Upgrading a county……
Let's talk technical......
These past 5 years myself and others have been working to get the entire video infrastructure upgraded and expanded here in Nevada County. This has been an excellent use of the PEG funds and not an easy task thru a pandemic. Let me explain.
We moved over 3 jurisdictions, plus NCM, plus a mobile vehicle all to high definition, and put everyone on the same systems, all with the capability to not only do a multi-camera live edit, but to record and push streams to cable, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and more. But wait there is more.
We used local as much as possible and since we use Telestreams switcher, we can also do a peer to peer connection. So the switcher (Wirecast) in Truckee is connecting right into our switcher (Wirecast) here at the Rood Center, or Grass Valley, or anywhere else. This gives the utmost flexibility and coverage that we can possibly do for folks who wish to tune into what is happening with our local government. We added a total of 6 systems throughout the county to improve local TV (or rather TV and internet). In order to use PEG funds we MUST go to cable.
But wait there is even more......
Each of the government jurisdictions meetings (Grass Valley, Nevada County, and Nevada City) all simultaneously stream to YouTube (in HD with Closed captioning). Each jurisdiction (including NCM and the mobile unit) all have the capability of incorporating virtual elements. This means we can bring in presenters from around the globe and in most cases provide an interaction with the live audience/participants.
We are getting ready to upgrade the broadcast server that all of our streams go through, as well as what plays out to our three cable stations. With the upgrade we will have the capability to pull streams directly off that system and push to anywhere. What does this mean you ask?
It means that all of the high definition content that we have been placing on the system for 5 years will now be watchable in HD (sorry not on cable. That is a whole other ball of bytes and bits). We currently push everything on our cable channels out to our website (yes down converted to crappy SD)........but wooohooo we will soon be able to push to anyplace we choose in high definition. Yes, that excites me.
Let me say that a few people did all this, all while also doing all the other stuff NCM is doing. Now imagine what we can accomplish with a few more volunteers. Technical, non technical, creative, or not.....there is room here for everyone who wants to volunteer. Come discover how we can work together to make community TV/Media amazing!
