For a small station WITH a staff it's not really that economical to put everything on computer. I'd recomend getting digital VCR's & copying the VHS's to digital tape.

WNED (is my local one & they've got a REALLY state of the art place there. Nothing beats a good controll room man (or woman).Īlso, try contacting other PBS affiliates. Going 100% computer is great but, computer break down you're 100% off the air. I'd recomend getting some Panasonic DVCPro VCR's & getting your VHS stuff on those. That can be controlled via local computer or via modem.īut, you will STILL need someone to man the post (FCC reg's).

I setup some Adtec Digital Duet's ( ) to run the TV stations WNYI & KWWF before they got sold. the WB network has their affiliates download the programs on to PC's & play's back from their. The only thing that I've been able to find that looks like what I'm thinking about is Showmaker by a company called Specialy Video Products (a D.co company):Īt my old TV station we used WinLightning to record all our shows. Then we can put volunteers to work digitizing all of their programming into WMV files and teach a few how to run the software - even remotely from home.ĭoes anyone have any contact information on this type of software? I see the entire station being compressed into a couple of nice PC workstations/servers. My thought is there must be a software package out there that would allow us to load all of our programming on a few hard drives and simply drag and drop video files onto a weekly time line, including little public service announcements and the obligatory scroll across the bottom with community events and the like. I've been volunteered to head up a technology refresh committee. What's scary is that they have a reasonable budget and spend most of it keeping tape decks working at $350 per repair. The only guy that even knows how to do it is over 80 years old - props to him, but I believe we are one banana peal away from some serious down time. I think they set up 8 hours of programming at a time and the process is very complicated and not all that realiable. They broadcast their shows from a bank of 16 VHS tape decks that are controlled with little IR sensors that are stuck to the front of the decks and mimic the remote controls. The organization has been run by group of volunteers that are nearly all very senior citizens and the equipment and methods they use reflects this.

I've recently become a board member of our local Public Access TV station.

Video broadcast scheduling software