WATCH LIVE! (Pacific)

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Schedule starting May 14, 2012

Starting daily at 6:30 PM Pacific time.

Ephemeral Special

In this broadcast, we present a collection of “slightly disturbing” Ephemeral films.

Ephemeral films are government, educational and public information flicks that were once shown in schools, community centres, and even movie theatres during the middle and latter half of the Twentieth Century. But while these films do cover a wide range of subjects, many of them are so full of errors that they’ve actually become a hazard to public safety! And yet, many of these films still contain enough factual information that they can still be used today — to a certain extent.

No, we didn’t add “Perversion for Profit” in the schedule. This anti-pornography information film is ironically too sexually explicit to be broadcast here. However, you can still view a *cough* “cleaned-up” version at your extreme discretion on our YouTube channel.

We’ve also included a couple of “normal” films to lighten the mood. A new episode of Armchair Directors will also be added later to the schedule once Crandall and Mercy have released it.

  • News – Democracy Now!
  • Ephemeral – Cliche Family in Televisionland (internal-use-only film made by an unnamed advertising firm)
  • Ephemeral – As Boys Grow and Molly Grows Up (sex education films that, while still fairly accurate, have highly questionable settings)
  • Ephemeral – Girls Beware and Boys Beware (Girls Beware treats the girl as an offender instead of a victim, and Boys Beware is just plain homophobic)
  • Ephemeral – Reefer Madness (the infamous anti-marijuana film)
  • Ephemeral – Sex Madness (the infamous anti-sex film)
  • Movie – Sita Sings the Blues
  • Movie – Niagara Falls

About the on-line broadcast

This page requires a Web browser that supports both the HTML5 video tag feature and the streaming version of the Theora/Vorbis/Ogg format. Mozilla Firefox (including the new Mobile version), Google Chrome, and Opera are three such candidates. Be advised however that Google Chrome’s support of the Theora/Vorbis/Ogg format is extremely buggy and may not work properly at all.

You can also watch the broadcast with the VLC Media Player. Simply open a network stream to the address http://38.104.152.86:11384. The average bitrate for the stream is about 800 kbps. Most high speed Internet services should be able to handle this without too may issues.

There is also a lower resolution, lower bandwidth feed available at http://38.104.152.86:11385.

If your cable company would like to help us test our prototype MPEG-2/AC3/TS HTTP or Unicast RTP streams, please contact us. We’re looking for broadcast distribution undertakings possessing sufficient bandwidth (minimum 7 Mbps) to test the stream’s reliability and consistency over both short and long distances.

Submitting your own material

If you’re interested in submitting programming material for broadcast consideration, please submit it as multiple AVI video files split up at the commercial breaks if any with the following parameters:

  • Resolution not exceeding 1280 pixels wide and 720 pixels high regardless of the aspect ratio.
  • XviD video encoded at Quantizer 3 for standard definition material, and minimum Quantizer 4 for 720p material (reduce it to 3.5 if macroblocking occurs in the blacks). Use the Koepi encoder for best results.
  • mp3 audio, minimum 44.1 KHz 160 kbps CBR (VBR encodings will be rejected), stereo, average level at -3 dB, peak level at -1 dB. Uncompressed PCM will also be accepted.
  • 1.0000 square pixel format (no 0.9090 or 1.2121 pixel formats please).
  • 29.97 Hz frame rate.
  • Include one second of “nothing” both at the beginning and at the end of each file.
  • Use standard aspect ratios (1.33:1, 1.66:1, 1.78:1, 2.35:1), and do not pad the edges with black bars if possible.

With these settings, the material you submit for broadcast consideration will be properly sized and scaled by the Automated Broadcast System regardless of the resolution and aspect ratio of the target broadcast feed.

We can also convert your DVD screeners for you, but we strongly advise against it due to the severe deterioration caused by a few too many transcoding steps. You’ll achieve better results if you render the XviD/mp3 release directly from within your editing software, and send us the rendered file either by mail on a data disc, or uploaded directly to our servers via the Internet.

Now get to work! The sooner we get new material, the sooner we can diversify the schedule!