Notices by Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social), page 5

:oof: the encoder died between clips. There's no good reason for that.

So clocks, right?

Every time pro's work with amateur gear, they complain about the clocks.

It's the biggest difference between professional gear and amateur gear.

When the videofreex tried to do a TV broadcast in 1970, it was the first problem the TV exec's encountered.

The freex knew how to fix it, but weren't allowed to touch the gear because they were not a member of the right union (and they were barred from joining the union because they didn't use the right kind of equipment.)

So it took three or four years before any television network successfully broadcast any video shot in a home video format.

I don't even know how to research this one.

Their broadcast engineer said

"When the content just changed, the transcode on our transcoder stalled. This happened several times. I have to go in and re-submit it. We will need to try and figure out what is causing it. "

which is a phrase that comes with *several* red flags, but...

I mean, even discounting the things he said that I would have preferred him to say differently, and the fact that the decoder can't automatically re-start when the stream fails (which is a huge problem!) I just have no idea how to research this one.

Now, I suspect that I could fix this by enabling twopass encoding.

But that's Twice as Expensive on CPU.

And I don't actually know if it would solve the problem.

And I don't know what language to even use to describe the problem.

I did run in to a similar issue when I was using remote runners to transcode the live stream from ffplayout in peertube.

So It's not a complete shock.

But I thought ffplayout was just spewing UDP packets, so I can't see why swapping between clips on the back end should make a difference!

Regardless, we'll get this sorted like we got the last issue sorted, as soon as I figure out what the issue actually *is*

Alright, I got a little more info out of the cable company, but not much.

And they've gone home for the evening, so I will not be able to continue troubleshooting until tomorrow.

But I was able to identify an error message in the ffmpeg debug logs that seems to correspond with the timing of their issue, and I was able to make that error message go away.

I was never able to reproduce the issue, which makes troubleshooting exceptionally difficult.

@silverwizard me too!

@silverwizard it's not just free software. It's open media. It's community media.

I think this is absolutely the future, and I want five dozen more.

And there's so much more than that!

There's our music series: https://newellijay.tv/shows/put-on-a-show/

Our political shows, like The Hastening: https://newellijay.tv/shows/the-hastening/ and Behind the Curtain: https://vod.newellijay.tv/search?search=behind%20the%20curtain&searchTarget=local

Our show about hunting bigfoot: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/3h6m3uZSkBjrHYVLMA3m1o

We've done cartoons and sitcoms and esports and all kind of things. You can learn more about some of them here: https://newellijay.tv/shows/

If you've ever wondered if it's possible to run a broadcast television network on commodity hardware using open source software when you have no idea what you're doing, the answer is absolutely yes.

We're doing it right now! Or, at least, we will be tomorrow when they plug us in to the head-end.

We're running ffplayout on the server side, building our schedules by hand (new open source scheduler and media asset manager coming Soon ™️) and outputting to SRT and RTMP.

The RTMP stream is consumed by peertube, and then spit back out to our roku channel.

The SRT stream is consumed by a piece of hardware at the cable company (that we paid for, an Impulse 300D Network Decoder)which takes the SRT stream and just shoves it in to their head end.

The Impulse Decoder is the only piece of equipment in all of this that isn't a cheap rented VPS, and whatever it's running is the only time any of these videos touch something that isn't free software.

The vast majority of our videos are captured on second hand 10+ year old cameras.

There are a few newer cameras in the mix, but they're significantly less common and frankly less useful.

We take the footage from those 10 year old cameras and we catalog it in nextcloud and it syncs to everyone who is involved in production.

Then we edit in kdenlive.

Audio is recorded, as needed, in ardor or audacity, and edited in the same place (or it's recorded on purpose built hardware rescued from the digital landfill and edited in ardor, audacity, or directly in kdenlive.)

Most of our editing is also done on second hand/landfill rescue computers. Most of our programming is edited and rendered at 720p or lower because that makes it cheaper and easier to work with on old hardware.

Everything lives on servers running debian (often configured with yunohost, because I'm lazy and I shouldn't have to maintain my own software.)

The vast majority of our content gets licensed CC-BY-SA so that other people can benefit from what we've done, and are encouraged to give back to the community.

And so, #NewEllijayTelevision is a full fledged cable network (or, at least, it will be in ~14 hours), web streaming network, and video on demand platform, powered by open source software, running on upcycled hardware, produced by a ragtag group of weirdos in the north GA mountains.

You can watch along, if you want: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/hPrMTPpUuP8ZLoaqHTkLmd

We're absolutely changing the rules.

And it all works! And most of the time it even works reasonably well! And when it doesn't no one is going to care.

We produce original television programs (like Appalachian Football Central: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/6hCHfnFYcT8FwBkrpXn9RZ and KENKYUU SENTAI PODCAST RANGERS https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/p/ijx94hSHTLw43DqyDpMBFm?playlistPosition=1 ) and we archive historical materials like Space Patrol ( https://newellijay.tv/shows/space-patrol/ ) and we syndicate national programs like Democracy Now and Captain Isotope ( https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/hs9NryagGYu5Pd12Hd7K2a )

ffplayout builds our SRT stream for the cable company and then, from the same playlist but in a separate process, our RTMP stream for peertube.

Peertube powers our online livestream as seen on our website, and our roku channel. When I finish my DIY cable box project, peertube will also power that.

@silverwizard The whole humongous entertainment package, yeah. Pajama Sam, etc.

@silverwizard Awesome. Thank you!

@silverwizard

Animal crossing is high on my list (assuming I can get the n64 or GC version running on linux) Freddie The Fish is on the list for both kids already.

I think Plants Vs Zombies was a problem in the past, but I don't know if it is *still* a problem. I'll look in to it.

They loved Kirby the one time they played it.

Bridge Constructor looks really interesting. It might solve the Sandbox Simulator want without leading to compulsive behavior. I'll take a look.

Thank you!

The goal is to re-create the "blockbuster night" experience of renting games.

We're trying to break the older kid out of a pattern of obsessive and occasionally violent behaviors around access to specific games.

One of the strategies we're trying for that is providing a rotating selection of games that are available for checkout, but only for one week at a time, and never for two weeks in a row (in addition to a much smaller number of games that they always have access to, or that are available every week to "rent".)

If I can nail the format of the flash drives and the configuration of retroarch or whatever, we can use this setup to encourage a more healthy, slow paced, and intentional relationship with tech.

So far, for games we're looking at

For the reader:
- Super Mario RPG (the SNES one)
- The Oregon Trail (2016)
- Animal Crossing
- perhaps Harvest Moon
- Other RPGs like Dragon Warrior Monster

For the non-reader:
- Reader Rabbit/Freddie The Fish/etc.
- Maybe also Animal Crossing
- Paleo Pines?

For both:
- Pikimin
- Pokemon snap (or any pokemon snap style game I can find that isn't tied to a massive media franchise which is likely to lead to stress for their parents)
- Harvest Moon

but ... That's all I got.

As far as game selection goes... It's complicated.

We're exclusively looking for games that don't feature guns. We're looking for slower paced and turn based games with an emphasis on reading for one of the kids. He's an early reader, but progressing quickly.

For the other kid, we're looking for games with constraints and external goals. He gets lost (as in very deeply invested) in open world and sandbox games like minecraft, to the detriment of everything else around him, so we're looking for games where that's not possible. He's still barely reading, so games that *teach* reading are great, but games that *require* reading are probably out.

The whole thing is going to run on linux, so ... games that run on linux or can be emulated on linux are a must.

My morals dictate that we should focus on indie games when possible, but that's just personal preference and not a requirement.