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Posted in Educational, Engineering, HDD, Storage, Video Server, Video Servers

Tags: 1TB per Sq Inch Hard Disk Seagate

Master Control in a Box, with ASI out?

April 7th, 2012

There’s a discussion going on over in the Broadcast Engineering and Technical Professionals section of LinkedIn where someone is looking for a solution to adding a single cable channel play out system with an ASI output. Their hoping for a single box answer but none seem to fit the bill. It’s interesting to hear what other broadcast engineers have to say about different play out systems.

Take a look here at “ASI Out of Master Control “Channel-In-A-Box?”

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Posted in Broadcasting, Cable Company, Educational, Encoding, Engineering, H.264, Master Control, MPEG 2, MPEG 4, Storage, Studio, Video Server

Tags: Broadcasting Cable Channel encoding Master Control in a Box

Small Drives and Disk Formats

March 17th, 2012

Tiny USB Drive

One of our clients brought up a USB Memory Stick with their program on it. We use MPEG 2 files for playback on our server. But this was a new client and had never sent us a file before. I had them send me a small test file so I could look at it first. It was an MPEG 2 video file alright but the audio was encoded as AC-3 (Dolby Digital), that would not play on our server, you’d have video but no audio. I told them and they sent me a new test file which had the required Layer 2 audio.

So they sent us the USB with their program on it, the operator got and but could not open the drive. I knew what it was right away, they had formatted the USB drive on a Mac and made it a Mac drive, our server is PC and they don’t know Jack about these. So I took it home and transferred the file to my Mac and reformatted the USB drive as a PC-DOS (FAT) drive. I then tried to put the file back on the drive, it would not go, it was too big. The file was 4.9 GB and PC FAT (File Allocation Table) only handle up to 4GB sized files. So that wouldn’t work.

Then on my Mac I noticed another disk format option, ExFAT. I did not know what this was but it sounded like it was a PC format that was extended, for bigger files. So I formatted the 16GB USB drive using the ExFAT format and then the file fit on it. I took it to the station and plugged it into the server and, no go, the server did not recognize the drive, asked if I wanted to format it.

Okay, back to my Mac and formatting the USB as a PC-DOS (FAT) disk. Now I knew why our other clients alway cut their 1 hour programs into two 1/2 hour shows, to make them small enough to fit within the file size limits of Window. I wound up buying a $35 program that let me edit MPEG-2 files, I cut the program in half and got the two smaller halves on the DOS disk and then onto the server, where they played out nicely.

I found out that the ExFAT disk format is new and from Microsoft, they developed it just for USB drives to allow them to handle the larger file sizes now in common use. Read more about ExFAT here.

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Posted in Computers, Educational, Engineering, Storage, Video Server

Tags: ExFAT MPEG-2 PC-DOS(FAT) USB Drive

Ranting about Media Files

February 25th, 2012

The other day a fellow engineer was sharing his thoughts on media files used in broadcasting and his station in particular, he was ranting. His station has logo inserters and the guy who does all the artwork for them can’t seem to keep straight that what looks good at 700 by 700 pixels may not look good at 40 by 40 pixels. He says it always take the guy about three try’s before the logo looks good.

Then when they want a new News open or some other motion graphic they always get the wrong file format from their creative service’s guy. When they complain that it’s the wrong format this guys says “it’s 1920 by 1080 60I, what do you want?” and they have to tell him, again, that their servers need it in MPEG2 format, not AVI.

With servers just a few years old the types of file formats they can accept is not upto date, and even the latest video server that does accept more formats still has to be made compatible with the older ones so files can be shared across all the servers they have. He told of the head Mucky Muck up in corporate stating that all video submitted for air must follow his standards for frame sized and file format. Well the advertisers had their own ideas and continued to provide whatever format was convenient to them, their paying the money so you convert, seems to be their motto. Then theres the shows that arrive in various formats and need to be converted before air and this falls to the engineering department since they seem to be the only ones who understand what is required.

My friend longed for the days of NTSC, where there was only one true format. You could manipulate any file you wanted within your graphics box or NLE but everyone knew that the final output had to be, NTSC.

NTSC is dead, long may we pull our hair out over the wrong file or frame format.

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Posted in Analog, Broadcasting, Computers, DTV, Educational, Engineering, Networks, Projects, Storage, Video Server

Tags: Bug Inserters Conversion Media File Formats

Learn Digital Content Storage from SMPTE

February 23rd, 2012

SMPTE Registration is now open for SMPTE’s March PDA Now Educational Webcast!

To Have and Have Not: Digital Content Storage in a Petabyte World
Thursday, 8 March 2012
18:00 UTC /10:00 Pacific/13:00 Eastern
Webinar login details will be provided with your registration confirmation
Registration is FREE for SMPTE Members and $49 for Associate Members and Non-Members.

Guest Speaker: Tom Coughlin, Coughlin Associates

Large rich media projects are getting ever bigger and raw content of multiple petabytes is becoming more common. Managing and protecting this content is a challenge and it is often a question whether backed up data can be recovered if the original copy is lost. Our presenter will explore developments in storage devices and systems used in modern digital workflows. These new developments are enabling accelerated collaborative media projects with ever larger source materials. Mr. Coughlin will also explore methods for creating, organizing and protecting rich media content including flash memory, local disk, digital tape and storage in the cloud.

For More Information or to Register, Click Here or go to http://pda2012march.eventbrite.com

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Posted in AES / SBE / SMTPE, Broadcasting, Computers, Educational, Engineering, Networks, Storage, Video Server

Tags: Digital Content Storage SMPTE Tom Coughlin Webinar

VM in the Broadcast Facility

February 14th, 2012

I had a chance to talk with a former Radio turned TV IT guy today. He was telling me about installing VMWear at the transmitter. This sounded interesting and I asked him to explain. First a little background.

If you don’t know VM or Virtual Machine is a process where you run software on a computer that simulates one or more other computers. You may have seen VM used on a Macintosh computer allowing it to run Windows software. The hardware on a Mac is not the same as a PC and the VM software allows Windows to run on the Mac. This is one example of VM.

VM started back in the 60′s with IBM mainframes, they cost a lot and to make it do more work the machine and software were made to ‘time slice’ different processes, allowing the computer to run several processes at one time. I remember this on the mainframe at San Francisco City College where a room full of teletype machines were all connected to the the college’s computer. Back then it was Time-sharing, each terminal got a slice of time from the computer. Later as PCs came into being, and were networked together, VM and Time-sharing was abandoned.

Servers started to grow in power and floor space, more and more servers where added for different functions. It was one server per process so that the crash of one program would not affect any others. But as the number of servers grew so did their power consumption and cooling bill.

Then it was found that a typical server was only being used 10 to 15% of the time, most of the other time was spent waiting for an external event. So in order to reduce costs VM returned, one physical server could become several VM servers thus increasing efficiency. But it was a tricky road to getting computers that were not made for VM to work with it. Special software was developed to allow different instances of a server to run as well as different Operating Systems too.

One of the most important aspects of VM now is it’s ability to protect your business during a disaster. Because you don’t need the floor space, power requirements or A/C it’s much easier to install a backup VM server at a remote location. It has all the software and OS’s needed and is updated on a regular basis from the VM server at the office. It’s not just data backup but a complete system backup allowing your company to continue to operate if the office and all your servers are not available due to fire, flood or what ever.

So that former Radio now TV IT guy was installing VM software on servers located at the transmitter. The system is updated once a day in the wee hours keeping it current. They have high speed data lines connecting the office to the transmitter and if they need to use the VM server at the transmitter they can setup shop somewhere that they can connect to it on a WAN and keep billing customers and doing payroll.

Now there are somethings you can’t use VM for, such as video editing and on-air playout, for those you still want dedicated computers since you can’t have any delays in processing.

Well thats what I learned today, I hope you found it interesting.

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Posted in Backup, Broadband, Broadcasting, Computers, Editing, Educational, Engineering, Green Energy, IP, Networks, Transmitters, Video Server

Tags: Disaster Recovery Networks servers VM

Backup Issues

January 12th, 2012

My Disks

I use a program called “CrashPlan” to backup my hard disks at home, it’s very versatile as I can backup local disks and my MacBook Pro (via Wi Fi) and it lets me know if there are any issues. I can even backup to a drive at a friend’s house or back at the station. My setup involves three main hard drives that are internal to my main Power Mac and one external hard drive for my iTunes media. So I need to back all this up, and to do that I have several external hard disk to do just that. The problem is that to do a backup correctly you need more space than what the source disk is using, as you don’t want just the current files but the files that were there yesterday, before you deleted that file you now need. And a copy from last week or the month before, you get the picture, a lot of space is needed.CrashPlan compresses and avoids duplication of files and generally does a very good job.

The problem is the space required for the backup files, the four disks I mentioned altogether take up over 5 TB of space. Now not all of it is used right now but I need to plan for it’s use and backup. CrashPlan puts all the backup files in one pot, if I give it more disks to backup on it duplicates the backup on those disks, I don’t get more room. That makes sense to keep more than one copy of a backup but for me I would need a RAID to backup all that data together, and that’s a little pricy for me just now. So I do something else.

For the system disk I use Apple’s Time Machine, that does a fine job of backing up, on my System disk. It’s the smallest one of the bunch and it is backed up onto two 1TB disks setup as a Mirrored RAID using the Disk Utility program in the Mac, so at any one time are three copies of my system disk.

The other two internal disks are backed up with CrashPlan pointing at another RAID drive set made up of two 2TB drives that are Mirrored, this is not really enough space if the drives were full but it will do for now. I should move up to 3TB disks and mirror them. Maybe later.

Now you might ask, what about my iTunes media, well I just copy it to a last RAID made of two 1TB drives that are striped to make a 2TB dive. I just copied the entire media folder to this RAID and I need to make manual copies of new files as needed.

What I would like, and please if you know of a program that does this let me know, a backup program that lets me direct back ups of disk A to backup disk B and backups of disk C to backup disk D. That way I don’t have to have one huge backup disk but I can spread the load around. Each backup disk had a complete backup of one disk, not the way it is now. That’s why I’m using the two programs to do the backups.

Yes, I know a large RAID 5 or even a RAID 10 would do the job and maybe I would not need to to a backup but even then I would still need to do backups to be safe, one little power glitch and years of work could be gone. The days of backing up on a CD or even a DVD are gone. And think about it, if I had a Blu-ray writer even the 50GB version would require 20 disks to make 1TB, and I would have to wait for the burns and thats just too much. For now I will put my trust in magnetic platters spinning at high speed, I just use lots of them.

Next I should get a UPS I think.

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Posted in AC Power, Backup, Computers, HDD, IP, Storage, TheOLE.Org

Tags: Apple backup CrashPlan Hard disks Mac Time Machine UPS

My MacBook Pro Died, Long Live my New MacBook Pro

January 7th, 2012

When booting from DVD

Over the last week or so when ever I turned on my MacBook Pro it would hang during the boot up process, I would hold down the power button to shut it down and restart it and all was fine. I was starting to think that I should backup the hard disk and reinstall the OS and run some tests on the hardware. At home I run a backup program called “CrashPlan” that automatically backs up this one and my main Mac. But I wanted a Time Machine backup because the Mac and automatically rebuild it’s self from that, instead of me doing all the work.

So I’m at work and Eric asked me to hunt down a couple of microwave dishes that should be in the big Data Base I have been working on for more than a year. I go to turn on my MacBook Pro and, guess what, that’s right, it won’t boot. I try the power off / on thing lots and lots of times to no avail. This is where the most current version of the Data Base resides, it’s on my To Do List to move the current copy to the main computer system here at the tower but it had not reached the top of the list yet. Yes, there is a backup at home but not here. More on this later.

I do get it to boot after a long while but sometimes it crashes with thick pink horizontal lines on any white parts of the screen and the curser has some funny vertical lines around it too. To get it home I put it to sleep and the first thing I do at home is to attach a hard drive to it and start up Time Machine. The screen goes pink lines on me, not sure if it’s still backing up so I shut it down and start again. Same thing happens but this time I notice that the external hard dive is making noises like its working so I let it go. In the morning It’s all backup up, I attach the drive to the main Mac and see that all the files are there.

Next I try to boot the MacBook Pro from a DVD disk, this time it shows me a window that tells me to hold the power key down and try again, I do this

Pink Lines

several times in a row with the same results. I find it interesting that I get the window with a DVD boot but it just hangs when it boots (or tries to) from it’s hard disk. Now I am sure it’s a hardware problem!!!

I had already swapped the two memory cards around to no avail, or change. I looked up this guy on the web and see that it’s what Apple calls a “Late 2007 MacBook Pro”, so it’s about 4 years old, it’s about time for a new one anyway. I also see that there is an issue with the Graphics chip that may cause these problems and that Apple will fix it event out of warranty, I have to take it in to them to check if this is the case. This would make the second Mac that has failed on me since I first owned a Mac, back in 1984.

I go down to the local Apple store in the mall and pick out the cheapest MacBook Pro they have, I can’t see pay hundreds of dollars for a 0.2MHz speed increase. The one I pick had a 500GB hard disk, same as I installed in the busted one (see tutorial), so I’m okay there. It only comes with 4GB of RAM so I have them put in 8GB just to be safe. It take them a couple of hours to get around to it, they were busy, but I get a call and go in the pick it up and take it home.

My New MacBook Pro

Now I connect it to the drive with the Time Machine backup and start it up. The new MacBook Pro has Gigi Ethernet, Thunderbolt (new high speed serial- 10GB), two USB 2.0 (no 3.0 yet- 5GB) and a Firewire 800. When they came out with the Firewire 800 and it’s new connector I bought a couple of adapters to go from 800 to 400, which is what I had mostly. After a couple of hours it had restored all the files on my new Mac from the busted one and I was happy, if not also a little poorer.

So now it’s doing it’s own backup and I need to set it with the Crash Plan to do regular backups. I just have to take the old one in to see if it’s under the this graphics chip warranty from Apple. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

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Posted in Computers, HDD, Networks, Something Interesting, Storage, TheOLE.Org

Tags: Apple Crash DVD boot MacBook Pro Pink Lines

Running out

December 29th, 2011

Well I’ve been working on a little project at home for almost a year and I can almost see light at the end of the tunnel now. I’m a movie nut, and have been collecting DVDs since they came out. In the last few years I had picked up the pace and kept adding to my collection to the point that I now have about 800 movies. We have a lot of shelfs in our TV room.

But that’s not the project I am taking about. Earlier this year I bought a couple of Apple TV boxes. These things are hockey puck sized and allow me to stream audio and video from my iTunes library in the attic. I had stood in front of those 800 movies looking for just the right one but now if I put them in my iTunes library I could watch them all with my Apple TV. But first I have to get all those movies in the computer.

So I have been ripping my DVDs to MPEG 4 files to put into my iTunes. I have it down to a single program that rips and file converts in one step. The program is Mac DVD Ripper Pro and it dumps the converted files into a folder. I then move the files into iTunes and it stores all media on a single 1 Terabyte external hard dive. As of today I have 604 movies in iTunes with about another 200 to go.

Today I had ripped a couple of movies and when to drag them into iTunes but they would not go! I drag, I drop and nothing. I quit iTunes and restart it, no go. I reboot the computer, no go. I run a disk utility and repair the disk and it’s permissions (a Mac thing), no go. Now I’m stumped.

Then I look at the iTunes media disk icon. I check the about of space left on the disk and see that it’s only 24MB, one movie is around 1GB. The disk was full, that’s all it was, I had filled up a 1TB hard drive. Now I need a new, bigger one. So I went to Best Buy and got a 2TB drive. I hooked it up and went to transfer the 976GB to the new drive, the little transfer window says it will take 12 hours, and thats with USB 2.

The new drive has USB 3 capability but not my Mac. With USB 3 with it’s transfer speed of up to 5Gbps. That will have to wait until the next upgrade.

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Posted in Computers, Educational, HDD, Something Interesting, Storage

Tags: DVD Mac usb 2 usb 3

Dropbox and Me

December 16th, 2011

With Apple’s new iCloud you can save documents on their servers and retrieve them from any other computer you own or even your iPad or iPhone. I thought this was a great idea until I tried it. With MobileMe and iDisk (the old system) I could store anything I wanted on Apple’s Cloud (that I paid for yearly). But when I tried to figure out how to upload anything to the new iCloud I found I can’t.

It seems it only works with Apple programs, if I used iWorks I could save documents from it but if I want to save a Word file or a CAD drawing I am out of luck. I see that the iDisk is still working but that is only until June 30, 2012, then it goes away. I think it’s a good idea, that programs can automatically save to the cloud so I don’t have to have a version on my home Mac, then transfer it to the Cloud and then download it to my laptop. And when I make changes I have to remember to replace the copy on the Cloud and if I don’t then I can wind up with multiple copies of different versions, on my home Mac, the Cloud and my Laptop.

But I would also like to save files that don’t automatically save to the Cloud and for that I have been using Dropbox. They give you 2GB of space for free and charge you for more space. I have only been using the free 2GB so far but it seems to work very well. They install an icon in the menu bar that allows you to access your Cloud storage anytime. It opens a window where you can just drag files in and out to your desktop and I have their iPhone App that lets me access my Cloud files from there as well.

If I did not use Dropbox I would have to remember to carry around a USB drive with me to move files but this is much easier. I would still use the USB drive to transfer large files, like video clips and such as it would take too long to upload them on my DSL (2.3MB/s download, 400KB/S upload).

I know there are other Cloud storage services out there but so far Dropbox does all I need and it has the App for my iPhone. Check them out. www.dropbox.com

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