Webcasting of Regionals

[Kevin Sevcik]

I can answer about half these questions and I'll work on getting you an email of the guy that can fully answer all of them.

Most regionals are webcast via NASA. NASA sends out a person to set up the webcast and run it for the event. A few are webcast by experienced volunteers that work in association with the NASA people. So not all the regionals are webcast because there's not enough people to go around. Bandwidth might also have something to do with it. I'm unsure about the archiving.

The video is typically the exact same as is displayed on the screen if that's available. Regionals have differing levels of AV support, so some might only have an overview camera for a video feed. Either way, the webcasting equipment is given a video feed from the AV system.

Staff for webcasting is minimal. You really only need someone to get it set up and running and occasionally check on things. Equipment is varied. It is possible to use most videoconfencing equipment like a Polycom for this. You can also use a computer with a video capture card, but it can't be a Dazzle or anything that captures in MPEG format. It doesn't have to be blazingly fast. You'll also need network connectivity, which usually means an ISDN modem, or a network drop, depending on where you are. Cost is typically dictated by said network connectivity. Getting one or two ISDN lines can be moderately pricey.

I'll find the emails you need to get in touch with webcasting people and PM you if you're really interested in webcasting your local regional.

EDIT: Scratch that. Dr. Bot (Alan Federman) is exactly who you need to talk to. I also outlined a lot of this info in the thread that Joe Ross linked, but I love to talk anyways, and I got distracted in the middle of this post.

I'm fairly certain that NASA will webcast more than just NASA regionals. Lone Star hasn't been a NASA regional for a while, but it's had a webcast for the past few years. I think the issue is getting someone at the regional to be in charge of all the stuff and getting the ISDN lines rented and such, really. It's not an incredibly simple task that you can hand off to someone that isn't very comfortable with computers.