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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-CABLE-2008-05-13Cable Access Oversight Committee minutes (as approved May 13, 2008)) The Committee (AOC) met at the PEG Studio on Tuesday, Mar. 11, 2008, at 4:30 pm. Present: AOC members Will Burbank, Wayles Browne, Jennifer Dotson, Trish O'Rourke, Wies van Leuken; studio manager Lauren Stefanelli. 0. Notes by W. Browne as AOC secretary. 1. The minutes of the Feb. 12, 2008 meeting were approved. 2. No comments from the public. 3. Studio Manager's report (written; attached below). L. Stefanelli: Time Warner Cable (TWC) has its own generator, so the cable service was not affected by the power outage in parts of Ithaca. But NEXUS doesn't restart until someone comes and restarts it. TWC will call in an engineer if a number of viewers (three ?) phone 272 -3456 to complain that a given channel is not working. L. Stefanelli hopes to have a capital budget with prices of items ready for the April meeting. Other items to rethink at that time: a request to upgrade the mobile studio -- a new item for $5000 seemed good but has problems because it uses fragile mini- firewire cable, so we may need to try to find a better solution. 4. Reports by members: J. Dotson from City of Ithaca Common Council (CC): 1) T. O'Rourke and W. Burbank have been officially appointed as AOC members and need to be sworn in. 2) The City hasn't yet met with TWC representatives as had been planned. She talked with city IT person Duane Twardokus today. The City will connect to the new fiber -optic i -net. Intended uses of money from the "old" (pre -2003) franchise: to get video conference equipment for City Hall and to outfit a studio for GIAC. Twardokus has one system that can do both. AOC will invite him to a meeting. He believes in solutions that help the most people for the longest time. The City hopes to meet with T. Doheny and M. Cotter from TWC in early April. Dotson hasn't followed up on the question of PEG studio opening hours yet. To a question by W. van Leuken about D. Twardokus's plans: yes, they would include remote origination of programs. L. Stefanelli: Some small cheap video cameras use .mp4 format for Internet usage. This is not very good quality (not high resolution) for TV usage, but is usable for simple programs. A camera holds about 2 hours of material, and can be plugged directly into a computer for editing, or be combined with better - quality video. 5. Next meeting: Tuesday, April 15, at 4:30 at the PEG studio. 6. L. Stefanelli: still waiting for the invoices she needs in order to prepare the capital - purchase report for the year 2007. 7. Members viewed short samples of programs entered in the PEG awards competition and viewed at the awards ceremony Feb. 29. These were very varied and aroused much interest. 8. Mike Levy of the Lehman Alternative Community School came in. He showed some samples of work done by 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at the school: "Exploring American Myths - -the Myth of Paul Revere" "Myth or Real" (the story about George Washington and the cherry tree) Levy hopes to get individual cameras into children's hands, and external hard drives [ ?]. He will work with Studio Manager Stefanelli on a proposal for the present year's and next year's budgets. L. Stefanelli: Chris Sperry also has plans for a studio at LACS, but construction at the building makes dates uncertain. M. Levy also teaches music -- another prospective source of content for broadcast. L. Stefanelli: Schools used to publicize broadcasts within their own circle of interested people. PEG could show schools' productions during the school day, for all students to watch. 9. Meeting adjourned about 6 pm. Access Coordinator Report to AOC March 2008 - Equipment All production areas are in operation. We had a 2 -hour power outage on 3/8 (from about 5 to 7 pm), which took out playback for a short while. Although we have a fairly powerful surge suppressor, 2 hours was more than it could outlast. Unfortunately, when our NEXUS digital controller loses power, it does not automatically reboot. And because all playback from PEGASYS, on both channels 13 and 16, is routed through it, loss of power to NEXUS kills all PEGASYS - originated programming until NEXUS is manually rebooted. I reprogrammed delayed starts for those programs that were affected. I am discussing ideas with our engineers about heading off a problem like this in the future. - Facility A PEGASYS orientation is scheduled for March 20. The 2008 PEGASYS Awards was held on Friday, February 29. About 3 dozen people attended. Awards were given out in 12 categories. We will be sending the 4 best programs on, at Time Warner's expense, to the national Hometown Awards competition. We received a number of positive comments from people about both the event and the telecast. We are also planning to be a judging site for the Hometown Awards in April. The Hometown Awards does its judging by sending entries all over the country to many access centers, each of whom field one or 2 judging panels. I am still looking for volunteer judges for this. - Notable Public Access Productions Starlight Presents did a particularly interesting episode in the aftermath of the recent college shooting, about the stigma such events attach to mental health care recipients and the dangers of sudden withdrawal from psychotropic medications. Several producers have done programs in memorial to former Ithaca mayor Ben Nichols. Institutional Access -LACS Mike Levy has responded with a request for equipment support. He will be attending this meeting in person to present more information about his program. His request: "Needs for the LACS video program include: 4 digital camcorders (three have broken beyond repair this one[year ? ?], and a fourth is malfunctioning) 1 external hard drive for backup of projects (preferably the LaCie Rugged All- Terrain Hard Disk, which does not require external power) 6 sets of headphones (for use at computers during editing) Other than that, my main needs are functioning computers, which I realize is probably outside of the scope of your budget. I want to state again that it is my intention to get a more regular stream of content to you in the near future. In the fall, I tried to get students to take ownership over this, but as a new faculty member, I had trouble swaying enough students to make it a viable option. Thanks so much for being patient as I work to re- energize the LACS video program." Mike Levy, LACS (Received Feb. 23, 2008) - ICSD (Ithaca City School District) Mike Pliss has inquired about capital equipment support to upgrade the I -Net to the school district to fiber [- optic]. His request: "Hello Lauren! I trust you have been well :) As you can see below I am interested in planning for the expense in 2008 -09 for upgrading the school district's video connection to the head -end. My budget projections are due very soon of course! If /when the I -net goes away the district will need to rapidly implement another way to connect. Can you help me with this or point me in the correct direction for the help I need? Thanks - Mike"