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Could I Run a TV Station on Linux?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the broadcast-by-penguin dept.

JesusQuintana asks: "I'm working with a low-power television station to update their playback system. Currently they're using tape and I've been tasked to move them to computerized playback (MPEG-2, etc.) There are proprietary solutions (very expensive) and there are companies that bundle software with Windows and standard x86 hardware. Overall, they are generally unimpressive and won't sell the software without bundling it with their own hardware. (They won't let us buy our own storage.) We have the expertise to build our own infrastructure (NAS, redundancy, etc.), but really just need the equivalent of iTunes for high quality video. There are lots of other pieces needed to complete the work-flow (such as encoding the media), which could be accomplished on Mac or Windows or even Linux. But what about playback? We need something that will play back these files at their scheduled times (perhaps scheduling cron jobs to change playlists) to broadcast quality hardware (SDI or YUV video). Could we run a TV station on Linux?"

18 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    yes

    1. Re:answer by kfg · · Score: 5, Funny

      But implimentation is left as an exercise for the student.

      KFG

  2. Of course you can by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    With Linux, all you have to do is concatenate 6 strings on the command line and edit 3 configuration files and you can accomplish anything!

    1. Re:Of course you can by DittoBox · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm sure their's also some obscure emacs function for it too, if you're brave.

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  3. HowTo by Crazy+Man+on+Fire · · Score: 5, Funny

    There some pretty good information about TV station automation here

    1. Re:HowTo by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is why progress sucks. With everything on MPEG and no more tapes, what will the h4x0r3d robot claws fight over?

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    2. Re:HowTo by MBCook · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think this one might have more information.

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  4. Dear Slashdot by brkello · · Score: 4, Funny

    Teach me how to do my job.

    Thanks!

    (I kid! I kid!)

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    1. Re:Dear Slashdot by rizole · · Score: 2, Funny

      So to summerise; The questions are fucking stipid. Actualy they are good but on the other hand they are crap.

  5. Re:NTSC Signal by CosmeticLobotamy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Depending on the equipment, a simple TV-OUT port could be used, but would that really give the results a television station needs?

    He said "low-power tv station," so as long as he can either tell that the local used car dealer is still bald or make out the nipple on the feed from the camera he put in his hot neighbor's bookcase, he's probably good.

  6. Program in APL by krell · · Score: 5, Funny

    You can even write the entire program to run the station itself in a mere 11 characters of APL code.

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    1. Re:Program in APL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Or 11 pages of Mindfuck if you are a Real Programmer.

      (And programme quality wouldn't even suffer compared to 99% of the stuff aired these days.)

  7. Re:The other challenge by chuck · · Score: 4, Funny

    Intutive ways to queue up programs, ads, etc.


    They can set it up in google calendar and the scripts can read the ical feed.
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  8. Re:Easy as.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    These are Linux commands, remember? To start the tv station program would be something like "tsain"

  9. You've got this all wrong! by giafly · · Score: 2, Funny

    You're stuck in the mindset of proprietary programming. Just publish a couple of videos under the GPL, then everyone who wants to can modify them into their own ideal TV Shows.

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  10. Re:Based on What I See of BBC America... by chuck · · Score: 2, Funny

    Some of us wouldn't call it luck...

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  11. ... and its OSS..... by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Funny
    so if some existing software does not do exactly what you want, then you can just add the functionality yourself FOR FREE!

    For instance, you could start with, say GNU/make. Now that is a pretty handy chunk of software but it sadly lacks video playing facilities. You can freely download the source code, spend a few evenings writing the video playback code you need and you're done. And it won't cost you a cent!

    --
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  12. Re:little software available for linux. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I know you didn't ask for any composting, editing, or formatting software. And I know you plainly asked for Linux. But you should really check out Final Cut Pro. It doesn't do what you want and doesn't run on the platform you suggested, but I used it once and it was great.

    Mod me up informative!