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Video Servers

May 12th, 2012

air_smallOur Matco servers have been acting up lately. Our original one is several years old and acts up now and then. A client of ours got a Matco more recently but has stopped using it so we switched over to that one but that too has been going or driving us nuts. When to clips are back to  back the second one does not play for some reason. the server just stops and we switch to the default input on the switcher.

We are planning to have one or the other serviced by Matco but the decision was made for us by PG&E, when we lost power (see next post or two) it killed the power supply on our Matco. So it’s down.

single-channel_smallBut a friend of mine has been looking at a newer server company called Cinegy, a newer automation / video server software package. I saw them at NAB 2012 and they seems very friendly and helpful. They offer a free demo, it comes with no limitations, just a key over the output channel. This way you can really get to know the product before laying down your bucks.

My friend has been looking at the product and likes it, which makes me think it could work for us. It can do several output channels at once and you can get a CG program for it but thats a bit pricey for us.

Maybe even use the old Matco box to run this in, but I think I  would prefer a new box with lots of storage.

We could sell all our old equipment and just have a couple of these with a network to ship files around the studio. I think this could work out really well.

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Posted in Broadcasting, Computers, Design, Encoding, Engineering, IP, Master Control, Networks, Video Server

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Day Two at NAB 2012

April 15th, 2012

Today started off with Final Cut Pro X, I have been thinking about it since it was announced last year at NAB but have not done anything with it. I have not heard the best things about X but with todays session I have a very good feeling for it.

It’s redesign seems to be about metadata, FCP X is all about metadata. It works with ProRez 422 and will auto transcode to it from almost any other codex. I liked it.

Next it was Harris trying to convince Radio engineers that they should use liquid cooling instead of air. Water is able to cool much more than air and it seems Steam can cool 20 times the amount of water. My old RCA TTU UHF transmitter used steam cooling. In air cooled transmitter you can’t hear yourself think with all the A/C.

Then I listened to Charles Kiefer who talked about “Just Start: Take Action”. It was all about taking your idea, your passion and moving forward with it, don’t plan it to death but take small steps, using what you have on hand and asking for help. And Just Start.

Sound Design, using sounds to make better Bumpers and Zingers in videos. The big points where to not depend on just canned sounds from libraries. Either make your own sounds through recording live sounds and then alter them or just add to library sounds by altering them in multiple ways.  We watched several bumpers and anlyzed the sounds used.

The last session of the day for me was about making better training videos. This was a great session tougt my Douglas Spotted Eagle, he knows his stuff. I took a lot of notes and really hope to improve my future videos form attending.

So after two days of session I have learned a great deal and starting tomorrow there’ll be more sessions and products to see on the floor.

 

 

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Posted in Audio, Broadcasting, Computers, Educational, Engineering, NAB, Post-Production, Something Interesting, Transmitters

Pulse of NAB

April 15th, 2012

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I believe this is where Leo Laporte will be doing his Tech Guy show from NAB starting tomorrow.

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Posted in Broadcasting, Computers

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Mac Attack

April 12th, 2012

Did you hear about the latest attack on the Mac OS?  It’s called Flashback Trojan. When I hear about it I checked to be sure I was clean (I was). But if what you do on your Mac is import an then you need to be serious about protecting it.

Here is a slide show with 10 recommendations on how to keep your Mac safe, from eWeek.

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Posted in Computers

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Wired Network for iPad

March 26th, 2012

We are looking at using an iPad to display data while on the tower, to do this we would need a wired network connection since a wireless network won’t  (may not ) work. But I cannot find any adapters to allow a wired network connection for the iPad. It seems that the common solution is to use a pocket wireless router that plugs into the RJ45 and provides a wireless network for you. The iPad to USB adapter will not work with a USB to Ethernet adapter as I have read, so thats out.

The reason for this is FileMaker Go, it’s an App that lets us access a FileMaker Pro file on your iPad or iPhone. I created a data base in File Maker to keep track of all the antenna and cables on the tower, it uses seven data bases to contain all the data. If the iPad is on the same network as a computer with the data base on it can be accessed on the iPad. If not, you can load the the files on to the iPad or iPhone and then you can load the changes back to the computer based data base.

The reason for all this is so I can go put the tower and compare the data base with whats really up there.

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Posted in Antenna, Broadcasting, Computers, IP, Networks, Tower, Transmission Line

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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

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Should the office and your BCast Networks Co-Exist as One?

February 25th, 2012

Right now there’s a lively discussion on whether your company’s network and your broadcast network should share the same infrastructure, its on Linkedin’s Broadcast and Technical Professionals board.

It makes for some interesting reading. Click here

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Posted in Broadcasting, Computers, Design, Educational, Engineering, IP, Networks, TSoIP

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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

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Learn Digital Content Storage from SMPTE

February 23rd, 2012

SMPTERegistration 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

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Bad Memory Brings Down Russian Space Probe?

February 23rd, 2012

According to a resent piece in the IEEE Spectrum, Russia’s resent failure and loss of the Phobos-Grunt probe that fell back to Earth in January was blamed on the failure of it’s memory chips. But when IEEE checked with JPL they found that the memory that was specified by the Russians as the culprit is well known to be susceptible to cosmic radiation. It would seem that the fault lies with the engineers that did not do their homework. Come on, this isn’t Rocket Science. Oh wait, yes it is.

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Posted in Computers, Educational, Engineering, Satellite, Something Interesting

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