Introduction to Webcasting

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Local and Central Government organisations are increasingly using webcasting to enable people to view or listen to proceedings of their councils and committees.

Enhanced Webcasting provides interactive features that enable viewers to participate in polls, provide feedback forms and access documents and related information.

Purpose of Public Sector Webcasting

The primary purpose of Public Sector Webcasting is transparency. Few people view public sector webcasts for entertainment. In fact, viewing rates are often rather low, except when controversial or high profile issues are being debated. The webcasts are there to make it possible for those people who are interested to get access to them.

What Streaming Media are Not

Webcasting is distinct from Television but can complement it.

It is not Internet-based video conferencing. Webcasting is a "one to many" technology where a single feed or "stream" of audio and/or video is "encoded" and sent to many viewers via a central server.

Streaming Media are also distinct from the simple hosting of media files (such as a video or audio) on a web server for download.

Introductory Webcasting Resources

See also these further Webcasting links.

This Frequently Asked Questions (PDF, 180kb) document produced by Public-i answers many good questions about Public Sector webcasting.

The Devon County Council have replica handbags produced a video case study of their webcasting initiative.

This "Webcasting local authority meetings" e-government briefing paper provides a good introduction to Local Government webcasting. It asks the questions "What is webcasting? What can it be used for? How do you webcast? What will a viewer need to watch a webcast? What hardware/software would I require? How do I get the best out of webcasting? and what could be the effect of webcasting in Local Government?".

This Webcasting and Web Streaming article provides a good introduction to getting videos to online audiences.

Here is a set of simple How To pages about capturing and editing video for the Web.

This wiki also contains Webcasting Technology introductions.