Ray's dashboard

Ray replied on November 12, 2009 15:04 to the question "Stopping a Cablecast Video" in Tightrope Media Systems:

From the main menu navigate to Autopilot -> Force Matrix

There you'll get what is basically a routing switcher. Click the button that will switch your channels output to you bulletin board channel.

-ray

Ray replied on November 10, 2009 19:53 to the question "Dynamic Video Page Won't Load!!!" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Ron,

The video in that page you linked is Silverlight, not flash. Do you have silverlight installed on the player?

http://www.microsoft.com/Silverlight/...

I'm not sure if TRMS supports installing silverlight, but I couldn't imagine it causing to much harm....

-ray

Ray replied on November 10, 2009 18:11 to the question "Carousel Hang-Up" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Nick,

127.0.0.1 is a loop back, so a ping from the command line should always work (unless something is really screwy). The error messages make it sound like your display engine is not able to get any info from the Carousel Server.

Restarting the machine restarts the Carousel Server service and the display engine is able to get what it needs again.

The first thing to do would be open a ticket with TRMS support:

support@trms.com

That way they can beam into your machine and see whats causing the server to go down. Did this start happening after anything specific. Like maybe a dynamic bulletin upload (video, interactive bulletin). These types of slides normally don't cause the server to crash, but its a place to start.

-ray

Ray replied on November 06, 2009 20:56 to the question "Style guides for employees to follow?" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Were just starting to do this, but kinda of differently. Instead of telling people what they should do. We are limiting what the can do by only allowing a few types of templates.

We are also setting up our website so that it acts as the "bulletin gateway." Organizations submit bulletins through the website, which is very limiting in what kind of data they can put in, as well as how much. Then our website generates an RSS feed of these submissions that the appropriate carousel zones subscribe to.

I'll probably post more about it when I'm done.

-ray

A comment on the question "Web page + YouTube" in Tightrope Media Systems:

To tell the truth, I honestly don't know. We haven't updated our bulletin packages in a while in part because we are moving to all custom templates. You could probably modify an existing template to include a web picture block. There is a training video on the template editor here:

http://www.trms.com/community/trainin... – Ray, on November 06, 2009 14:37

Ray replied on November 06, 2009 14:06 to the question "Web page + YouTube" in Tightrope Media Systems:

There is also a feature called "Web Snapshots" You can read about it here.

http://blog.trms.com/jj/2008/09/carou...

-ray

Ray replied on November 05, 2009 20:03 to the question "Web page + YouTube" in Tightrope Media Systems:

You can display web pages using interactive bulletins.

You could display a YouTube video by using something like Mpeg Streamclip:
http://www.squared5.com/
to download the youtube video and upload it as a bulletin.

Information about uploading videos and using interactive bulletins can be found in the carousel documentation.

http://www.trms.com.s3.amazonaws.com/...

Ray replied on October 29, 2009 21:58 to the question "CG Exempt won't "stick"" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey DJ,

While your situation is definitely frustrating, its actually expected behavior. Here is why.

There are two places in Cablecast where you can mark something as CG Exempt. One is a Show record, the other is a Run Event.

The place where CG Exempt really matters is in Run Events because these are what actually make up your schedule.

When you mark a Show Record as CG Exempt what your really doing is marking a preset telling Cablecast "Anytime I schedule this show, automatically mark the Run Event as CG Exempt".

The problem your running into is that when you click on the show title in the schedule you are actually bringing up the Show Record and editing it. This does not affect the CG Exempt Status of Event Runs because those runs have already been made, changing the preset for the show doesn't do anything. However if you go somewhere else in your schedule and schedule that same show again, that Run will now be CG Exempt.

When you click on the details of an event run, you are actually modifying that Event. Which is why marking it as CG Exempt actually causes that Run to be CG Exempt. Clicking in the greyed out E would have the same effect, marking that specific Run as CG Exempt.

What I do, and what I gather most other stations do as well, is mark PSA and Filler Show Records as CG Exempt when we first make them, before we've scheduled them at all. That way every time we schedule them the runs default to CG Exempt.

Hope this helps.

-ray

Ray shared an idea in Tightrope Media Systems on October 29, 2009 13:12:

Cablecast needs a favicon.

So like many here, I usually have way too many tabs open on my browser. Cablecast needs one of those nifty little favicons so I can quickly pick it out of the plethora of tabs in my browser.

And while your at it....

Add an apple-touch-icon so that that the quick launch link I have on my iphone looks sweet too :)

Thanks

-ray

Ray replied on October 22, 2009 00:26 to the question "Need Documentation on Setting up the 2nd Channel!" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Jon,

You most likely don't need a second Leightronix for your second channel.

The beauty of Cablecast is that you tell it what device you have, and how those devices are hooked up to your router (in your case the Leightronix), and autopilot figures out how to time everything so that all your channels are playing what the need when they need to.

What you do need is enough outputs on your router / Leightronix for all your channels plus anthing else you may need to send video to (preview monitor, encoder of video server).

Lets assume you have a Leightronix pro 16, TRMS SXLE, and a Satellite Feed.

You also have two cable channels, for simplicity Cable Channels 1 and 2.

The Leightronix pro 16 has: 16 inputs and 4 outputs.

Lets handle the inputs first.

Here you have plenty of room.

input 1 = Output One of SXLE
input 2 = Output Two of SXLE
input 3 = Satellite Feed

You would also route your Carousel (or any other bulletin boards), Live Studio feeds, DVD players, SVHS decks into the remaining channels. Basically anything that will playback on your channel.

Now for the Outputs on the router

output 1 = cable channel 1
output 2 = cable channel 2
output 3 = SXLE Encoder Input
output 4 = preview monitor

Pretty tight. But we can definitely run a two channel operation off of one Leightronix Pro 16.

As for setting this all up in Cablecast. Its really well covered in the manual.

http://www.trms.com.s3.amazonaws.com/...

Hope this all makes sense!

-ray

Ray replied on October 17, 2009 14:24 to the question "How do I prevent people from accessing my database thru a channels public age??" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Richard....

You can easily deny all users access to the public site.

On the Cablecast machine navigate to: D:\TRMS\Web\Cablecast\Public

Inside that directory is a file named Web.config open this with notepad.

In the middle of the file is a line that reads: <allow />
Change this line to read: <deny />

That will kick anyone off the public site, and redirect them to the Frontdoor Login Page.

There is probably a way to change the redirect via that web.config file. But I'll let one of the TRMS gang advise on that as they are a little more familiar with IIS configuration.

Hope it helps...

-ray

Ray replied on October 16, 2009 17:51 to the idea "Ingestion List" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey David,

There is almost sort of a way you could do this now.

What I would do is create a new category called "Needs to be ingested" then from the main menu of Cablecast select the Reporting option.

Set a date range that makes sense, maybe from the beginning of the month to end of next month.

Choose to display only Details , and Breakdown only by your needs infestation category.



Now run the report. Find the breakdown of the needs ingesting category, copy it into a word document and walah.



Hope it works for you.

-ray

Ray replied on October 16, 2009 16:58 to the discussion "Reporting for Carousel" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Cor,

There has been progress. But I don't know if it will help you know. It can in the future though!

Carousel now has impression tracking.

You can read about it on John's Blog:

http://blog.trms.com/john/2008/03/car...

-ray

Ray replied on October 16, 2009 16:55 to the question "Can our VS4 video server play back MPEG 4 (H.264) files?" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Nope,

The VS4 can only blayback mpeg-2 files. The SX line of video servers can play H.264 and much more..

http://www.trms.com/broadcast

-ray

Ray replied on October 13, 2009 21:21 to the question "Post a new bulletin to a 300r player, not server" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Kevin,

Channels get there content from zones, but zones can belong to more than one channel. In the simplest Carousel setup each channel has one full screen zone, and you could specify which channel a new slide runs on by adding it to the appropriate zone.

In practice however its common to have some zones that go to both channels, and zones for a specific channel.

For example at my station both channels subscribe to the same weather zone and news zones, but different zones for the upcoming tv schedule.

I've included a picture that points how you select which zone your working in and also shows what zone you are currently working in.



Also the Carousel manual covers all of this in extreme detail. Page 37 specifically begins the explanation of multi-zone channel layouts.

The manual can be found here:

http://www.trms.com.s3.amazonaws.com/...

-ray

Ray replied on October 08, 2009 22:46 to the question "How can I control the volume in my Carousel?" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Trent...

I'm assuming your using the line input on the Carousel Machine.

To adjust the input volume go to the Desktop of your Carousel machine and open up the audio controls by right clicking the speaker icon in your tray bar. Using the options menu you can switch between input levels and output levels. Adjust appropriately.

I tried making a screencast:



Here is also a little image:

Ray replied on October 07, 2009 23:49 to the question "Record Run Preset" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey David,

I don't know how your idea would really work... because if your idea was implemented then you would have to be just as mindful to override the automatic recording every time you replayed something.

I think maybe a better way was to have a format, not a show ID predisposed to record. For instance I always record content that is coming from my studio. But I never record runs that are playing back from my video server (that would be pretty redundant).

This way when You or I initially schedule a show that is coming from a studio, satellite, conference room feed. It automatically sets up a record. Once we go back in the next day and trim the show and change the format to On of our video servers, we don't have to worry about it recording over and over again.

Would that work for you?

-ray

Ray replied on October 07, 2009 20:26 to the question "Using interactive bulletin - requires login? Index page will not load." in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Sean,

I'm going to through out a wild guess. I know sometimes zip files can carry over permissions. What I would do is before you archive the files for your interactive bulletin (the index.html, images, etc) Change the permissions on them so they are readable by everybody. Then try uploading the archive.

I'm making this guess because it seems like Cablecast isn't able to acutally read the files you upload in order to render them. Since its an instance of Internet explorer that is rendering the files, it would throw out the authentication required error message.

Hope you get it up and goin.

-ray

Ray replied on October 07, 2009 20:03 to the question "RSS Feed" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Obviously a question for a lawyer, but I'll give my two cents.

If an RSS feed is present, the publishers of the web page are obviously trying to promote there content. It is expected that people will subscribe. You could argue that your bulletin board is an RSS reader with a larger than single person audience.

That said, an RSS feed has a description field usually citing where the feed came from. I would make sure that is displayed somewhere. Also somewhere include the feeds URI. This essentially citing the source of the information and is overall good practice.

If it is a local source, why not just email someone and ask them?

Overall I think that grabbing RSS feeds is fine, as long as you cite them. Its definitely better than just randomly pulling information off a site. The RSS feed is meant to be syndicated. If they issue you a take down notice, remove the feed.

-ray

Ray replied on September 26, 2009 01:32 to the question "SX2 only playing files with 48khz audio sampling - Help Please" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey Tom...

Sorry to break the news. The SX will only play 48khz audio. But there is hope on the horizon. You can download FixMpeg from TRMS labs that should convert your files to 48khz.

http://labs.trms.com

-ray