David Moisan's dashboard

David Moisan replied on November 04, 2009 19:37 to the question "RF interference (?) messing up my audio" in Tightrope Media Systems:

I have RF experience. You'll want to make a test plan for the router. This will involve disconnecting all router inputs except one, then feed that into the system. No interference: disconnect that input and try another.

You want to divide and isolate the different components to figure out where the interference is coming in. Input, through and Output, if you can get a test with just those three kinds of components, you'll go a long way.

These three questions may help narrow it down:

1) Is interference present on black input (black burst through router and encoder)
2) Is interference present on encoded content that is played on another isolated system (say, another PC in your office.)?
3) Is interference present on a non-encoded source (line video from studio, a tape player, etc.) played to air?

David Moisan marked one of Jennifer McCleary's replies in Tightrope Media Systems as useful. Jennifer McCleary replied to the problem "Cablecast DVD Import 5.0.0 not working on Vista x64".

David Moisan replied on September 16, 2009 15:41 to the idea "Disposition tracking, and automated disposition generator." in Tightrope Media Systems:

What is missing, or at least what I could not find in the menus, is a run log.

We need to know:

1) Did the show not run?
2) Did the show try to run but Cablecast reported an error

We get phone calls from producers saying that they or a friend or relative did not see their show. What do we tell them?

For the time being, I wrote a Powershell script to email an error report based on the TRMS event logs. But we still have to dig manually to find out what went on. These logs aren't normally visible and I would have never known what went on in them unless I exposed them as I've done with my script.

David Moisan started following the idea "Disposition tracking, and automated disposition generator." in Tightrope Media Systems.

David Moisan replied on September 04, 2009 14:41 to the problem "Cablecast DVD Import 5.0.0 not working on Vista x64" in Tightrope Media Systems:

I've just tried 5.0.1. No go. Here's what's happening. Given one DVD to import, one that's worked with DVD Import in our other (x86) machine:

1) Tried importing directly from DVD as standard user. Hang.
2) Copied VOB folder to desktop and import as standard user. Hang.
3) Tried #1 as domain administrator. Hang. No change.
4) Tried #2 as domain administrator. Hang. No change.

The program hangs when you click Import, whether it's from the DVD or the hard drive (copied VOB).

I'd be willing to work directly with your developer to resolve this. I have a Windows Internals certification and can install any troubleshooting framework I might need to find this bug.

[I had wanted to upload a screenshot but that seems to be broken.]

David Moisan reported a problem in Tightrope Media Systems on September 03, 2009 15:37:

support@trms.com down?

Dave Gauthier and I have emailed support and gotten no response. Is the network down at TRMS again?

David Moisan reported a problem in Tightrope Media Systems on August 31, 2009 23:42:

Cablecast DVD Import 5.0.0 not working on Vista x64

Cablecast DVD import 5.0.0 locks up on a Vista Business x64 machine. Details are as described in this earlier thread on Vista.

Vista comes with .Net 2.0 and I have installed and verified Visual C++ 2008 redistributables are on the machine.

Symptoms: Reads DVD and populates the name field, but locks up on import before it even asks for a directory. No error messages.

David Moisan asked a question in Tightrope Media Systems on August 27, 2009 15:33:

Revisiting XP SP3 on Cablecast

I know this has been brought up before, but I want to re-ask this. Have things changed so that XP SP3 can be installed on Cablecast machines. We have an SX-4 which is the only XP machine in the building without SP3.

All of our machines have Powershell 1.0 for administration. In a few months, Powershell 2.0 will be released for XP and it will almost certainly require SP3. I really want to bring the SX-4 up to the same SP level as the other XP machines, and I need the remote administration capabilities of PowerShell 2, since we will be moving our office PC's to Windows 7 (which includes PowerShell 2) at the end of the year.

David Moisan replied on August 27, 2009 15:31 to the question "Windows XP SP3" in Tightrope Media Systems:

I know this is an old question but I want to re-ask this. Have things changed so that XP SP3 can be installed on Cablecast machines. We have an SX-4 which is the only XP machine in the building without SP3.

All of our machines have Powershell 1.0 for administration. In a few months, Powershell 2.0 will be released for XP and it will almost certainly require SP3. I really want to bring the SX-4 up to the same SP level as the other XP machines, and I need the remote administration capabilities of PowerShell 2, since we will be moving our office PC's to Windows 7 (which includes PowerShell 2) at the end of the year.

David Moisan started following the question "Windows XP SP3" in Tightrope Media Systems.

David Moisan replied on July 08, 2009 15:20 to the update "Announcing Carousel 5.2.6" in Tightrope Media Systems:

We just upgraded to 5.2.6 today. We had no problems with the Carousel Player. However, the instructions didn't list the SX-4, so we weren't sure what to do. We ended up installing the 5.2.6 Framework on the SX-4 which appears to be what it wanted us to do anyway.

I try never to assume anything when upgrading and usually take TRMS documentation at face value.

I wouldn'tve attempted the update on the SX-4 but for the fact that I had done a Cablecast update recently and I remember having to update the Carousel Framework then.

David Moisan replied on May 01, 2009 14:50 to the question "Where is the URL to the Cablecast RSS schedule feed?" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hey, you're next door to us!
Try this URL:
http:(yourIP)/Cablecast/Plugins/RSSSchedule/rss.aspx?Days=3&ChannelID=1#

ChannelID corresponds to the ID for the channel you set during installation. Days explains itself. That seems to be the minimal code that generates good RSS.

Try it with our schedule at SATV:
http://media.satvonline.org/Cablecast...

David Moisan marked one of Chad Gartner's replies in Tightrope Media Systems as useful. Chad Gartner replied to the question "Backup disk image of SX-4".

David Moisan replied on May 01, 2009 14:44 to the question "Backup disk image of SX-4" in Tightrope Media Systems:

I plan to try it out. I've tried DriveImageXML, a popular imager, but it did not work. I caution, though, that most free imaging software is only free for private and noncommercial use, which excludes almost all of us.

David Moisan asked a question in Tightrope Media Systems on April 28, 2009 15:07:

Backup disk image of SX-4

A few days ago, I had to get a new hard drive for an SX-4 which had failed the system RAID array, and which had had a previous hard drive fail eight months previous.

Had another drive in that array failed when we were waiting for a new drive, we would have been down hard.

What does TRMS recommend for backup best practices? I am seriously considering a disk imaging program such as Acronis. I don't want another drive failure to happen without having a plan in place; it puts me in a very bad spot as the IT person.

David Moisan replied on April 10, 2009 14:42 to the problem "Network disruption causing support delays" in Tightrope Media Systems:

We've all been there.

David Moisan replied on January 23, 2009 16:16 to the question "Encoded files disappearing" in Tightrope Media Systems:

OK, I've nosed around and found the dropdown arrow on the encoder actions row. Entered a filename in the showid field, and got a file with encoded bars under the name I entered. I think this does it for now, I have sent a screenshot to Dave G..

David Moisan replied on January 23, 2009 15:59 to the question "Encoded files disappearing" in Tightrope Media Systems:

OK. I encoded some bars from the autopilot matrix/force device on encoder1. There was no file name in the drop down actions menu: just none, stop, movefile, record, recordstop. Screenshot enclosed.

David Moisan replied on January 23, 2009 15:35 to the question "Encoded files disappearing" in Tightrope Media Systems:

Hi, Chad, I'm the other Dave at SATV, the IT person. I watched Dave G. finish an encode the other day, which was successfull.

I noted that the SXEncoder uses a blank file name (.mpg). Is that by design? Would it not be better to have it be saved as encode1, encode2, etc. (or untitled, untitled1...)? The XP console on the SX is normally set to not display file extensions ("hide files for known file types") and it is disconcerting to see a blank name with an icon when renaming.

This next question is probably too big to answer in this thread but: we do many related file operations through XP's Explorer. Is there a workflow we are missing?

A comment on the problem "DVD Import 5.0.0 build 28 crashes on Windows 2000SP4 workstation" in Tightrope Media Systems:

It's an Athlon XP. This is what SIW says:

Number of CPU(s) One Physical Processor / One Core / One Logical Processor / 32 bits
CPU Full Name AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+
Vendor AuthenticAMD
CPU Name AMD Athlon XP
CPU Code Name Thoroughbred
Platform Name Socket A (462)
Revision B0
Technology 0.13 μm
Instructions MMX (+), 3DNow! (+), SSE
Original System Clock 133 MHz
System Clock 133.1 MHz
FSB 266.3 MHz
L1 Data Cache 64 KBytes
L1 Instructions Cache 64 KBytes
L2 Cache 256 KBytes

I had wondered if it was due to the OS, since it is still Windows 2000SP4.

I have reverted back to 4.6.0 on that particular machine (DVD Import runs on two of our machines) – David Moisan, on November 20, 2008 17:37