School Announcements Video Upload

[pmolsonmus]

Hi, not really a theater question, but there are lots of knowledgeable folks here so....

When they remodeled the high school I teach in, they "upgraded" the classrooms to Smartboard computer and projectors and pulled out the TVs and cable used for the morning announcements. As a result they've gone back to the "Grease" format of reading 6-8 minutes of text over the PA and,( surprise,surprise) not too many people pay attention.
I'm thinking that if we created a simple format of recording a video of the announcements and uploading them to a site that we would be better serving the community.

I'm told our server can't handle 100 or so classrooms trying to access a video stored there. Is there an external solution (e.g. drop box or ???) that video could be uploaded to everyday and teachers could access at any point in that period? Obviously, cost is an issue, but what would we be looking at?
Every classroom has access to the internet and a projector already.

Phil

 

[emac]

As long as your schools internet blockers don't block sites like YouTube or Vimeo, you could upload to one of those sites and use the private feature.
That way teachers need to enter a password to view the video.

I have found that usually some teachers won't use something like that because they have a hard time learning new software/websites. You mileage will probably vary how ever.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[AudJ]

Any chance of steaming? In my experience, you won't get a viable set of announcements without the ability to add last- minute items. That in addition to the ability to get video from the outside (for example the last presidential oath of office was a big event broadcast in many schools) seems remiss.

With PARCC testing potentially starting next year, your school is in trouble if the network can't handle a task like this. They must be working on something?

We run a daily tv announcment show, which is still broadcast via coax to our projectors (need old vcr's with tuners) but the plan is to switch to a streaming server in our next capital project. Also adding huge wifi capabilities, which will allow individual students and teachers to view as well.

 

[lwinters630]

Funny we have a very similar scenario. We use a FTP that is linked to our high school web page http://schools.u-46.org/index.pl?id=35036&isa=Category&op=show

Ours Airs every Friday, it is broadcast over coax for those who still have TVs. and posted for those who have projectors/ Smart Board. Students shoot it in a green screen studio and edit with CS 6.
This one is a WMV format which is a most players will play. I hope it links through CB okay.

 

[chausman]

As someone who's fought this battle regularly, I'm really curious to see other peoples ideas. I know our building, with the usual assortment of Macs and PCs and a pretty resilient network infrastructure can't handle streaming a video to every teacher without buffering issues. It didn't matter if it was hosted elsewhere or on an internal server. Our most recent even ended with having every teacher download and save the video, then I went to every classroom to ask the teacher if they got the video working and if not, I'd take a thumb drive and put it on their desktop. Our biggest problem is teachers who assume everyone else will follow directions and download beforehand, so they won't have an issue.

Otherwise, good luck!

 

[Chris15]

Now annoucement reels are not something commonplace in Australian schools, but I'm assuming that everyone watches at the same time?
In that case, you want a solution built around multicasting the video rather than each computer pulling it off a server somewhere.

Basically a server somewhere starts spitting multicast packets onto the network at the start and each computer joins the IGMP group and watches it.
It's the principles underlying IPTV (NOT video on demand a la Youtube or pay per view), but it's been a couple of years since I was last playing with those sorts of systems.
From memory VLC can do virtually all of the functions needed...

There are of course proprietary systems that do all of this too, Tripleplay, Exterity, amongst others...

 

[pmolsonmus]

Actually the ability to access the video at any point in the period is the ideal. Some teachers would prefer to get class started right away and use as a break. Others at the beginning or end of the period

 

[kevlar557]

One thing that hasn't been asked, does your school have a studio with cameras where announcements were broadcast with the old system? Or are you just looking for something like showing a powerpoint slideshow?

 

[pmolsonmus]

Actually they just got rid of the studio equipment and space. ( I got the leftovers that I wanted which didn't include the cameras/ switchers , etc because I don't have the space). But I do have some nice racks and carts now.

I'm looking at a VERY basic set up due to time and space limitations. Simple camcorder or even iPad to create the file, edit and add some text if necessary and upload the sucker to ???
Teachers access it as desired.

 

[kevlar557]

Like Chris15 said, VLC setup as a multicast server might be able to provide the solution you need, with managing bandwidth much better than a unicast. Do you typically record your announcements the day before, or the morning of? You might be able to make friends with the IT guys, and have them make a script to do a staggered upload over the night to each teacher PC, so they have the announcements on their desktop, ready to go.