Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Metropolitan opera

This is topic Metropolitan opera - broken recording in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Hordur Valgardsson (Member # 5482) on 05-01-2010, 07:49 PM:

Hi all, we just had a problem with our topfield receiver during the live armida broadcast tonight, the audio stopped working just before first half, i called the support center and got the information that everything was ok on their end.
it looks like it was a problem with the topfield receiver that caused this since the audio went out both in the auditorium and in the TV wich we use to monitor the broadcasts and is hooked up via the rca output on the receiver.
anyways we fixed this by restarting the topfield and within 3 minutes we had the show with audio back on, started recording again and crossed our fingers that what we had recording from the first half would still be there. unfortunately it was not.
we have a encore showing this wendesday and now i am desperatly trying to find a way to get a recording from somewere, we would of course pay for all shipping and hard drive costs and man hour if needed.

Another thing i am wondering, what kind of satellite equipment have you guys been using for live broadcasts, size of disks and receiver and scaler,
here in Iceland we were forced to get a 3 meter dish since we have bad weather and such and use a topfield receiver and recently i got a new scaler, dvdo edge wich is alot better than the old thing we used to have from http://www.anchorbaytech.com/dvdo_edge/
do you guys have any backup plans or common problems for example i´ve been thinking to use a seperate recevier to record and another to use for playback, defragmentation of the hard drive seems it could be the cause of our issue now, although i can´t be sure until i investigate further.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-01-2010, 08:05 PM:

I know most if not all of our installations have TWO identical receivers with the ability to switch to either at the push of a button. I can think of one installation where both have recorders on them too.

Steve

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-02-2010, 04:01 PM:

Blame it on the Volcano!

Posted by Hordur Valgardsson (Member # 5482) on 05-02-2010, 05:50 PM:

haha that is actually be something to look into, it might very well be the ash getting in the way of the signal.

Posted by Joe Elliott (Member # 4006) on 05-03-2010, 06:50 AM:

We had two glitches during the opera, one was just before the sword fight, before first intermission, the other just after second intermission.

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 05-03-2010, 08:24 AM:

No problems last Saturday, however we have stopped using a Topfield box due to many problems with it.

If we need to run another showing we have to be sent a copy.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 05-03-2010, 05:03 PM:

Does Cinemedia handle MET events outside the US? They will either re-air it or send you a receiver with the content already on it if you call your event specialist.

Posted by Kris Verhanneman (Member # 5562) on 05-04-2010, 02:37 AM:

For France the event is 'broadcast' by CielEcran. Website

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-04-2010, 09:48 AM:

Our provier is "By-Experience."

We use two Sonicview-8000 recievers with external 250 GB USB drives. (2 identical units for redundancy.)

Both receivers go to an Extron 6-port switch. (We use the system for other things, thus the need for other ports on the switch.)

Each broadcast uses approx. 50-60 GB. We can store up to 4 or 5 shows on a drive. I have a spare drive if I need to back up a show or if I have a drive failure.

IF I have a failure during a recording I can send one of my drives back to ByExperience and have them copy a show onto that drive and send it back to me. If I get on the horn fast enough I can have it back in 2 days. If it was a "life-or-death" emergency I could have them ship me a hard drive and I would send it back when I'm done with it.

I have had screw-ups in the system but, luckily, I only had ONE of the two systems fail and I was able to get a clean recording on the backup system.

The only thing that scares me about this arrangement is that we are daisy chaining both receivers off a single 1.5m dish. I'm covered if I have an electronic failure but, if the dish gets damaged or stops working, I'm in trouble and I won't be able to recover. The boss cites the expense of getting another dish as the reason why we don't have two. (Some people don't get it.)