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Home My WebLink AboutMN-CABLE-2015-12-14 1 City of Ithaca Cable Access Oversight Committee (AOC) Meeting Minutes Monday, December 14, 2015, 4:30 PM (postponed from Nov. 23) Meeting Room, PEGASYS Access Center, 519 West Green Street, Ithaca, NY As approved Feb. 1, 2016 Present: chair Rich DePaolo, AOC members Wayles Browne, vice-chair Wies van Leuken, Common Council liaison J.R. Clairborne; studio manager Lauren Stefanelli. 01. Call to Order by DePaolo at 4:40. 02. Agenda Additions and/or Deletions. Van Leuken: under New Business, add PEG awards and the position of PEG channel 13 and 97-1. 03. Public Comments: none. 04. Approval Minutes of the October 5, 2015 Meeting: approved with two changes, 3 to 0. 05. Access Studio Coordinator Report: in writing (attached). a. 2015 Budget – Progress Report: all the items from the 2014/2015 Budget were ordered, except for the DVD players, which have been discontinued by the manufacturer. See 5c. b. PEGASYS’ Facility Improvements – Progress Report. c. TWC's Maintenance and Repair Report. AOC congratulates Stefanelli on getting Studio Camera 1 fixed. The one working DVD player plays but doesn't accept triggers from NEXUS any more. At present Stefanelli has to convert DVD programming to .mpg files and then trigger these. AOC members have ordered and paid for a used DVD player. Re Wi-Fi: she understands that there is free Wi-Fi service for customers at all TWC’s public buildings including the local cable store on State Street. Will it work for customers at the studio too? She will look into this. 06. Member Reports a. Publicity. Van Leuken: I am compiling a PEG Publicity list and would like your input. The following additions were suggested: 1) Lifelong; 2) Ithaca Freeskool; 3) Radio station WRFI; 4) TC Mental Health; 5) The Human Services Coalition. Stefanelli added that Lifelong might want to televise its classes and lectures and perhaps Ithaca Freeskool could do that too. Radio station WRFI does a couple of simulcasts with program identification on the video feed. Nexus can "overlay"--that is, add a .png image file to any picture, either constantly or from time to time. For example the file might say "This is from WRFI Radio." This should ease simulcasting (multi-platform presence). They could also hang a camera on its studio wall and televise their radio programs. And also a newly hired person in Mental Health is interested in options for a TV show. b. PEGASYS' Access Rules: Tabled until the next meeting. 2 c. Third Quarter 2015 Quarterly Franchise Fee Worksheet from City, Town and Village. The Village’s report was received. DePaolo will ask for a report from the Town of Ithaca. Clairborne will ask for the 2nd and 3rd quarter reports from the City of Ithaca. d. Vacancies and Term Expirations. J. R. Clairborne's term expires and he is leaving Common Council at the end of 2015. We need a new liaison person from Council and a new member who lives in the City of Ithaca. e. Furniture in Studio. Sets and props and new(er) chairs are needed. (Postponed till next meeting, for discussion on 2016 budget.) 07. Old Business a. Franchise Agreement. DePaolo: the Negotiating Committee is continuing its negotiations. b. 2015/2nd Quarter Franchise Fee Report from City. Clairborne will ask City Controller Steve Thayer for worksheets. Preferably copies of these should be mailed to van Leuken as they arrive. 08. New Business a. Charter/TWC/Brighthouse Network merger. No report. b. Van Leuken: PEG Awards. Stefanelli: I seek a balance between awards to programming from Ithaca College and awards to entries from the PEG studio. c. Van Leuken: On newer TVs with a Quam tuner, Channels 13-15-16 are really on channel 97-1, 97-2 and 97-3, so let's always announce PEG as "13/97-1," "15/97-2" and "16/97- 3" on promotional materials. 09. Next meeting: Monday, February 1, 2016, 4:30, PEGASYS Access Center. 10. Adjournment: 6:05. Notes by W. Browne as AOC secretary. ===== Contact information for AOC members: City of Ithaca: Wayles Browne, secretary <ewb2@cornell.edu>. City of Ithaca: Ducson Nguyen, Common Council liaison 2016 <dnguyen@cityofithaca.org>. City of Ithaca: member TBA. Town of Ithaca: Rich DePaolo, chair <rd@richdepaolo.com>. Village of Cayuga Heights: Wies van Leuken, vice chair <pmv4@cornell.edu>. Web site for the PEGASYS studio, with program schedules: http://pegasys.webstarts.com/index.html studio location: 612 West Green Street, Ithaca, New York mailing address: 519 West State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 phone (607) 272-7272 fax (607) 277-5404 PEGASYS staff: studio manager Lauren Stefanelli <lauren.stefanelli@twcable.com> 3 December 2015 Access Studio Coordinator Report - Building Improvements  The interior renovation project is almost completed. The last of the baseboards and the studio carpet were installed. The cleaning service provided us with new runner carpets to help save our new office carpet this winter. The painter had a technical problem doing the studio wall and this remains to be completed.  The exterior building sign has been ordered. This will be helpful, as people can not find our entrance on first coming here, and knock at various doors until someone lets them in. - Playback  We have been in discussion with other departments about moving our playback equipment to the 517 W. State St. building, in order to protect it from power outages. Power outages have destroyed sensitive hard drives and DVD players in the past, and threaten our server. Everyone seems to be agreeable to having us join with another multi-system PEG playback server, which is going to be installed in that building over the coming months.  For 2 years, I have been warning producers that the era of all videotape machines is ending. Producers spent years producing programs here on SVHS, VHS and MiniDV tape and some still submit these older shows for playback. It has been over 8 years since we have been able to get repair service for VCRs. We have about 4 each working SVHS and DVCam VCRs – and these are getting more unreliable. Playing ancient tapes that are brittle and dusty increases their trajectory towards the dumpster. I have been encouraging producers who want to submit such shows to convert them to mpg or DVD and have helped them transfer their old shows onto digital hard drives. Because of the unreliability of these VCRs when playing extremely old tapes [they often play with tracking, white lines or other errors and require repeated cleaning of the decks], I have made conversion to mpg a preliminary step prior to playback. Accordingly, I am considering setting up a conversion process to allow producers to convert their own programs to mpg file or DVD prior to submission. This would allow those producers with a closet full of tapes an opportunity to archive them and put them in a form that could be submitted in the future. - Equipment and Facility Maintenance and Repair  Our studio camera 1 was repaired! A/V Corp. engineers spent weeks working on it, and got it working again, but because they can not guarantee that the work will hold, they did not charge us. Even better, we have found an identical camera in another system, which will be sent down to us and provide further backup. So we now have a 3 camera studio again. - Equipment Fund Update  All items on our equipment fund have been ordered, with the exception of the replacement playback DVD players. So far, we have not come up with an available unit. - Institutional Access  Ithaca High School has continued to have problems with their live video signal for their Board of Education meetings causing them to miss an additional live broadcast. We have been in communication with their tech about it. - Staff  Mike Cederstrom did a great job, as usual, in covering PEGASYS during my vacation in November.