Bandwidth considerations when selecting chalkboard media profiles

When uploading your videos to a chalkboard most everyone is concerned about video quality and wants to offer the highest quality video possible. High quality video is certainly very attainable when you first start with a high quality produced file for upload and select any of the available media profiles. One question that we often receive has to do with students encountering buffering situations when attempting to watch a chalkboard. Most of us will always be inclined to select the highest quality media profile setting when making our selection during upload, however, this is not aways the best choice. Before making your profile selection take some time to consider your audience and how they might be connecting to the internet to view your course materials.

A user attempting to receive a non-buffering stream of a video processed using the Large Video/Highest Quality video media profile must have at least 768Kb of download bandwidth dedicated to this video stream. For a user attempting to connect with a DSL connection this is going to be very difficult. For a user attempting to connect with a broadband cellular card this will be near impossible. If you encounter a situation where download speeds are just not quite robust enough to handle such a large stream I would suggest adding a media profile of Large Video/Standard Quality to your chalkboards. Having this second media profile available may make it easier for students with slower connections to view the content without encountering so many buffering situations.

You can add this media profile to the chalkboard by taking the following actions:

• go to the chalkboard editor
• click the manage media link
• click the media thumbnail in the media bin to select the media file
• within media details for the selected media clip click the add media profiles link
• click the checkbox Large Video/Standard Quality
• click the submit button
• the original uploaded media file will be processed again and when complete the new profile will be added to the media list

Changes for the student

• When the student is viewing the chalkboard, if they begin to experience a buffering situation then can click the media profile link above the media player and select the standard quality profile.