Safe Harbor Interactive PEG Channels

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Safe HarborInteractive PEG Channels

• Presenters
• Brooks Bennett, Technology Specialist Round
  Rock
• Cyrus Haskell, Webmaster Flower Mound
• Dave Kuhn, CGTV Broadcast Director Garland
• Moderator
• Jake Starkey Missouri City

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Video on the Web

• 123 million Americans will view online video at
  least once a month in 2007
• 27 of online video viewers watch news at least
  once a week
• 3 Out of 4 U.S. Internet Users Streamed Video
  Online in May
• Average American Video Streamer Watched More than
  2.5 Hours of Video Online
• Sources comScore, Inc. and EMarketer, Inc.

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Video Formats

• Real Player
• 54.7 percent
• Quicktime
• 67.6 percent
• Windows Media
• 83.7 percent
• Flash
• 98.7 percent

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Real Player

• Pros
• Image quality is good
• Cons
• Slightly less sharp than other formats
• Difficulty downloading free Real Media Player for
  users
• Free version of player is invasive and ad-driven

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Real Player

• Samples
• http//www.real.com
• BBC
• Pinellas County, Florida

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Quicktime

• Pros
• Interactivity available
• High quality possible
• Cons
• More difficult to work with than some other
  formats
• Default settings are rarely good enough. Tweaking
  is essential to get high quality.
• Mac-based streaming

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Quicktime

• Samples
• http//www.apple.com/quicktime
• Movie Trailers
• Firstgov.gov

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Windows Media Player

• Pros
• Highly used player.
• Windows Media Player packaged with Windows
  install
• Relatively high quality and low size
• Cons
• Proprietary format support on Mac, Unix, Linux
  is shaky at best.

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Windows Media Player

• Samples
• Windows Media Player
• Movie Trailers
• Lakeville, Minnesota

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Flash Video

• Pros
• Largest adoption rate of any player technology.
• High level of interactivity available
• Open source community has latched on to
  technology and large number of products are
  available to make it easy to deploy
• Cons
• Steep learning curve to take advantage of
  interactivity
• Can be expensive to implement

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Low cost solution

• Flash Video (progressive download)
• No need for streaming software or separate server
• Open Source Software
• Low startup cost
• Online Conversion
• No cost to convert files for use on Web

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Flash Video Progressive Download

• Begins playing video as it downloads
• No cost for media server software
• Video can be loaded into any Flash file providing
  wide range of interactivity

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Flash Video

• Samples
• Adobe Flash Player
• YouTube
• DentonTV Sports

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Inexpensive and Free Tools

• Wimpy Video Player - 39.95
• Movavi FREE
• Zamzar FREE

15
Town of Flower Mound

• Redesign using Flash video and Wimpy Player
• http//www.flower-mound.com/redesign2007

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City of Round Rock

• High-tech community - home of Dell Inc.
• 93.3 of population has Internet connection
• 89 of those connections are high speed

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City of Round Rock

• City has recognized our communitys outstanding
  connectivity and made the push to make
  roundrocktexas.gov the primary source of
  information about the City of Round Rock
• What can Channel 10 do to help?

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Round Rock Replay

• The dreaded Council Meeting
• Limited playback on Channel 10
• Meeting duplication requests - never fun
• Contracted with Granicus to provide a recording,
  archiving and streaming solution.

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Granicus - the Good

• Set it and forget it setup - clerks do nearly
  all of the administration of the system
• Excellent customer service
• Should speed up the minute-taking process

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Granicus - the Bad

• Reliance on Windows Media
• Upload tool is PC only
• Hosted - makes integration a challenge
• Web-based - slow network can make using the
  system frustrating

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Why not just Granicus

• Upload tool is PC only
• Quality is good for meetings, but not great for
  video magazine content
• Video list can be miles long if all shows are
  listed on playback page

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What we do now

• Granicus for meetings and live-recorded content
• Playstream for Windows Media playback of video
  magazine
• Podcast for higher quality playback

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Podcast Sidebar

• Content is delivered to people who want to view
  your programming
• Video quality looks great on devices like the
  AppleTV and iPhone
• More and more people becoming familiar with
  download before demand

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What we plan to do

• Granicus for meetings and live-recorded content
• Flash video for newsmagazine
• Podcast for higher quality playback