Slide Server - Projects

A laser video disc is a precursor of today's CD-ROM. Fifteen years ago, shining disks of vinyl (12")disk's size appeared. On the physical level the recording Physical principles haven't changed since that time, but the record format was analogous, TV compatible. Optimists foretold disk players will replace video players on the market. This, though, hasn't happened: Information storage reliability appeared to be non profitable for video producers. Although, analogous video disks technology has found its place in the sphere of education.

A video disk has got two sides, each contains a video track up to 30 minutes long or 54 000 separate slides. Unlike videocassettes, video disk is a random access device; i. e. it can be positioned at any slide on video track in approximately three seconds. Unlike CD-ROM, videodisk could be viewed without a computer. Positioning command can be given with just a device for bar code recognition. Before DVD appeared, this technology had no competitors in the field, even now DVD-ROM is inferior in terms of both image quality and data volume. See more...

Many foreign universities design tutorials with visual material as illustrations, stored at videodisk. Up to 54000 illustrations could be placed at one disk (it could be colored pictures of organs, of microscopic sections of tissue, tomography results etc. ). Video disks are released on noncommercial basis and are available at low prices. Besides, coping isn't prohibited.

Slide server is a device, which allows the materials to be accessed by many people at the same time. Connected to local university network, it allows to view the illustrations from any computer in the same network. The IT technology implies no restrictions on computer type (PC, Macintosh, Sun, Silicon Graphics etc.). Access is also possible through the global network.

Slide server is a soft- and hardware unit, which includes a computer with the Intel architecture, video input card and videodisk player. A specialized web server program manages the work; it can read the picture from a videodisk, convert it into jpeg or gif format and send it in response to the query. The web server has also got slide cash. Query format allows to set parameters of a reply picture. Besides, the server can send ordinary files as well.

So, end user's access the slides through an ordinary web browser. It doesn't matter from which soft- or hardware platform the query was sent and how far the server or the user is.

Furthermore, slides from the videodisk can be easily included in html documents network, so they can be used in interactive manual systems based on the html language, including distance learning.

Videodisks are widely used in automated tutorial systems. A specially organized disk with a book or instructions with managing bar code on pages are called interactive videodisk. And if there is also a computer with a tutorial program, this is called hypermedia system. See more:

Computer videodisc education systems. Raden Dunbar, Executive Officer, Satellite and Telecommunications Association.

Interactive Video: Foundations of Multimedia/Hypermedia. James D. Lehman, Educational Technology School of Education,Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1442.

Besides, videodisks are used for publishing big collections of slides (can also be managed by bar code recognizer or computer). Here some examples of such editions:

Pacific Northwest Native American Art in Museums and Private Collections: The Bill Holm and Robin K. Wright Slide Collections.

International Veterinary Pathology Slide Bank Videodisc. B. R. Weeks, S. M. Hall, and R. Smith III. From the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, Texas A&M University (Weeks, Smith), College Station, TX 77843, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture /FSIS Western Laboratory (Hall), Alameda, CA.

Slices of Life IV. University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Slices of Brain I. University of Utah, Salt Lake City.