Advantages

The best features from both worlds.

At the beginning of the 21st century academics and industry started searching for the best solution for delivering presentation-style events (e.g. university lectures, academic talks, corporate keynotes, etc) to larger groups of remote participants. Researchers then found out very quickly that none of the existing technologies was perfect for this application: traditional one-to-many webcasting systems were not interactive and lacked support for visual aids; existing video- or web-conferencing solutions lacked an adequate scalability and the option of recording and accessing presentations on demand. Desire2Learn® Capture (formerly known as ePresence) project has been started at the University of Toronto (Canada) as an attempt to develop a technology that brings together interactivity and media richness of conferencing and scalability of webcasting.  The tremendous success of this project resulted in family of Desire2Learn Capture products and services that deliver a true front row experience to online audiences around the world.

Desire2Learn Capture Rich Media vs. Plain Video Webcasting 

There is a wide variety of traditional single stream webcasting solutions on the market today. Although some of such systems might work just fine for events like a music concert or a sports game, there is a fundamental difference in the requirements for presentation-style events, where various visual aids are typically shown along with the speech. Desire2Learn Capture's main advantage is the ability to capture and deliver multiple sources (e.g. voice, video and screen) simultaneously, providing the remote participants with a true front row experience.

Sense of Presence

You can deliver a true sence of presence for a remote participant only if you allow to see the presenter, hear the presenter's voice and read the slides, all at the same time. If any of the components above is missing then the presentation becomes very hard or even impossible to follow. Desire2Learn Capture guarantees all 3 media components to be transmitted to online users in sync, with perfect quality, delivering an unparalleled sence of presence.

Interactivity

The ability to ask the presenter a question or comment on the topic is essential for the remote audience to feel "there". A traditionial webcasting is strictly one-to-many type of a media, pretty much like today's television, and, therefore, not perfect for this use case. Our webcasting solution, however, is interactive: Desire2Learn Capture supports submitting questions, private and public text chat as well as public announcements, which makes online viewers fully engaged.

Accessibility

Most of the traditional webcasting technology vendors require users to download and install special software in order to watch the webcast. This often turns out to be a problem: at work it is often against a local IT policy as users typically don't have sufficient privileges to install or change any software. And even at home a personal computer may pose various compatibility, performance or security barriers for a 3rd party software. On the contrary, Desire2Learn Capture relies on a software player that users most likely already have: Flash and HTML5 work on virtually all platforms and together cover almost 100% of computers and mobile devices worldwide.  Your instructions for Desire2Learn Capture users can't be more straight-forward: "Just click on the event title and join, no software installation required". Another barrier that often makes webcasting inaccessible, especially for corporate, government and healthcare viewers is corporate network firewalls. They block streaming protocols and prevent the content delivery through organization's networks. Desire2Learn Capture addresses that by offering a HTTP-based streaming that is fully transparent for most known firewalls.

Desire2Learn Capture Rich Media vs. Web Conferencing

The primary concern for conferencing technologies are small, highly-interactive meetings. Although some of the features of web conferencing and Rich Media webcasting do overlap, there is still a tremendous difference between these two technologies.

Non intrusive production workflow

In Web conferencing there is no other way to run a session other than 1) create, 2) launch and 3) monitor the show via some sort of a web application. It has a significant learning curve for all participants, and especially for the presenter.  In webcasting, however, speakers do not have to use any special software or specific training to be able to present. An external device, which is often hidden, takes care of everything.  Presenters with different levels of comfort with technology are equally efficient working with it.  With webcasting technologies like Desire2Learn Capture, they can just plug in their laptop and present as they normally would. We have been involved in all sorts of production for a long time, and we appreciate the presenter's focus on the actual subject. That's why we believe in the seamless capture process and do not expect the presenters to pay much attention to any technology. Desire2Learn Capture is happening "behind the scene".

Scalability

Webcasting is "one-to-many" process. Webcasting is scalable by design, both in terms of the number of simultaneous sessions and the number of the remote viewers who can access a session at the same time.   Web conferencing is "many-to-many" streaming technology, so the bandwidth consumption may increase exponentially as the number of viewrs goes up while the webcasting guarantees it to grow in predictable "linear" fashion. This makes it easier to manage the costs and control the quality of service while accommodating significantly larger numbers of online viewers.

Capture quality

Some web conferencing systems stream in lower resolution video to reduce the bandwidth load for online participants.  Again, because of the two-way nature of web conferencing the priorities are different: since everyone streams to everyone, bandwidth is a limited resource. Desire2Learn Capture technology delivers the same stream to many viewers. In turn it can afford to deliver much higher quality audio and video, even a High Definition (HD) signal. Audio quality is also a factor to consider. Often phone conferencing or VoIP will be used in web conferences to accomplish communication.  Although perfect for small-group discussion, VoIP can be unreliable and not production worthy, making it less than satisfactory for important presentations.

On demand media repository

Meetings don’t often need to be edited or easily searchable.  However both editing and search can be quite useful for presentations.  Webcasting solutions often offer a searchable repository of your content along with some form of a post-production tool. In addition, webcasting technologies focus on the ability to easily publish high quality archives of live sessions, so those that missed out on the live webcast can catch it on demand.

Automation

If you often need to stream, record and publish recurring events you can benefit from having an automated deployment. Desire2Learn Capture offers an “automated mode”, in which you may pre-schedule event sessions and have the webcast stations execute automatically, with no manual interaction required onsite. Web conferencing systems are always managed manually.

Pricing models

One of the most attractive aspects to web conferencing solutions are their relatively low entry price points.  However, what is inexpensive up front does not always translate into what is inexpensive always.  The initial cost for webcasting technologies are higher because you are purchasing to own, i.e. buying hardware and software.  This will save money in the long run though – especially with increased use and larger participant numbers.

Desire2Learn Capture Rich Media vs. Other Rich Media

Features

It is very hard to do side by side feature comparison for various Rich Media delivery technologies. Although five major components (video, visual aids, interactive tools, on demand repository and management tools) exist in all of them, there are hundreds of small differences, which can be only compared in a context of a particular use case. We believe Desire2Learn Capture is the most flexible Rich Media capture system as it offers both hardware-based and software based technologies or any combination of the them. The real question is which Rich Media capture technology works best for your use case. Please contact us to find out.

Price

We believe Desire2Learn Capture is the most affordable Rich Media webcasting system on the market today. It costs less and does more than competitors. Our pricing model is very straigh forward: There are no hidden costs or fees. Please contact our Sales Team and ask them to compare prices with any Rich Media webcasting system of your choice.