Techsmith has launched a new product that automates the process of capturing and distributing lectures. Camtasia Relay makes use of desktop software (Mac or PC) and a back-end server that handles the encoding and redistribution. Some good background information in the Techsmith Education Newsletter, where I learned of the product. Apparently a lecture can be encoded foro Flash, iPod video, mp3 only, and other formats, and automatically sent to iTunes U, for instance. It ain’t cheap, but for an enterprise-wide solution it might be worth it.
Apple has a similar product in Podcast Producer, that appears to be bundled with the OSX Server. I suspect there are others…