The Difference is in the
Details
Why Smartcaster Systems are
your better Choice
We have known for years that our customers get confused
by nomenclature. Buzzwords have
infested our industry to the point that one company announces a feature and
everybody else adopts the same buzzword for the feature but not the same
functionality.
The only way to combat this problem is meticulous details on how the system operates. That’s where the differences will be. If you are considering a digital system for your station, please take the time to read this and other documents that will give you an in depth view of how our product works.
John
Schad
President
Smarts
Broadcast Systems
First, a word about Linux:
Linux is a breath of fresh air to the computer industry and a natural product for critical on-air computer applications. Unlike the Windows environment, Linux can smoothly and easily do many simultaneous tasks without loading down the processor with extraneous duties. Linux can be taught to put audio first and make other functions secondary so that your system stays on the air through many situations that would be catastrophic in Windows. Linux is scaleable so only the necessary parts of the operating system are running at any given time. Many of our systems use less than 10% of the processors power. That means speed and reliability that goes far beyond anything developed in the Windows environment. Linux is much more impervious to problems such as worms and viruses, and it guarantees that the computer running the critical programs won’t be running non-essential games or other Windows software that might affect the critical operation. It also opens the door to many of the features below, because we can work with your system while it is on the air in your station. The Linux Smartcaster systems are very revolutionary and paving the way for many future developments only possible in the Linux world. Read on to find out about some of the outstanding characteristics of our units.
Backup:
Having a digital system used to mean that from time to time you lost virtually all data. That was difficult but not impossible when that data consisted of current spot inventory that could be re-recorded. It became imperative with the advent of music-on-hard-drive that a better system be devised. Here is how we do it.
Hard drives are bigger, far more reliable, and far less expensive than they were a few years ago. Our standard systems now feature a 3-deep data backup scheme. The new Smartcaster Linux audio devices are supplied with a 120 gig hard drive as standard equipment. However, we do not record audio directly to that drive. Instead we record it to a Linux audio server with a 120 gig raid array. The raid array provides the first layer of backup protection. The server actually has two 120 gig hard drives in the unit, housed in removable drive bays. You can pull out a drive without the need of taking apart the computer. The raid automatically writes simultaneously to both drives, creating a mirror image of one drive on the other. Should one of the two drives fail, the other will continue working with no down time – it can even happen in the middle of a file playback, and it will keep right on playing. As a matter of fact the biggest problem we have had with raid arrays is that they are so seamless in the way they protect the audio, that stations have operated on a degraded raid for months at a time, only discovering that one of the drives had died when the second one died too. Our new software handles this situation by beeping continuously if one of the two drives fails. This allows you to notify us, we can log in to your system (see Internet troubleshooting below), determine what drive has failed, instruct you to remove the offending drive, and replace it, without it ever taking any station off the air. Once replace, the bad drive is rebuilt while the other continues to handle the load.
The second layer of backup is the 120 gig drive in the Linux Audio Box. Using a Linux exclusive process, we can slowly “dribble” the contents of the raid array in the server, back to the drive on the Linux Audio Box. The data rate is slow enough that it doesn’t load the LAN network, but fast enough that the target drive always has almost all the recorded audio backed up. Only audio done in the past couple of hours would not have made it through the process. In the unlikely event that you lose both drives in the server, or the server itself, you still have virtually all the data on site and accessible within a few minutes by repathing the Smartcaster units. Downtime is reduced to a minimum.
Our suggestion is to take the backup one step further. The same synchronization process works as well across The Internet as it does across the internal LAN network at the station. This makes an off site backup very practical. While it might be considered overkill, we have seen situations where lightning can so decimate a station that multiple hard drives are affected. We have had Smartcasters inundated in floods, burned in fires and buried in lava after surprise volcano eruptions (no, our warranty doesn’t cover that!) The point is, we don’t know what is going to happen, and an off site backup gives us one more chance at data preservation If you already have high speed Internet in place, it is remarkably affordable, yielding 4 complete data backups in two different locations.
Internet Firewall
The Internet is one of the greatest inventions of mankind, and it can greatly benefit your station. However, it must be treated with respect to avoid the well known Internet pitfalls of virus infections and data confidentiality. Smarts can design your system to get the benefits without the downsides.
A few years ago it was very common to allow raw Internet connections to flow directly to every computer in your operation. Today, the practice is going away because of the severe security problems that it presents. If your computers still have public internet addresses assigned by your internet provider (e.g. 66.38. etc etc), these addresses are visible from anywhere on the Internet, and skilled hackers can get to them if they ever target those machines
The modern way of dealing with this is to put a router in place at the point the outside Internet connection enters the building, then put Ethernet switches behind the router to create circuits to your individual machines. I like to compare it to a phone system. You can open an office and buy an outside line for every desk in the office, or you can purchase a multi line business system and put extensions on each desk. That’s what a router system does. With a router, all the machines behind the router have special IP addresses or “phone extensions” rather than outside numbers. These are generally in the range of 192.168.1.0 to .255. You have one public IP address that routes only to the router. We can program the router to allow only needed services to pass through. Your computers are totally shielded from the public Internet, but totally accessible to the “good guys” who need connectivity. By allowing only certain ports to pass through, you get the best of both worlds. It also allows for a critical upgrade of your internal LAN network to TCP/IP from the mixture of protocols you are now using. Our plan would be to leave the CBSI network alone, but build a second, interconnected network for the Smarts Equipment.
Support takes on a whole new meaning when it’s possible to monitor stations and correct problems before they affect airplay or are even noticed by the customer. Proactive Support is a major advancement over reactive support that fixed problems after they had manifested themselves on the air or in your operation. It’s far better to fix things before they become problems.
Smarts offers an enhanced support service we are just beginning to roll out called “proactive support”. The concept is quite revolutionary, and no one else is offering anything like it. Since we can have diagnostic level access to virtually all our equipment via the secure Internet connection, we can routinely sweep the equipment at daily intervals to look for trouble spots. When we were doing test runs of the concept last summer, we discovered a memory leak in a Smartcaster in South Dakota. It was a Saturday morning and we projected that the Smartcaster would run out of memory by Tuesday morning. We analyzed the data, and traced the problem down to a single audio file that the customer had downloaded from the Internet. The file did not adhere to standard MPEG header protocols, and the system was using up memory trying to fit it into the mold. We made a program change to allow that type of file, uploaded it to the customer, waited until he was in the midst of a satellite feed, then upgraded his software. The problem was solved by Saturday afternoon. The customer was notified by email on Monday morning that we had found and fixed the problem with no down time and no time demands on any station personnel. It was totally fixed before anybody at the station knew about it. On another occasion, we discovered a hard drive failing in a station in Illinois. We had an installer driving to the East Coast, called the installer and had him stop at the station to change out the drive. We only had to contact the station in order to get a key to get in the door at 10 pm on Saturday. The drive was exchanged with no data loss.
We can see file corruption, hard drive problems, error messages that generate from other circumstances, network problems and a whole array of other conditions when we look at your system. Proactive support works on the premise that we attempt to identify and fix the problems before the customer has a failure, not after we have an off air emergency and the customer has called us. It may not work all the time, but every time it does it is a vast improvement over standard support services offered in the computer industry.
Smartcasters began as automation devices, primarily used to automate satellite feeds. Over the years they have evolved into diverse units capable of automating from outside sources such as satellite, from data stored on the system hard drive, and providing live operators with capabilities for programming that were unheard of only a few years ago.
We have created a product blending the original automation screens with Linux based live screens in the form of Magic View and our Button Screen. Magic View runs from the program log. It allows you to manually fire audio files in the sequence in which they appear on the log, or to quickly drag and drop changes on the graphics screen. Magic View is designed to work as a stand alone live screen. Everything you need is there to play and even record files.
The Magic Buttons, is similar except that it is best used as a supplement to a Smartcaster. It provides banks and banks of programmable buttons that play audio on a single click. That allows you to superimpose audio over other audio coming from the conventional Smartcaster system. You can even program which audio cards each button will use for playback, and each announcer can have as many buttons as he or she wants. It makes a great companion to the Smartcaster Live Screen.
Want a really neat thing to do with these screens? Put them on a laptop computer outfitted with Linux, hook them up to The Internet at a remote site, and remotely control the playback of audio from the remote location! You don’t need slow screen writing programs like PC Anywhere because Magic View and Magic Buttons communicate with the Linux box through TCP/IP
New Smartcaster automation systems are capable of opening up the audio file access to standard Windows computers. Traffic can audition the spots they are logging and sales can play them to the account. Everybody in your station that needs access to audio files can have that access without leaving their desk.
With the breakthrough in cardless technology, using the Linux computer to play through virtually any modern audio card, we can now place programs on computers throughout your operation. That would allow, for example, the traffic operator to audition a spot she is logging to see if the copy is outdated. The spot will play right from the computer speakers on her machine. It allows the same capability for the sales department to check copy viability. It eliminates the need of having to run into the control room to audition material. That’s called Audio On The Spot. It is designed more as an audition tool than as an on air tool. Audio On Demand is the on-air version. Rather than just playing one spot at a time, Audio On Demand has 6 virtual cart machines displayed on the screen, and the entire audio inventory on a scroll at the bottom. You can find what you want and drag it to any of the 6 “cart machines” for playback. It also has a record function that lets you record audio quickly and simply into the system. It really replicates the old multi-deck cart machines with a record capability, and is quite useful in many operations. It runs under windows. We can sell you the unit or you can put it in your own computer, as long as it meets all our specs. All files recorded into the system through this program will play on any Smartcaster. All files recorded elsewhere on the system will play in Audio on the spot/demand.
With the advent of multiple processor computer networks, many different operating systems and computer platforms had to be made to work together. Smartcaster systems handle this job by continuously compiling a database shared with all systems, including both Windows and Linux platforms.
DB Maintainer is another new program that establishes a constant bridge between many different platforms handling audio in a modern Smartcaster system. Smartcasters use Linux for almost all on air play, with the exception of air play through Audio On Demand, which runs under Windows. We also continue to use certain DOS applications for critical automation features that generally run in unattended modes. DB Maintainer runs on one of the machines to constantly sample audio inventory on all platforms, and update inventory files on all machines so that every machine, regardless of platform, knows about and can instantly play any audio anywhere on the LAN network. This program is running constantly in the background for this housekeeping operation. You don’t know it is there, but it eliminates problems of finding audio, regardless of where you are when you are looking for it.
If you’re not doing this now – It’s a real time saver!
The ripping of audio from other digital sources is now a common practice in the industry, and a major time saver for station operations. Rather than having to play an audio source into a Smartcaster system, you can now rip the audio at many times the speed from sources such as CD’s, internet files and other digital sources. The ripped files all wind up in the same APT-X format you have been using.
Many of your operators today grew up in a computer world, and quickly become adept at editing visually rather than by ear. If you are still spinning CD’s behind an announcer to produce your spots, consider this.
Digital editing is something you have been using for a number of years, but the ripper gives it new life. The digital file you create can now be ripped into the Smartcaster system without an analog dub. The file is always digital and there is no generational loss. The ripped file can be placed in inventory much faster than the real time dub formerly required.
The digital world has taken a different direction from it’s analog predecessor. When the recording industry was growing up, standardization was a necessary component to mass distribution of audio, thus the advent of the 78 rpm, 45 rpm and 33 1/3 rpm record. Digital doesn’t have a single standard, but our equipment can play them all..
One big advantage of the new Smartcaster system is that you can play virtually any modern audio file directly on the air. In our former system, everything had to be APT-X. That’s the only format the audio cards could handle. In the new system we can play APT-X, Mpeg Layer III, Mpeg layer II, wave files, and even certain types of ADPCM (an outmoded file structure that predates any of your equipment). What that means is that you can download material off the internet and directly play it without the need of any file conversion.
Want your own meteorologist? You can do that with Smartcaster and Weather Eye!
One innovative use you can make of the above feature is a new offering we have, automated weather. Weather Eye Inc. has 11 staff meteorologists on duty to produce custom weather forecasts for their subscribing stations. We have developed the technology to have your server systems automatically log via Internet into the Weather Eye website, and download personalized forecasts for your stations, then put them on the air through the Smartcaster system. Weather Eye is inexpensive and hassle free. It in effect gives you a staff meteorologist. This isn’t an automated machine-sounding weather forecast. It lends a great deal of professionalism to your operation at a very reasonable price.
The Spider has been around for a long time but remains the only fully automatic audio file transfer process of its kind. It can pull together your stations anywhere in the world and allow production from one central place or sharing of production among many stations.
We developed our initial Spider System when The Internet was in its infancy. Today we have a much more modern product that takes advantage of the great strides in Internet capabilities that have occurred over the past few years. Now it’s easy to send a single audio file to multiple locations. We transfer a single copy to the FTP site along with instructions to each station that needs to download it. This greatly speeds up this operation. You’ll find the new spider system is fast, reliable and has many diverse capabilities for file transfer. Even in areas with poor Internet access, we can even make available server space on our system here that will serve as a repository for all audio moving from station to station. This is particularly valuable if you have an internet provider that will not allow FTP access to one of your facilities.
Do you have an air personality that needs to have access to the air from home? Do you need to get emergency messages on the air without traveling to the station?
As explained above, the new system can be fully integrated to The Internet for diagnostic and repair purposes for us. This same integration can allow you to administrate things from your home or other location. With the proper equipment you can even have production or voice tracking done from an announcer’s home and sent via FTP to the proper station. The system can be configured so no one has to be at the station to receive the files being sent remotely. This is a big improvement over emailing files because that creates the need of somebody to receive the email, strip the file away, and put it into the system. That all can happen without any human intervention with our system.