The End of An Era

Randy Lively has left the building. GCTV would like to bid a fond farewell to “Dukes of Sports” co-host Randy Lively who filmed his last show here on Monday. Randy is going to be spending his well-earned retirement living on the Cape and, though he’ll miss doing the show with Russ Brown, he won’t be driving back and forth every week to tape it. Randy and Russ together have given us almost eight years of great shows and a large amount of underwriting through their sponsors. All we can say to this wonderful team is THANKYOU and ENJOY THE BEACH RANDY!

In related news Russ Brown is searching for a new co-host and plans to tape a show on Monday. Stay tuned to find out who will be joining him!

Rogue Reporter At It Again

I love how Reba manages to inject some really helpful hints while making viewers laugh. My favorite bit is the opposable thumbs text. Not sure what I'm talking about? Watch this clip! ---Alicia

New video from the Rogue Reporter!

Independent producer Reba Razz has provided us with her latest short. Here, Reba ably demonstrates that live performances don't have to simply be filmed and aired as they happened. Utilizing video loops and extra music made this video a dance step ahead. :)

Fun & Festivals!

GCTV is pleased to announce that our sister station, WMCB-lp 107.9FM, will be giving away 5 pairs of Friday night (7/17) tickets to the Green River Festival over the next couple of weeks. The Greenfield Business Association has graciously donated these tickets for our live DJs to give away. Be sure to tune in Monday-Friday from Noon to 6PM to see if your favorite live DJ has a pair of tickets available.

July 4th weekend is coming up and GCTV is celebrating with fireworks! Well, a recording of fireworks anyway. :) In the past, Station Manager Scott MacPherson has taped the fireworks here in town and we'll be showing them on Saturday, July 4th at 5PM and on Monday, July 6th at Midnight.

Check Out The Revamped WMCB Blog!

Drew Hutchison, GCTV board member & liason to our community radio station, has been hard at work redesigning WMCB-lp 107.9FM's blog and it looks great! It is easy to find what you are looking for, there are some interesting links, and the content is up to date. Check it out here. Thanks Drew, way to go!

Toolbox: How to put high quality videos online.

Travis Roy (producer of "Valley Homegrown") inspired this post a week or so ago when he emailed the station to let us know he had come up with a new way to upload really spiffy looking video to Youtube.com. Check it out here! His method, unfortunately, is a little cumbersome.

However, Elijah Rottenberg (one of Travis' camera operators and a producer in his own right) emailed in with some more straightforward advice. Elijah uses "h.264 (but I'm on a mac). Restricting the bit rate to like 850 or 980 kbits/sec will keep the ending file size way smaller - but it takes a lot longer to compress. You can also mess with the frame sizes - the best advice is to have people experiment by compressing files that are around 10 seconds long till you find something that looks right, then do the whole file - you can also use those test files as a check on the quality on youtube as well before you devote your whole afternoon to compressing and uploading something that may not be right."

Garry Longe (President of GCTV's Board of Directors and an Instructional Media Specialist at GCC) has a slightly different take on the matter. "Experimenting aside there seems to be no one answer for web video. Depends a lot on what and how its shot and who you are trying to deliver to. We have a number of media servers and they all like it a little different. Note that You-Tube recommends you upload MPEG4 but delivers as a flash file after the conversion??? Working on Premier 2.0 and CS-4
on Windows seems okay to me as I haven't had any major issues although I am making a master rendered out file first before rendering to any other distribution formats."

What do you think? Do you have a method that works really well for you and gives you a high quality product online? Let us know, and continue this discussion, by commenting on this blog post. This is a great opportunity for all of our producers to share their experience with each other.

Big Thank You to Brent Eaton!

Don Wheeler started a trend! Brent Eaton, producer of "Encore Body Art", "Windchanger", "Silly Wizard", and "Dark Horse", has donated a digital camera to us. Until now we've been using people's personal cameras (thanks to Jimmie Bailey of "Homegrown" & "Local Bias" and to staff member Owen Weaver, among others) to take photos of what happens around here. Now we will have one in the office to use whenever we want to make our web presence even spiffier than it is now. Thanks Brent!

Thank you to Don Wheeler!

This is a great big shout out to Don Wheeler (producer of the weekly "Unity in the Pioneer Valley Worship Service") to say thank you from all of us at GCTV for all you do! Some of you may not know that Don has been responsible for periodic maintenance of our Bogan by Manfrotto tripods (the big, heavy-duty, ones) for quite awhile. Each time he would check one out for his shoot he would tighten all the screws and return it to us in better condition than when it left. Last week I asked him to take a look at one of our tripods because its arm had come apart and none of the tools we had seemed to fit its screws. The very next day he came back to the office with the tripod all fixed and a set of metric allen wrenches that he generously donated to GCTV. So, Don, we say to you, "you rock!" THANK YOU!

Have you voted today?

Make sure you vote today and then tune in tonight at 8PM to catch our LIVE election results show hosted by Joe Gochinski. It will be rebroadcast tomorrow at 11AM if you miss it.

The School Committee Meeting scheduled for this Thursday, June 11th, has been cancelled.

Election Coverage Mon & Tues

If you missed any of our 2009 Greenfield election coverage so far, don't fret! From 12AM to 12PM on Monday, June 8th we will be re-running almost all of the debates & interviews that were taped this political season in addition to some of our regular Monday programming. Then tune in on Tuesday, June 9th, at 8PM for our annual election results show hosted by Joe Gochinski (producer & host of Western Massachusetts Democrat). Haven't had enough of local politics? The election results show will be re-broadcast on Wednesday, June 10th, at 11AM. In addition, Susan Laing's new show "Think Out Loud---Biomass" will re-air on Tuesday at 5PM, "Biomass or Buy-a-mess" will re-air on Wednesday at 12AM, and the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee's "Biomass 101" will be re-airing soon. Enjoy!

VOD Fully Up & Running

Please check out all of the videos we've posted at www.gctv.org. If you are looking for the "Greenfield Public Schools Study", "Local Bias" with Governor Deval Patrick, or the Ways & Means Committee Meeting from May 26th we hope to have them up tomorrow. If you would like us to re-post the April meetings please let us know by emailing mail@gctv.org. Thanks!

Fat Guys On Film Returns!

*trumpet blare* GCTV is proud to announce the triumphant return of "Fat Guys on Film"! Co-hosts George Gohl (co-owner of Greenfield's own Garden Cinema) and Dave Peck (in his words, "NOT a co-owner of the Garden Cinema"), along with their trusty side-kick and director Bill (also a co-owner of the Garden Cinema), are back to give you the skinny on all the latest movies. The first new show will air at 8PM on Friday, May 29th so tune in and check it out.

Video On Demand

We are still experiencing technical difficulties with our new Video On Demand (VOD) service and we apologize for any inconvenience these difficulties may have caused. Late last week the servers crashed at the company that supplies this service to us and they lost all of our files. We were able to re-upload four of the most recent videos before the service was interrupted again. We are working hard to restore full VOD capability and will be getting additional content up as soon as we can. In addition, the company assures us that they have taken measures to ensure this does not happen in the future.

New info on office bulletin board

Have you looked at the GCTV/WMCB bulletin board in the office lately? In addition to being a place where you can put up flyers about events directly related to our TV & radio stations it is also a great resource. The bulletin board now boasts a list of volunteer opportunities for the current month as well as folders for potential guests for your shows and shows you may want to sponsor on GCTV. Please check these out the next time you're in the office.

****Our Video on Demand service is experiencing technical difficulties. We hope to have it back up & running later today or tomorrow.****

****Tonight's debate will be broadcast live from our studio beginning at 7PM.****

Looking for the Greenfield Mayoral Debates or the Ways & Means Meeting?

Due to the large number of shoots taking place this week, and the annual Kiwanis auction that will be televised, live, from our studio on Wednesday, May 6th, and Thursday, May 7th, from 7PM to 9PM we will be airing the events as follows:

Tonight's debate will take place at Greenfield High School beginning at 6PM. GCTV will be there filming but the debate will be televised tomorrow night, May 5th, from 5PM to 7PM and at the same time on Friday, May 8th.

Tomorrow night's debate at the Masonic Hall-Republican Lodge (215 Munson Street) will also be filmed by GCTV but not aired live. It will air this Friday, May 8th, from 7PM to 9PM.

Wednesday night's Ways & Means committee meeting will be filmed at the Greenfield Youth Center (20 Sanderson Street) at 6PM and aired on Saturday, May 9th, at 1PM.

Wednesday night's Annual Spring Music Concert at Greenfield High School will be filmed beginning at 7PM and we will post an air date as soon as we have one.

Don't forget, most of these productions will also be available on our Video On Demand service at www.gctv.org within 24-48 hours of airing.