View the 2010 Graduation Ceremony

Again this year, with the continued gracious support of VistaNet, WUHS was able to offer a LIVE webcast of the Class of 2010 Graduation Ceremony.  Here is an edited version of the webcast for your viewing pleasure... you may also download a copy in the History section below.

View the 2010 Graduation Photos courtesy of 516 Imagery

Tech Talk

For you techie types wanting to know how this is was done, it isn't anything fancy!!  This webcast was accomplished using is a Canon ZR950 video camera connected via 400mb firewire to a Dell Inspiron 1525 notebook running Windows XP Service Pack 3.  Utilizing the latest version of Windows Media Encoder, this video is a single 148K, 15 frames per second, 320x240 resolution stream sent via a wireless connection from the football field back to our server room the equivalent of two blocks away.  From there this video stream is pushed to a Microsoft Windows Media server at VistaNet in Chico (about 70 miles away) who have more available bandwidth than us to accommodate a greater number of simultaneous connection requests.  This entire process results in the event appearing on your computer with less than a 10 second delay on average for high-speed Internet connection end-users!!

The archive copy to be made available in the next day or so comes from a captured copy of the webcast on the same notebook using the encoder's built-in MPEG4 codec and saved in Windows Media Video (WMV) format for easy playback/conversion.  Prior to uploading, Windows Movie Maker was used to edit the opening/closing title screens.  Discounting the wireless infrastructure costs, this entire project is made possible using less than $700 worth of consumer-grade hardware.

History

In 2009, there were between 35-45 live connections by family members in some 16 countries!!  Our efforts in 2008 were showcased with a front-page article in the Appeal-Democrat newspaper.

An archive copy of the 2009 and 2010 webcasts are available below.  To download, simply right-click the desired link and select "Save File As" or "Save Target As" to download:

    Class of 2009 Graduation Ceremony (177M WMV file)

    Class of 2010 Graduation Ceremony (104M WMV file)

If you have any questions, please contact Mick Shatswell, Director of Technology, at (530)633-3100 x123, during normal business hours.