Choosing a Voice Talent

One of the more overlooked processes in the development of audio for Elearning is the choice of voice. With emerging technologies and programs offering a cheaper solution to the recording of voice , many existing clients as well as potential clients will often choose the less expensive option of finding either internal employees or project managers to record the dialogue, rather than hire professional voice talent, in the quest for a much smaller budget consideration for their project. Although, in the short term this might save the company a few thousand dollars, the quality of the project will always suffer and in the long run will lessen the impact of those particular Elearning projects choosing this option. In the end, when dealing with Elearning projects that have a total budget of several thousand dollars to hundreds of thousand of dollars it makes sense to go the extra mile and take the time to choose professional voice talent. Your clients as well as your reputation will appreciate this.

Streaming video over the web these days can be a great advantage to any web site or Learning experience, but the key to delivering video effectively and efficiently over the web depends on your user’s connection speed as well as several other factors.

There are several effective methods for delivery content via the web. If you are delivering video that is under 1 minute long, then a progressive download method may be your best bet. If the video is live or you are delivering content that is several minutes long, or the video quality resolution needs to be higher quality, then you may want to consider streaming your video content via video server. One such technology is called Flash Communication Server. There are several other Video server technology services currently available, such as Akamai (www.akamai.com).

The advantages of streaming video through a server are numerous. Besides giving greater control over the video, it provides faster video start time, ability to seek anywhere on the video at anytime, video security, buffer control, and real-time exchange of video and data. You can learn more about the best practices for delivering video content at the following link:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashcom/articles/flv_bestpractices.html