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When Access SF moved into their current facilities, they purchased a TiltRac robotic tape jukebox automated tape playback system made by Synergy Broadcast Systems. One unit handles VHS and SVHS, another handles DVCAM and (allegedly) MiniDV. The system also included a audio/video encoder and a four channel digital playback server.
The digital playback server has had problems as long as I can remember. The problem is that periodically the digital file does not playback correctly. Sometimes there is no audio, sometimes there is no video, sometimes there's a static video frame. I've done a bit of testing and I could not detect a pattern. The problem is not related to the video file, nor is it related to the digital playback channel. I suspected it was either an interrupt conflict in the server or a timing problem with the video router. Whatever the problem is, it has been going on for quite a while, if not from day one, and SFCTC had not gotten Synergy to correct this problem. Questions need to asked;
These four channels are used throughout the day, primarily for short digital segments, like the animated station ID and short public service announcements (PSA). They were also used to playback producer programming submitted as MPEG2 files and to replay live producer shows that are encoded during the live cablecasts, until Zane recently banned that use. Zane was correct to ban the use of the unreliable digital playback server for producer shows, since nobody wants to see 30 or 60 minutes of black going out to the air.
My concern is that Zane has not gotten Synergy to fix this problem. SFCTC is negotiating with Synergy to buy a more robust system to support a second cable channel, yet over the years, SFCTC never got Synergy to get our existing system working correctly. If we need a second station (topic for discussion), and if we need to upgrade to a more robust system (topic for discussion), should we do more business with a company that never delivered what we paid good money for?
In today's digital age, producers should be able to submit their shows as digital files. It's a lot cheaper and faster to burn your show to DVD than to tape. Instead of a cheap DVD recorder and dirt-cheap DVD disks, you must purchase a tape deck and tape stock. Many television and radio stations are almost exclusively digital. SFCTC paid for this capability with public funds, but they never got it working.
This problem also discriminates against live shows. Although Access SF is only obligated to play a producer show once in their designated timeslot, in practise, new shows are played two or three times in the un-allocated overnight and next day timeslots. A show submitted on tape may get played three times (depending on the day of week), but a live show is now played once and only once. Tom Barkett used to routinely encode live shows to the digital server, and then replay the digital file overnight and the next day. Because of this digital playback problem, even if the live show is encoded (recently Zane told Sam Long to stop encoding live shows), it cannot be played back reliably.
Let's get this existing automated playback system to work to specifications as we were promised and as we've already paid for. Then let's resume accepting digital playback files and giving live shows the same opportunity for replays that taped shows have.
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