Disposition tracking, and automated disposition generator.

So today someone asks me "Remember that show..."

and I say "Sure do."

Them: "Can you get me a Copy of that?"

Me: "Absolutely, its on the SX Video Server"

Now we all know where this is going....

If you had asked me 4 months ago, before we restructured and added a second programmer to the station, I would of bet my left arm that show was on the server. I only delete shows off the video server that come from two sources, weekly church services and biweekly county government meetings that never get rebroadcast, only archived to our VOD server.

Imagine my surprise when low and behold, I go to the SX and no such file exists!

Honestly, I don't use the Autopilot Digital File Management, but I would... If it had these features added.

1) Start logging disposition changes. Its not enough to know that a file was 'destroyed' I need to know when, and most importantly by who (which logged in user).

For example I should be able to pull up a show and show through disposition logging that... The show was created on xx/xx/xxxx an MPEG was put on the video server on xx/xx/xxxx that the file was archived on xx/xx/xxxx and finally destroyed on xx/xx/xxxx And for all of these log entries I need to know who did the action.

2) It would be nice to be able to have a place associated with a disposition. For instance I use an archive disposition for shows that we don't intend to play anymore, but keep around just in case. I move these shows to an external hard disk. We buy a new disk about each year. It would be nice to be able to add a drive name or place to a disposition so that Cablecast can tell me which archive drive a show is on. This would work for archived DVDs and tapes as well.

3)It would be nice if Cablecast could scan my drives periodically and if a show isn't where its supposed to be, but hasn't had its disposition changed manually, changes it to a default disposition such as in my case "missing", and sends me an alert email that this has happened.

This would speed up the process of figuring out why I am missing a file that should be there.

Finally for helping with archival purposes a helper program like DVDImport that can scan a location, such as an external hard disk and batch change all the dispositions would be extremely useful. In my case it would scan the external drive and change all the dispositions to archived. This would save huge amounts of time when doing archives.

These changes, while probably not that easy to implement, would be a huge help in managing our ever growing digital file libraries. My station is about to hit 2000 show IDs, and I know there are stations out there that have as many as 30,000.

I really think that the disposition system in Cablecast needs an overhaul so that Cablecast can really start helping stations manage there Show Records, but the files for those shows as well.

Thanks Guys....

-ray