Telecast of the committee meetings

[Gopal Shenoy]

Folks,

I get to hear about many meetings in the town - BOS meeting,
technology committee meeting, school committee meeting, town hall
meeting - all held in the evenings starting around 7pm. While I would
love to attend these meetings, it is just not practical for me.
Working in the high tech arena, it is quite common that I get home at
8pm.

Given what technology can do these days, has anyone thought of posting
these meetings on the web or you tube. These meetings are being
recorded for telecast at certain times on the local TV, so we do have
the recording. My problem with the TV is that I have to remember the
exact time and sit and watch it. OK, I could use my DVR to record, but
I have to remember to do it.

The benefits of you tube is the ability to fast forward the meeting,
play it back and being able to do it whenever I can.

Has this been ever considered?

Gopal

[bob.ha...@gmail.com]

Gopal, it is good to see people interested in town affairs!

You are correct that for the most part the various boards and
committees and so on tend to schedule their meetings to start in the
7PM time frame. That is mainly because it is when the most members of
the bodies can meet, and in the cases where the public has an active
role it is generally considered to accommodate the largest fraction of
the people who would like to be there. No matter what schedule is
selected there are some who can not make it. I can cite current cases
where 7 PM was LATER than a member of a board wanted because he wanted
to leave by 8 or 9. There are others like you who would like later
times. There are a couple of exceptions I can think of off hand. The
Finance Committee holds some of its most important meetings in the
morning and early afternoon on Saturdays. Another is the Cable TV
Oversight Committee which meets on Saturday morning.

To your question about making recordings of meetings available on the
Web: yes the possibility has been very much in my and the Cable TV
Oversight Committee's sites for some time now. Even now I am
researching the technological and economic issues. I am even
including live streaming of meetings. Personally I want to have as
many meetings as possible available on the Web, in a format that
allows me to "scrub" (fast forward and fast rewind) through to the
part I am concerned with. I would like to see that accompanied with
agenda information and so on too.

Video files tend to be very large, and to require considerable network
bandwidth on both the users end and on the server end. There are very
significant tradeoffs between quality and the sizes of the files. I
have asked them and the company that runs the Town web site (Virtual
Town Hall) does not have the capacity on its servers to host video
files like that. If the Town wanted to do it through them they would
facilitate a contract on the Town's behalf with a third party that is
in the business of hosting video. The Town web site has other, more
pressing priorities before it gets to that, and I am not sure the
present budget situation has room for the added costs.

The alternative we are looking at, at least for the near term, is to
tie it in with the Cable Access web site (http://GraftonTV.org/). I
am presently working on a redesign and modernization of it, and as we
go forward I hope to use that as a platform to work out technical
aspects of preparing video for the Web and test the possibility of
hosting the videos there. The advantage of doing it that way is that
site is funded from sources that can only be used for cable related
purposes. As long as we can conclude it is an eligible cable purpose
then the funding is less of an issue. I will note though that videos
have to go through a process of encoding in order to put them on the
Web and that requires equipment and staff. To be a reliable service
it should most likely be done more by staff than by volunteers who
can't always be available. I am hopeful we can come up with a work
flow that will not be a serious added burden on the Access staff, but
all that will take some time to develop.

As far as that interest in live streaming of the meetings goes (e.g.
so you can watch them via computer as they are happening, from
anywhere, not just on cable, and not just in Grafton too) it is
significantly more expensive and demanding to do, but I am looking at
that too, and we are factoring all these considerations into the
current licensing negotiations with Verizon and relicensing process
for Charter to give is the best options going forward.

Bob Hassinger
Grafton Cable TV Oversight Committee - Chair (http://
www.town.grafton.ma.us/Public_Documents/GraftonMA_BComm/cable/CATVcomm2)
Grafton Cable Advisory Committee - Chair (http://
www.town.grafton.ma.us/Public_Documents/GraftonMA_BComm/cable/CAC)

[Gopal Shenoy]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your elaborate response and the issues you are facing. It
was very educational.

Here are some others you may want to consider if you have not already
done so.

Are you allowed to post it on You tube? That way Google provides free
storage. I am not sure
what the largest size of the file they allow - but what I have seen
others do to get around this
is to divide it into parts and then label it 1 of 10 (give a brief
explanation of what this contains),
2 of 10, etc. You can see a ton of content posted this way (especially
in sports).

I would not say that we require live streaming - the purpose it to
watch it afterwards - even if there
is a delay of a week, it is quite acceptable.

Thanks once again for your response. It is sincerely appreciated.

Gopal

[bob.ha...@gmail.com]

Hi Gopal,

I think that is the first time anyone has referenced "elaborate
response" in connection with my postings - it usually tends to be
rather less charitable :-)

I have YouTube and other similar places in mind and have not dug into
them at a detailed level yet. From a technical perspective, I expect
to find difficulties using those venues in a reliable on-going
solution. The kind of thing we are talking about is a bit different
from their business and technical models and even if workarounds like
breaking up into parts works for the short term, down the road I doubt
it will be viable and sustainable. What looking I have done has
indicated they recognize that and are hedging their bets. They also
seem to impose pretty severe constraints on quality (image size, bit
level of compression, etc.).

As a proof of concept, and perhaps a contribution to moving it forward
it would be entirely possible for anyone in the Town to capture the
meetings off cable, or perhaps in DVD form via a request to the
schools that would be handled by the Access staff. From there they
could break it up, put it in the right format, and upload it to
YouTube or Google video or whatever.

That points out my previous reference to staff availability and viable
work flows. Making a DVD for someone takes a certain level of staff
effort. The work in doing what it takes to prepare the content and
get it on YouTube, etc. is greater. Being able to have a hosting
arrangement that is designed around what best serves our needs is more
likely to work going forward than needing to add additional layers to
accommodate a solution like YouTube. But yes, it is part of our
thinking even though my own preference is for a higher level service
that is sustainable.

Bob

> > Grafton Cable TV Oversight Committee - Chair (http://www.town.grafton.ma.us/Public_Documents/GraftonMA_BComm/cable/...)

[Gopal Shenoy]

Thanks Bob. If you could keep us posted on the progress you
make, it would be sincerely appreciated. When do you expect to
have this up and running?

Gopal