[Marvin Holdman]

Hi Dave,

We had the same problem. Here is Sony’s response to our inquiry;

“None of the engineers I’ve spoken with have been able to reproduce the anomaly you reported, or think of what combination of events could have caused it.

If it happens again, please let us know as quickly as possible, and well see if there’s any additional troubleshooting data that can be gathered.”

Thankfully, it hasn’t happened again, but we’re obviously pretty troubled by this glitch. Has this happened to anyone else? More importantly, can anyone re-create this?

Keeping our fingers crossed.

Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv

[Marvin Holdman]

Hi Stephen,

If I understand correctly, you are describing a “spanned clip” in which a single clip goes from one card to another. The way we’ve always approached this is first, but downloading the BPAV folders into a series of folders (disk01, disk02, disk03 and so forth) and then at the end of the day, combining them into a single BPAV folder using the EX-1 clip browser software.

When you do this, it automatically recombines spanned files.

Hope this helps.

Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv

[Marvin Holdman]

Guys there is one thing you should know…..

Giving the station an mpeg stream might seem like a simple solution, and in theory it is, but in the real world it’s going to go something like this;

Salesperson – Hey guys, someone just sent us an MPEG file and they said it could go straight to our playback server at the transmitter. Can we make that happen?

Production Person – Well, let’s throw it on a timeline and see if we can get it to work. D’oh, my system doesn’t recognize that flavor of MPEG. We’ll just send it to control and see if they can deal with it.

Control – Hmmmm, mpeg. Was it made with our custom preset which conforms to every other file that is one our file server? No? Send it back.

Salesperson – We’re sorry, but if you want it to play on our station we either need it on tape, or we’ll have to charge you for the time it ties up our editing systems in order to make the conversion, IF we have that codec available.

The long and short of it is this. There is NO STANDARD FOR MPEG’S IN THE BROADCAST WORLD. It’s getting better, but if you can’t match EXACTLY the mpeg codec that is required for the equipment at the headend, the it is going to cause problems. Your best bet, for the immediate future is to provide a dub in whatever the station request. If you don’t, plan on it taking more time to sort out the issues.

ASK YOUR STATION WHAT THEY PREFER. That’s what you need to deliver. There may be better ways to do things, but most people in the business of broadcast embrace change VERY SLOWLY.

Just a thought from someone who has received their fair share of “mpeg streams” and has never seen two that were quite the same. There are MANY variations to the mpeg format. You won’t be able to get it right without specific knowledge from the facility. If you’re chummy with the head engineer, and they have the time (unlikely) then you might get it right after a couple of tries.

Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv

[Marvin Holdman]

Thanks Don. Upcoming circumstance will necessitate a “default reset” so we’ll see. The whole reason we had to become involved with file naming is that we are initiating an asset management system with several EX-1’s and had to insure that there were no duplications of file names. I’m sure you can imagine the chaos that duplicate file names could bring to a relational database. It’s a bad thing.

We think we’ve come up with a way to manage that, but this whole “camera creating duplicate names” thing is throwing a very mighty wrinkle in our plan. We’ve got the Sony folks on site tomorrow and I’m going to quiz them about this issue. If I find anything interesting out, I will report back here.

Thanks.

Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv

[Marvin Holdman]

By the way, I spoke with Michael Palmer this morning….

What a pleasant and thoroughly enlightening discussion we had. While I’ve read these forums for years, and have always been impressed with everyone’s willingness to share, this is the first time I’ve had a voice associated to a “cc’s” persona. We are lucky to have such great folks here. At the end of the day, they are the ones that make this whole thing work.

Thank you Michael.

Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv

[Marvin Holdman]

Hi Don,

Sorry for not mentioning using the clip browser to combine folders. My assumption that everyone knew this to be the only way to do this was, obviously, unfounded.

As for the camera generating filenames….

Our Ex-1 generates files names like this;

AD09_0000

The first four fields are user definable alpha numerics and the last four fields are camera generated sequential numerics. Our filenames do not look like yours at all. Is this a default setting?

Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv

[Marvin Holdman]

Sigh, guys..

I’m afraid you are both incorrect. If you use the EX-1 Clip Browser you CAN combine folders. We do it all the time. It is much easier to manage the media from a single shoot as a single folder vs multi folders. I realize you cannot combine folders WITHOUT the Clip Browser software, but that is not what we were talking about.

Don –

I’m using 1 camera, and yes, I know it’s not SUPPOSED to generate the same file names, THAT’S my problem. We downloaded a card, re-inserted the card and it named the first 6 files the same as they were on the previous download.

BTW, I am talking about the EX-1 and it DOES NOT include ANY serial number information in the naming convention of the FILENAME. While the camera will arbitrarily assign the first four digits of the username, it IS user definable. The ONLY other part of the filename is a sequentially camera generated numeric filed. The user can ONLY reset this field to zero. Perhaps you are confusing this camera with another model??

The ONLY time a filename is duplicated is when it spans the two cards, in which case the Clip Browser software will consolidate that clip when you “combine” the folders. But this IS NOT the case with the anomaly I was describing.

BTW, as best we can tell, we are using version 1 of the firmware.

I guess no one else has seen this.

Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv