SnapStream will be at NAB this year again, to demonstrate our new products and features. Come by and see us at our booth, South Upper Hall #SU6105 (Map)

The new products and features we’ll be demonstrating:

• QAM/ATSC Support: Record, search and clip QAM and ATSC broadcasts.
• Email Clip: Create a clip and email it using the Viewscape or Admin interface.
• Real-Time Search: Search for mentions of interest as they are being recorded.
• SnapStream Mini TV Search Appliance: For smaller organizations that stand to gain from searching television, but don't need the full functionality of the SnapStream Server.

NABShow
April 17–23, 2009 • Las Vegas, NV
The NAB Show has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead this ever-changing industry. And while the solutions at your fingertips have changed to keep pace with consumer lifestyles, habits and technologies, your aspirations to produce and deliver memorable content have remained consistent. From conception through distribution, the NAB Show has proudly served as the incubator for excellence – helping to breathe life into content everywhere.
www.nabshow.com

Hi there, Daniel Mee from SnapStream Enterprise Support here. We're hoping to use these Support Corner posts as a place to bring up some tips, tricks and common questions we come across in the course of supporting our Enterprise clients. Some of these posts will contain usage hints, while others may explain features or offer suggested workflows that our software supports, but that may not be immediately obvious.

Let's start with something simple, but important: scheduling manual recordings.

What is a manual recording, and why would I want to make one?

Our Enterprise software offers a powerful and intuitive program guide for scheduling recording jobs. But maybe you don't care about the program guide data, and you just want to record based on time, as if you were setting a VCR- say you want to record a particular time on the same channel every day, regardless of what's on. Maybe the program guide doesn't have data for the channel you want to record, as is the case with public access, government and educational channels. Maybe you're importing video from an A/V source- say, a VCR ;).

For these applications, you'll want to use our Manual Recording feature, which allows you to control the specifics of when and where a recording will be dispatched.

Two different methods

There are two different methods for scheduling a manual recording. First, from Enterprise TV Link, go to Setup Recordings and select Set Up a Manual Recording. From this screen, you can set the name, recording schedule and channel for the manual recording.

Hints:

• To change the name of the recording, highlight the Name field and hit Enter, or just click on the existing name.
• The options that will appear on the screen will change depending on the type of Recording Frequency you select- for example, the Block Size option will only appear when 24 Hours a Day is selected. Try flipping between the different Frequency options to see this for yourself.
• You can't specify the tuner on which a recording will be dispatched using this method. If you need to, you can do so after the job is scheduled by going to Recording Settings and Priorities and selecting View and Edit Details for the job.

Second, you can use the Enterprise TV web admin. Select Setup Recordings and then Create a New Recording. You'll be able to set many more options from this screen.

Hints:

• This page allows you to enter custom metadata for your recording jobs. Metadata are tags attached to the recording that describe it, but aren't part of the video. Along with the Title, you can specify the Series Description and Genre. If you want to change the title of a specific episode of this recording, you'll need to edit the recording of that episode after it's complete.
• The Start and Stop Recording options can be used to move the beginning or ending of the show. This is useful if the show may be delayed depending on another program that may run over, like a sporting event.
• Some of the options on this page, like Video Source and ShowSqueeze, will cause the page to reload if changed. Don't be alarmed if this happens.

So how do I decide whether to schedule a manual recording through Enteprise TV Link or through the web admin?

Enterprise TV Link is the fastest, easiest way to schedule a manual recording. If you have a lot of recordings to schedule, or if you just don't need a lot of control over all the options for the recording, this may save you some time. Additionally, if you are an administrator, you might want to instruct your users to use this method if you want to limit their access to options- this basically limits them to time, title and channel.

The web admin, on the other hand, offers much greater control over how the recording happens. You'll want to use this method if:

• You have metadata that needs to be entered
• You want to specify the tuner on which the recording will happen
• You want to change the quality at which the shows will be recorded
• You want to set custom ShowSqueeze options
• You want the recording to expire based on age or a set number of episodes, or not to expire at all

After the recording job is saved, most of these options are available in Enterprise TV Link through Setup Recordings → Recording Settings and Priorities, but in order to set them when you're scheduling the job, you have to use the web admin.

SnapStream’s Clipping feature makes it easy to work with just the portion of video of interest to you. In a few quick steps, this easy-to-use feature lets you edit out only the part of the program that you need, which you can then:

• Download
• Email

How it works:

Step 1: Once you've used the search feature to identify the segment of video you want to clip out, click on the "scissors" in the top navigation bar:

Step 2: Then, using the "Set Start" and "Set End" buttons above the timecode bar (or the shortcuts "Z" and "X" on your keyboard), simply set the beginning and end of the segment you want to clip out. Remember, you can also use the "comma" and "period" shortcuts on your keyboard to skip backward in 7-second increments and forward in 30-second increments; you can also use the space bar to pause at the precise frame. The left and right arrow keys allow you to move frame-by-frame through the video.

Step 3: Then simply hit "clip" and just that portion of the video broadcast will be saved separately as a clip in the clips area of your menu. It also allows you to rename the clip for simplified recall.

Step 4: Then, from the full-screen interface, you can email that clip or download it.

It's as simple as that. You can then erase the original program to make room for more recordings! SnapStream's Clipping feature makes it easy to work with video.

Governments use SnapStream to monitor television for a variety of reasons. In most government uses, it’s the PIOs who are using SnapStream to keep themselves, and thus the public, informed about issues that relate to the governing of the city and the reaction of the media to those issues. It is the responsibility of the PIOs to track events, issues and people relating to their specific department/agency.

So as the PIO, you are responsible for being spokespeople for the City and for coordinating all other communications activities with the media and citizens. Being able to respond quickly to coverage relating to your city is key. SnapStream servers allow you to do just that. Using the TV search function, you can find whatever you’re looking for immediately, without having to scan through hours of media coverage manually.

The SnapStream Servers also give you the ability to edit out just the segment you need and then email that clip. You can even have an email alert sent to you notifying you of mentions of whatever it is you’re looking for. Read more about SnapStream email alerts.

Do More With Less. With SnapStream, administrators can easily control who has access to the server and what features they have access to. For a lot of government groups, for example, access to media recordings is limited to one centralized group, and so those departments that have access are often overloaded with requests for copies of news coverage – which is both time-consuming and expensive.

By using SnapStream Servers to streamline your media monitoring efforts, you can:

• Improve reaction time to media coverage
• Eliminate costs of VHS tapes and shipping
• Give access to multiple departments; reducing unnecessary strain on one centralized group

Recently, The City of Austin was a guest speaker for a webinar we held on the benefits of using SnapStream for government media monitoring. Reyne Telles, the Media Relation Manager at “Corporate PIO” says that as the City of Austin has been on a hiring freeze and his team has been short-staffed, SnapStream has enabled his group to do more with less. Read more about how the City of Austin is using SnapStream.

Just a short note to let you that the SnapStream Enterprise Blog has a new name: the SnapStream 'TV Searcher' blog. You can get directly to the renamed blog at:

https://blog.snapstream.com/

(And don't worry, any links you had to the blog will still work...)

Background

First, some background. The City of Austin is the 14th largest city in the United States, the capital of Texas and home to 700,000 residents. Known for its high-tech companies (for example, Dell and Samsung), its government, and seven-time Tour De France winner Lance Armstrong, Austin gets it's fair share of attention in the media.

And Austin's residents are active citizens, with a great interest in things happening in the City of Austin. Accordingly, there are six TV news organizations in Austin -- ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, Univision and News 8 Austin -- all of whom individually cover things happening in Austin City Government. The City of Austin team estimates that there are probably 150 news stories about the City of Austin in any given month -- that's about 33 TV news stories a week!

Austin's Public Information Office

Wikipedia has a good description of the job of a public information officer:

"Public Information Officers (PIOs) are the communications coordinators or spokespersons of certain governmental organizations (i.e. police departments, army, city, county, state governments). They differ from public relations departments of private organizations in that many of them typically do not engage in marketing, but solely in providing information to the public and the media..."

So Austin's Public Information Offices are responsible for being spokespeople for the City and for coordinating all other communications activities with the media and citizens.

The City of Austin has one central public information group, called the "Corporate PIO", and then there are another 25 to 30 department PIOs for each of Austin's various city departments, including:

• Austin Police Department
• Austin Fire Department
• Austin Water
• Austin Energy
• Austin Convention Center
• Economic Growth and Redevelopment
• Parks and Recreation
• Public Works

Austin's "Corporate PIO" handles anything relating to the central city management and larger issues that span multiple departments. With 6 local TV news organizations and television being approximately 60% of all media mentions the city receives, monitoring TV has always been important to them.

How the City of Austin USED to monitor television

Before SnapStream, the City of Austin's Corporate PIO and 25-30 department PIOs monitored television in a fragmented fashion -- everyone was doing their own thing.

VCRs and VHS tapes: The "Corporate PIO" group and 2 other departments PIOs had large banks of VCRs that they used to record television onto VHS cassette tapes. Naturally, VCRs were a labor intensive solution.

DIY PC TV Recorders: Two other department PIOs had built their own DIY PC TV recording devices. These devices requires constant upkeep and maintenance and were, ultimately, unreliable.

What the rest did: All the other PIO department would call the "Corporate PIO" group asking to be sent physical VHS tape copies of media mentions they had received. This put a lot of burden on the "Corporate PIO" group to take requests, dub tapes and then physically ship VHS tapes around the city.

So the way the City of Austin used to do media monitoring was fragmented (everyone was doing their own thing), expensive (lots of labor went into making recordings and then making cuts of those recordings), and time-consuming.

How the City of Austin monitors television TODAY (yes, with SnapStream!)

Sometime in 2007, Keith Reeves at the City of Austin saw a demonstration of SnapStream at a TATOA event and after a few more meetings, the City of Austin bought a 10-tuner SnapStream Server in 2008.

Stratatech is an IT and consulting company that offers analysis of television marketing efforts as one of their services. To do this, Stratatech provides clients with detailed reports that measure and evaluate on-air mentions versus cost for specific televised sporting events.

How Stratatech's service works: So let's say your company decided to sponsor a NASCAR event. Stratatech would record that televised event, then carefully listen to the recording of the program for mentions of your company's name, and finally tally up the number of media mentions. They would then compare the cost of sponsorship against the number of media mentions to evaluate whether the exposure received was worth the cost.

The Old Way: Stratatech was coordinating recording between 6 and 8 TV programs at once on cumbersome VCRs and VHS tapes and needed an easier way to schedule recordings.

“We would be recording anything from a NASCAR race, which can be multiple hours, to a two-hour basketball game throughout the day,” notes Fior Lostumbo, Sales Associate for Stratatech.

Some notes about the old, labor intensive VCR/VHS process at Stratatech:

• Television programs were scheduled manually by VCR and recorded on VHS tapes
• Once a program of interest was recorded, it then had to be manually reviewed by a human for mentions of their clients.
• Mentions would be tallied up and manually entered to a separate system, which they had designed to analyze the media exposure versus the cost to the client.

They needed a better and faster way to monitor television.

The SnapStream Way: Stratatech’s growing clientele prompted them to look for a more efficient TV monitoring solution.

SnapStream delivered that solution, with the capacity to record up to eight channels at once, and enough storage for 2,300 hours of recordings. In addition, the SnapStream appliance allowed Stratatech to automatically search closed-captioning data for mentions of their clients, making the data collection process much simpler, more efficient and more accurate.

Fior Lostumbo explains, “Previously, we would have to sit and listen to audio for mentions of our clients. Now we simply just use the keyword search feature, saving us immense amounts of time.”

Some of the benefits that SnapStream has brought to Stratatech's media monitoring and analysis operation:

• Automated Scheduling: Stratatech's 8-tuner SnapStream appliance gives them the ability to easily schedule and manage TV recordings and avoid conflict using a simple, easy-to-use interface.
• Faster, Automated Search: With SnapStream’s search technology, Stratatech is able to quickly and accurately pinpoint media mentions with a simple keyword search.
• Less Physical Space: Recording and archiving recordings digitally has eliminated banks of VHS tapes and VCRs.
• Integration using SnapStream's powerful API: SnapStream’s powerful API (view the SnapStream Enterprise API) allowed Stratatech to integrate their in-house data collection system with TV data from the SnapStream appliance, eliminating the need to manually input data from one system to another.

The old set up of VCRs:

Lots of VHS tapes, too:

The SnapStream setup in the rack under the TV; Stratatech can now schedule, record and search TV straight from their desktop:

At the risk of becoming the official "In memory of VHS!" blog, if you don't know what I'm talking about), here's another use for that old VCR when you replace it with a SnapStream Server or a SnapStream Mini:

How to make a VHS Video Toaster (on Instructables.com)

In this article on Slate.com by Christopher Beam, it's mentioned that SnapStream got a nice shout-out at the Republican Party's Tech Summit last week:

A woman named Carrie Pickett says Republicans should get hip to SnapStream, a program that lets you flag and record anything that appears on TV, like Google news alerts for video. So anytime a candidate is mentioned, they automatically have the footage.

Our product saw a bit of usage in this last election cycle, including now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential bid and popular blogs "The Jed Report" and "Daily Kos", so it's cool to see that the word is spreading.

But I have one question... who is Carrie Pickett? I'd love to know where she heard about us -- if you know who she is, please e-mail me or leave a comment here. (Yes, this feels a bit like a Craigslist Missed Connection).

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, a lot of our customers drop their VCRs and VHS tapes in favor of recording and searching TV with a SnapStream Server. So we end up seeing a lot of VCRs and VHS cassettes tapes. A whole lot.

If any of our customers were worried about what they were going to do with those VCRs and VHS cassette decks, this should give them some ideas:

• They could create a VHS plush pillow / doll
• Pluck the buttons off that VCR and make "Play" "Pause" "Rec" VCR buttons (magnetic or pin) (sold out, sorry!)
• Recycle all that VHS magnetic tape to make: drink coasters, clutch purse, or a tote bag

Photographs (all from Etsy.com):

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