Agenda Packets - 2018/07/02 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Page 7 support and technical support. Without the production support, some of the local interest programs may need to wait longer to be produced by staff, or they may not be created. In the event of withdrawal, staffing levels at Mounds View would need to be evaluated. With additional responsibilities in programming and maintaining the channel, time for producing other programming would be limited. A potentially big loss is the access to the technical staff. The CTV staff had a large part in designing and installing the video systems at the city. They have been available for troubleshooting support and hardware support. Any other company providing support services would be coming in cold without knowledge of and history with the system. Staff anticipates that equipment problems or failures would take longer to resolve and mean more channel outages when working with another service provider. Several routine maintenance tasks such as cleaning the heads of the video decks and camcorders would have to be taken to another service provider. Shop rates are easily $125/hour. There would need to be a larger budgeted amount for equipment repair to provide for service outside of the current CTV support agreement. • Manage public, educational, government access channels • Manage video on demand and web stream for PEG channels Staff researched video playback systems in use by other cities. MGAP, Minnesota Government Access Producers, is made up of representatives from cities across the state. Far and away the most commonly used system for video playback is the Cablecast line from Tightrope Media Systems. Tightrope Media Systems is a Twin Cities company whose principals started by working with Bloomington Public Access. Products were designed specifically with the PEG market in mind. Other options are Leightronix PEG Central, 360 Systems ImageServer, and TelVue Princeton. This equipment is specifically for the distribution of video on the cable channel and internet. Replacement of the cameras and control room equipment for live meeting coverage is a completely separate issue, not covered in this analysis. Single channel (Mounds View 16 only) Necessary equipment to operate cable channel 16 and provide video on demand and web stream of meetings and other programs: Cablecast SXLE Video Server $7795 (or SX2 video server) This is the main piece for storing video files, scheduling, and playing back. The XSLE unit has one video output, a single 750 GB hard drive, and SDI is a hardware upgrade later. This would be the minimal system that could playback Mounds View channel 16. A hard drive failure would completely take out the channel, and reloading video content from DVD and backups on the editing system would be time consuming.