Current Projects
This should be a listing of current, ongoing Technical and Computing projects that aren't yet complete enough to merit real documentation. Be warned, this is liable to be outdated and should be used for some idea of what's going on. Also worth a look is the Techie Todo List and the Trac Listings for some of the other ongoing projects.
External IMAP
Responsible: Alex Williams
Status: Probably a week or so short on completion.
Negotiate with IT Services for an external firewall hole, so that YSTV mailboxes can be read using regular clients or phones from off-campus. At present on-campus works, with this running to completion it's probably worth documenting how to set up external YSTV mail.
DNS Delegation
Responsible: Alex Williams
Status: Awaiting a meeting with IT Services
In theory YSTV could administer our own DNS server, and delegate the zone IT Services manage for us to be managed directly, potentially with access to LanDB for updating our own machines.
Continuous Channel/Scheduling Engine
Responsible: Sam Nicholson
Status: Being written (slowly!)
Write a scheduling and automation tool to allow the Scheduler to come up with shows, and autofill idents, trailers and graphical overlays to make us more like a "real" TV channel. Known as Tarantula.
Easter Refurb
Responsible: John Caine and the Station Director
Status: Waiting on Estates Services
Still known as the Easter Refurb, despite that holiday being long gone, the plan was to repaint both studio and control room, re-carpet both and generally make the place look nicer. Sort of a tech project.
Currently Chris Teeling (ZFM) has provisionally agreed to fix our blinds but put the floor etc on hold for a little while due to the potential to move into a new space. It should be noted this is a very early stage, the idea to move was mooted but nobody has said yes in any way shape or form.
OB Stream/Receive
Responsible: Sam Nicholson/John Caine
Status: Sender works, receiver needs to be more robust
A computer, labelled YSTVOBSTRM is sent out on OBs. When started up it runs a hidden stream back to YSTV, which is "watched" by YSTVOBSTRMRE inside the control room. This is then fed into the Technical:Vision_Path to either be sent directly to the main stream or inserted into a show. The main advantage is the director/Tarantula can switch to the OB source at the right time rather than taking down the stream, enabling a continuous channel, along with allowing OBs to insert into live shows.
Currently the receiver needs to detect if a stream is there or not and keep trying, so as soon as one comes up it starts receiving. This may also fix the Live Link Laptop's problems
Live Link Laptop
Responsible: Sam Nicholson
Status: Needs more stability testing
Fit up a laptop with a capture device and some cabling, and mount in a rucksack. Then, a camera op fires up the laptop, plugs in a camera and mic and we can live insert from anywhere with wifi!
Greg notes we may have significant issues with cooling, may need to customize a spare rucksack supplied by John.
At present it works with the new YSTV laptop, but roaming between wireless APs causes it to go a bit wrong.
New Muxes
Responsible: Michael Chislett
Status: Power supplies need finishing
Build a pair of chainable 8x8 video matrixes,as prototyped for NaSTA 2011. See the history wiki for more.
Jack/JAAK
Responsible: Michael Chislett
Status: Development hell
The mother of all abstraction layers for the video and audio paths. JAAK will essentially be the auto-router, with simple monitoring of gear statuses. Shiny things JAAK will do:
- Cope with instruction (graphic touch screen apps) such as "patch studio 92 to DaVE 4". JAAK then goes off and finds the most suitable routing path (shortest and non-conflicting with existing paths).
- Not need a user manual.
- Poll serial ports for new YVP compatible devices
- auto-initiate them.
- Have an advanced command interface, supporting commands such as DO, WHEN & ON. It will also cope with basic logic and events such as time, and whole system I/O events.
- JAAK will also detects and avoid (it already can) things such as routing loops.
Video Server Recording
Responsible: Sam Nicholson
Status: Works in theory, largely untested
Write a wrapper to start and stop the Video Server recording live shows over the network.
OB Recording
Responsible: Sam Nicholson
Status: Server written, never tested. Client UI design done
Write a similar wrapper to the video server one for recording on OBs using the capture cards, along with a client to provide a director with record/stream controls, matrix controls, a running order and potentially internal IRC in one handy window.
Archive Server
Responsible: None (stalled)
Status: Part working, see http://ystvvault.york.ac.uk
Write an interface to the Archive server to search for items by name or tag, and retrieve them either by download or to a network drive.
Document All The Things!
Responsible: Greg Ebdon
Status: In Progress
Basically, write up documentation on everything YSTV does on here. Big project!