of time and effort by a lot of talented people. And if you are going to go to all the bother of mass-distributing your video, it absolutely behooves you to do an outstanding job.

So the question remains... where is all this great video content going to come from?

Bob

Text&Image is better than Rolling Video

[LionKimbro]

You can read text/image faster than you can listen to a person talk. You can search text faster than you can search a video. You can perform minute fast forwards and rewinds with much greater speed than you can through a video- just move your eye, rather than fiddling with a UI. I could go on for some time with this.

This isn't happening already?

[whee]

I went to a smallish private school in Delaware and we used VCDs in the French language courses. As much as I hated the class, VCDs were a nice choice for learning a language -- quick playback for review, easy to maintain, simple to use. (If anyone cares, the material was French in Action.)

I find it odd that techniques like this aren't used more widely; My school wasn't large or that wealthy, yet they decided to use VCD to teach the course. It seems that VCD isn't widespread just because it takes a little more work to generate a course around it; My French teacher worked hard for a high school level class, but I doubt most do.

The only disadvantage to using video material is the fact that it's video material -- television anyone? It's very easy to stare at a screen and completely zone out, ignoring whatever you're trying to be taught. If not interrupted constantly for questioning and such, VCDs are useless.

more potential applications

[cowtamer]

The idea is that VCDs are an excellent medium for any instance that require you to distribute video.

I admit that in most cases, video is not the best medium for instruction. However, there are many more applications:

1) Archives of videotaped university lectures at the library [my school had real videotapes and I found this extremely helpful, but they were somewhat jelaously guarded]

2) Sharing video with semi-computer-literate family: Sending out cousin Larry's first piano recital to all the aunts and uncles, mailing a copy of the wedding to all the guests, etc.

3) Distributing underground "cult classic" movies, favorite TV episodes, etc. Demos for independent filmmakers

4) "Handouts" for students in film/advertising class

4) Ticking off the MPAA

5) etc.

I'm sure you can think of more. What kind of geeks are you???

VCD & DVD

[quakeroatz]

Many people are posting on how DVDs are better than VCDs... while this may be true in some cases, in other ways they're the same thing

DVD = 4.7GB
CD = 650-700MB

(NTSC)
DVD = Mpeg2 video 720x480
VCD = Mpeg2 video 352x240 - 720x480 (xvcd)

Were really talking about storage capacity and video resolution as the main differences here.
My point being that a VCDs with educational content can be produced with DVD video quality, at a cheaper price and still maintain compatibility with standalone DVD players.

Why do you need video at all?

[g4dget]

It seems to me books or e-books are all around better: they can be read at the user's pace, they are easier to produce, and they are more compact. Videos might be good for an occasional clip demonstrating something that is difficult to describe; when that is necessary, they are easy to include in e-books. They might also be good for people who are illiterate, but perhaps the first thing to do for people who are illiterate is to teach them how to read.

So, altogether, I just don't see the point of producing a lot of video at all.

How old VCD really is ..

[JupiterX]

Everybody's arguing about how VCD is not a new format, but nobody seems to know how old it actually is. Some think it actually came out around the same time as DVD. The fellow who wrote the article thinks it's a new format. One fellow isn't sure, but thinks it might be even older, but isn't quite sure. Egh. Apparently I'm the first who actually bothered to Google it. VCD is fifteen years old. It was created in 1987. Now, was that so difficult? And as a matter of trivia, the compact disc was originally invented with video in mind.

You sound...

[Snaller]

...like one of those people who don't want to learn *G*