Sustainable Transport
Good practice at local and regional level

Media Conference held by CODEMA in Dublin, Ireland - 13 June 2002

Proceedings of main event, Brussels

Introduction

A workshop on "Sustainable Transport: Good practice at local and regional level" held in Brussels, was organised by Managenergy. There was a media conference held by CODEMA in Dublin, Ireland, where a web-based broadcast of the conference was projected onto a screen. Local people with an interest in the workshop were invited to participate.

Participants
Brian McManus, Office of the Director of Traffic, Dublin City Council
Barry Wardell, CODEMA
Edel Giltenane, CODEMA

Technology used

• Laptop PC with windows XP
• Real Video format
• 218Kps ISDN internet connection
• Projector

Comments on technology used

• Acceptable video quality using Real Video, and a 128Kps ISDN connection.
• The speaker could be clearly seen, and the frame rate was also good.
• It was helpful to have the slides available.
• The quality of the audio was good. The speaker could be clearly heard, with little or no distortion.
• The camera angles used were effective.
• It was helpful to be able to check that the correct software was installed and set-up in advance using the provided videos.

Problems and suggestions

• The quality produced by the Real Video format was far superior to that of Windows Media format. It should be used in favour of the Windows Media format.
• Although it was very helpful having the slides available onscreen, the process of downloading them had an adverse effect on the quality of the video. This problem could be solved by making the slides available for download (or caching) beforehand.
• The slides often lagged behind or went ahead of the video and audio. Again, this problem could possibly be fixed by making them available beforehand.
• Slides which did not have a soft copy (powerpoint file) were not shown.
• The lack of interactivity made it a bit more difficult to remain concentrated on the workshop. The options to submit questions would help.
• Sometimes, the video would become jerky or the audio would stop. This was often connected to the downloading of a new slide. Stopping and restarting playback fixed the problem.

Conclusion

The media conference worked well as an inexpensive and timesaving means to participate in the workshop. The lack of active participation was the greatest difficulty. Apart from that, and a few small technical problems, the media conference was very successful in allowing those who would not have otherwise been able to attend the workshop to participate.