EAGLES TV

'Eagles TV' is a local educational access television station available to cable subscribers in Grays Harbor County, Washington. The television station, as well as "Eagles Live," are both ran and maintained by the students at Elma High School.

Contents

History

Eagles TV Technology

Eagles Live Technology

Eagles TV Today

External Links

History

Eagles TV was originally entitled "Eagles Live," and was simply a closed-circuit morning news channel for Elma High School. Production of the original Eagles Live was carried out in late 1989, when Dan Warren, with the help of his students, produced a short news program over the topics present on the school bulletin. The show was very primitive at the time, only including very basic camera angles and editing. As the show developed, Dan Warren, still with his aspiring students, moved out of the Library's Media Center, and into a large classroom which would soon be "Eagles Live Studios." In 1998, Warren retired from the video production scene. His position was soon filled by Donn Leiske, a technology enthusiast with a strong resume. Afterwards, Warren moved to the school board, where he has ever since helped Eagles TV develop.
The television show continued to develop throughout the next few years. Equipment was donated from several local residents, and the scene became more complex. In 2001, EHS students video conferenced live with victims of 9/11, receiving many answers that were still unknown at the time of the attack. The studio soon grew to include many jobs for students, including several video technicians and news anchors.
In November 2004, with the help of a grant from Comcast cable, Eagles Live became more than closed-circuit. The morning news program which had been running for over ten years had now became a 24/7 television station serving Grays Harbor County. The television station was provided by Comcast as an "educational-access" channel, meaning that only videos approved by Elma High School could be broadcast. Furthermore, copyright quickly became an item of attention, for now the music generally used for the morning TV show could no longer be broadcast on a public station without gaining the copyright owner's permission. Just a year later, in November 2005, Eagles TV celebrated its first anniversary with the students of the video productions class. Several Eagles TV executives were invited, and a two-hour video special was aired that afternoon. The special was eventually made into a DVD archive, which the executives of Eagles TV later received as a thank you gift.
Just a few months later, in early 2006, Leiske announced his retirement. The school was left with a decision to make. That summer, Elma High School hired the help of another technology enthusiast. Rob Beldin began his first year instructing the video production class at Elma High School in September 2006.

Eagles TV Technology

Eagles TV was originally ran from two PowerMac G5 computers enclosed in a fan-cooled case with a simple A/V switcher in between. In the case that one computer failed, the other would be perfectly synchronized to it and would take over as primary output. This redundant system was utilized until the summer of 2006, when the station was temporarily shut down for remodeling. Today, a single computer is running Eagles TV. Editing is carried out on high-end Macintosh or Dell PCs. The edited footage is then output to portable hard drive via FireWire (IEEE 1394), or sent through the school's network. The hard drive then uploads the final playlist to the Eagles TV computer for broadcast. In the past, Eagles TV used only one codec to store its video. Until late October 2006, Eagles TV used the DivX codec because of its ability to minimize processing power required by the Eagles TV computer, thus minimizing crashes and freezing of the station. DivX was also used because of its relatively low profile when stored on a hard drive; often allowing several hours to be stored onto one disk. However, as a result of DivX's low power and space consumption, picture quality suffered. As of October 2006, DivX was replaced with a variety of other codecs. These include, but are not limited to AVI, MPEG, and Windows Media Video (WMV), although future plans hope to limit the variety of the codecs the station uses.

Eagles Live Technology

The morning news program "Eagles Live" was always filmed live until just recently, when Leiske retired. It used a four-camera setup with analog video & audio mixers, and a digital video feed for B Roll. The anchors were prompted using primitive teleprompting software and a plexi-glass reflector setup that was placed in front of each camera. Eagles Live also featured the "Eagle Eye Game" in which a word was displayed each day for the week. At the end of the week, the words created a phrase to which the viewer could call in with and potentially win a prize. This was usually carried out by a computer displaying the word through the video mixer, and then placing a microphone near the telephone and reporter at the end of the week when calls were accepted. During homecoming at Elma High School, a designated reporter at Eagles Live would go on location in one of the school's hallways. From there they would quiz a student from each grade with a few questions. The winner would have points added to their class's homecoming score. Because of limited technology, this was usually done with a very long RCA cable containing video and audio data that was strung through the hallways, and occasionally, out of windows to reach the destination.

Eagles TV Today

Once Rob Beldin began teaching at Elma High School, his plans included utilizing a green screen to chroma key the news anchors into the show, as well as a pre-recorded format instead of the live broadcast as in years past. Chroma key allows an infinite number of backgrounds to be used as the sets, while the new pre-recording format allows the show to be corrected in post-production. Also, pre-recording has significantly simplified the production of the show.
Only one class is maintaining the television station and show this year, as opposed to the two that were operating under Leiske in the previous two years. Years prior to that were dedicated solely to the television show, for there was no television station to maintain. Today, the video productions class is dedicated to the making of content for the TV station, as well as independent video and animation projects.

External Links

★ Eagles TV website