Those VCRs collecting dust around your office are so 20th century — and we know you’ve been dying to upgrade. So we’ve created a cost-effective means for you to update your media-monitoring technology, and we’re offering you a chance to win an extra 12 months of free service to boot.

How? Just purchase a SnapStream Server through our new “Switch and Save” program, and we’ll automatically give you a year of maintenance for free (a $1,200 to $3,000 value). Then, once you’ve installed your new gear, send us a picture of how you and your staff have cleverly dismantled and responsibly disposed of your obsolete systems.* We’ll post the images of your handiwork alongside that of others on our Web site. Be as creative as you can, because we’ll bestow an additional year of free maintenance upon whoever sends us the best shot.

What’s more: Because the SnapStream Server can shorten the task of media monitoring to mere seconds, your organization will save additional time and money. Our digital technology lets you and your colleagues record thousands of hours of television to a centralized appliance, and then locate specific clips by topic, using closed captioning for search. You can copy any relevant video to your PC’s hard drive or burn it to a DVD. It’s that quick and easy!

So, what are you waiting for? Click here to get more information about “Switch and Save” and the SnapStream Server.

*Please recycle. Or ship the parts to us, and we’ll recycle them for you. ]]> http://tvsearcher.snapstream.com/2009/11/win-a-year-of-free-maintenance/feed/ 0 http://tvsearcher.snapstream.com/2009/11/win-a-year-of-free-maintenance/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SnapstreamEnterpriseBlog/~3/c_Detx2Ph-U/ http://tvsearcher.snapstream.com/2009/11/learn-how-to-record-search-high-definition-hd-tv/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:26:20 +0000 Melissa Kidonakis http://tvsearcher.snapstream.com/?p=1130

Join us on Thursday, November 19th for a one hour web seminar designed specifically for organizations interested in recording, searching, clipping, archiving and/or rebroadcasting high definition (HD) television.

Using QAM encoders the SnapStream HD Server is able to directly record your satellite provider (Direct TV, Dish) and/or cable provider’s (Time Warner, etc..) HD feed. And like with the SnapStream Server, you are able to record up to five HD channels simultaneously and then search within those recordings for mentions of interest. We’ve also created a SnapStream HD-SDI Playout Node that can be added to your setup to give you quick and easy importabilty of recordings and clips created on the SnapStream HD Server into your Avid or Apple’s Final Cut Pro editing work stations. The SnapStream HD Server was designed to save you time and effort every step of the way: recording, searching, clipping and editing.

During the web seminar, we’ll discuss how to:

• Record and search thousands of hours of HD TV
• Save time using our HD-SDI Play Out Node
• Distribute HD TV (live and recorded) using the existing office network
• Create unlimited HD clips from full recordings
• Engineer your ideal HD workflow

Learn more about the capabilities of our new SnapStream HD Server as well as the engineering details of designing an HD workflow in further details by signing up for our upcoming web seminar.

Web Seminar: Incorporating HD TV into the Work-flow
When: Thursday, November 19th, 2009; 2:30 – 3:30 PM (CST)
Cost: Free

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Join us on Tuesday, November 17th for our web seminar geared towards Media and Public Relations Specialists of higher learning institutes interested in monitoring their schools TV media coverage.

If you are currently using a media monitoring subscription service to track TV mentions of your school and its affiliates, then you’ve realized how quickly the price of video clips adds up.

Unlike traditional media monitoring subscription services, the SnapStream Server is a one time purchase, turnkey appliance that enables you to record, search and create unlimited high-quality clips without any incremental costs. A cross between a DVR and search engine the SnapStream Server enables you to immediately pinpoint any mention of interest and then quickly and properly respond to the coverage.

SnapStream is currently used in Public Affairs Offices to:

• Record & search thousands of hours of TV
• Pinpoint mentions of interest
• Create unlimited clips of full recordings
• Respond appropriately and quickly to TV coverage

Attend our one hour web seminar to learn more about the benefits Media and Public Relations Specialists have found by implementing the SnapStream Server
into their workflow.

Web Seminar: TV Monitoring for Public Affairs Officers in Higher Education
When: Tuesday, November 17th, 2009; 2:30 – 3:30 PM (CST)
Cost: Free

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Join us on Wednesday, November 18th for our free web seminar centered around Public Information Officers in Fire and Police Departments looking to record, search and pinpoint mentions of interest on television.

Do you ever wish you had faster, more efficient means for monitoring the media coverage of your department? Are you still using banks of VCRs, DVRs, or a news-clipping service to track mentions of your department on TV? If so, then you know just how unreliable, high-maintenance, and time-consuming these methods can be. Fortunately, now there’s a better way: the SnapStream Server.

A cross between a DVR and a search engine, the SnapStream Server enables your department to record video from up to 10 television channels simultaneously and then quickly use keywords to find any mentions of interest – just like searching the Internet. SnapStream also brings TV (live and recorded) right to your desktop PC, and with the Server’s Email Alerts feature, you can receive automatic notifications anytime the words or phrases that you specify are mentioned.

SnapStream is currently used in Police and Fire Departments to:

• Record & search thousands of hours of TV
• Eliminate manual search of video tapes
• Track TV mentions of department personnel
• Respond appropriately and quickly to TV coverage
• Distribute TV using the existing office network

Attend our one hour web seminar to learn more about how the SnapStream Server is currently being used and how it can help your department reduce the amount of work and time associated with monitoring TV.

Web Seminar: Cost Effective TV Monitoring for Fire and Police Departments
When: Wednesday, November 18th, 2009; 2:30 – 3:30 PM (CST)
Cost: Free

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This is the chassis that’s been in use on our server since its introduction in 2007. While this hardware has done very well for us, we’re beginning to find that some of our clients are using their servers heavily enough to demand better power and thermal management, greater storage capacity, and easier access with less downtime for maintenance. So, we’re phasing out our existing chassis in favor of this new design.

Among the benefits of this new platform:

• Increased storage capacity
• Hot spare hard drives
• Better OS drive management
• Bigger, better power supplies
• Server-grade SAS storage backplane
• Better failure indicators
• Better airflow management and cooling
• Improved access to storage hardware

Increased storage capacity: Our servers will now start at 3TB of usable space, and we can offer up to 9TB on our 3-unit servers, while our 4-unit models will max out at 15TB. We hope to be able to offer 30TB or even more soon!

Hot spare hard drives: Our new drive cage has space for hot spares, which will make drive failures much less intrusive by providing automatic failover to the spare drive.

Better OS drive management: The system’s mirrored OS array will now be managed through the same controller as the storage array, allowing for faster performance, better management, and dramatically easier maintenance, as well as providing e-mail alerts for failed OS drives.

Bigger, better power supply: All SnapStream servers are equipped with dual hot-swap power supplies that are both redundant and load-balancing. A single power supply may fail without the system losing power- and a single unit may be replaced without shutting down the system. In addition, the redundant units are rated at 900W each, allowing them to operate at a much lower percentage of capacity, and providing safer operation even if one unit fails.

Server-grade SAS storage backplane: We’ve switched to SAS for the connection between the system’s RAID controller and its backplane. SAS provides better performance, as well as better reporting in the event of drive or port failure. Meanwhile, we’ve retained the use of SATA for the drives themselves, due to its higher storage density.

Better status indicators: Using SAS for the RAID hardware allows for better communication between the chassis and the RAID management software, including the ability to display drive status using LEDs on the front of the server. A flashing blue light means the drive is in use, while a flashing red light appears on a drive that needs to be replaced, and a slow-blinking red light indicates a hot spare.

Better airflow management and cooling: Improved cooling means better performance and stability in long-term high-load use cases.

Improved access to storage hardware: Replacing the RAID backplane now takes ten minutes instead of two hours.

Overall, it’s a physically stronger chassis that can provide the same storage in fewer rack units. And, the rackmount rail kit delivers its own significant improvements over the older model- easier installation, sturdier design and a better fit to the case.

We’re very excited to offer this new hardware on all new orders of the SnapStream TV Server, starting immediately. We hope that you’ll be as happy with it as we are.

Let’s look at some examples of ways in which you might use our Advanced Search features.

A couple of things to note:

Search by Grouping

You’re probably familiar with the use of AND, OR and NOT to combine search terms. Did you know you can “group” search terms by using parentheses? For example, let’s say you work for a sports marketing firm and you want to find mentions of sports teams in Houston from sports other than the “big three-” baseball, basketball and football. You could use parentheses to exclude multiple terms at once: HOUSTON SPORTS NOT (ASTROS OR TEXANS OR ROCKETS)



This will return mentions of the words “Houston” and “sports” together while excluding any results that mention the Astros, Texans or Rockets.

Search by Category

Now let’s say you wanted to restrict that search to news broadcasts. You could do that using the category filter. This is available in a drop-down box in the web admin, or you can enter the term CATEGORY:NEWS in Enterprise TV Link’s search feature. So the full search string would look like this:HOUSTON SPORTS CATEGORY:NEWS NOT (ASTROS OR TEXANS OR ROCKETS)

Or you could use the Category Filter drop-down box in the web admin, as shown here:

Search by Channel

Maybe you’d like to see only mentions on ESPN. Use the CHANNEL command. You can enter the callsign or name of the station, or the number on which it appears in your lineup. HOUSTON SPORTS CHANNEL:ESPN NOT (ASTROS OR TEXANS OR ROCKETS)You can use the options NETWORK: and CALLSIGN: in a similar way.The Channel field in the web admin has the same function.

Search by Show Title

Maybe you work for a particular team and want to see if they’ve been on a specific program recently. You can use the TITLE command, which restricts a search to a particular program.HOUSTON ASTROS TITLE:SPORTSCENTER (If you enter a title that has two words or more, use quotation marks- “BASEBALL TONIGHT”)

Search by Date

Maybe you want just mentions from a specific date, or maybe just the last week. Or last month. Or last year. You can use the DATE syntax in Enterprise TV Link, or you can specify the date on a calendar in the web admin. The date filter gives you a couple of different ways to limit the date range of your search. You can use a specific date, in the M/D/YY format:HOUSTON ASTROS TITLE:SPORTSCENTER DATE:6/14/09 You can also use the Date Range option in the web admin to specify a single date or a range of dates.

Or you can use one of the date keywords, which are also available through Quickdates in the web admin. These are:TODAY, YESTERDAY, THISWEEK, LASTWEEK, THISMONTH, LASTMONTH, THISYEAR, LASTYEAR For example:HOUSTON ASTROS TITLE:SPORTSCENTER DATE:LASTMONTH

Search Clips

Say you’ve made some clips from this particular program, and you want to see all of those. You can specify that you’re searching for clips. HOUSTON TITLE:”BASEBALL TONIGHT” IS:CLIP You can also use this syntax with the minus sign ( – ) to exclude any clips you’ve made from the search. HOUSTON TITLE:”BASEBALL TONIGHT” -IS:CLIP The IS option works with the file types CLIP, ORIGINAL, and SHOWSQUEEZE. This is very useful if you find that your searches are cluttered with duplicate hits on existing clips or ShowSqueezed files. HOUSTON TITLE:”BASEBALL TONIGHT” -IS:CLIP -IS:SHOWSQUEEZE

There are check boxes for each media type in the web admin search menu.

Wildcard Searches

Finally, there are some specialized search operators that can help you with very specific searches:A “wildcard” search allows you to find multiple words that start with the same series of letters. For example, searching for SPORTS TEXA*Will find mentions of “sports” along with a state, TEXAS, or someone from that state, a TEXAN- even the name of a tri-state region: TEXARKANA.

Note that you can’t use a wildcard as the first letter in a search term. For example, you couldn’t use a wildcard to search for the phrase “State of _,” because the string “STATE OF *” will return no results. “Fuzzy” search allows you to search for words that are similar, but not identical, to the search term. This is very useful when searching for words that are frequently misspelled in closed-captioning data, especially proper names. For example, HOUSTON ROCKETS MCGRADY~ Could be used to find mentions of Rockets basketball player Tracy McGrady, even if his last name is misspelled as MacGrady or Magrady. It also works backwards- searching for HOUSTON ROCKETS MACGRADY~ will return correctly spelled results.

Now, you will see only results in which the two search terms appear within 5 seconds of each other.

For further information on how to search and create clips watch the video below.

The SnapStream Server is a DVR appliance that allows schools to distribute television using their existing LAN, projectors and electronic whiteboards, eliminating the need for expensive RF cable drops, traditional TVs, VCRs and DVRs. In addition, the SnapStream server gives you the flexibility to record anything on TV, from PBS to Discovery to the History Channel to CNN. And unlike Safari Montage or Discovery Streaming, the SnapStream Server does not come with any expensive subscription fees.

Using educational TV programs in the classroom, teachers can reinforce and expand on material being taught and increase student interest in learning. SnapStream makes TV useful to educators in entirely new ways — using SnapStream’s easy-to-use TV search technology, teachers can pinpoint relevant TV content themselves and then easily create clips and download for use in their class curriculum.

Attend our web seminar to learn more about providing your teachers with a valuable new teaching tool – the SnapStream TV Server.

Web Seminar: Stream TV to the classroom over the LAN
When: Tuesday, July 14th; 2:30 CST

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Enter a couple of keywords (up to 5) into TV Trends and you’ll get a graph showing you the relative frequency of mentions of those words on mostly-news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC and CNN.

Here’s an example comparing mentions of Twitter and Facebook on national TV:

(click the “SnapStream TV Trends” link on top to see a larger more detailed version the graph)

So you can see Facebook was generally getting more mentions on national TV until February or March of this year when Twitter started taking over… and since then Twitter has consistently received more TV airtime than Facebook. And what about that big spike for twitter in mid-April? That was the whole Twitter/Oprah/Ashton Kutcher thing.

Here’s a comparison of mentions of tech giants Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo on traditional TV:

And the word ‘yes’ vs. the word ‘no’?

TV Trends graphs can be embedded into your website or blog using the simple embed code underneath the graph or you can link to graphs by just copying the URL from your browser’s address bar. And on the TV Trends site, you can view excerpts of stories at selected points along the curve and you can filter the results by network (chart mentions of “Obama” on Fox or MSNBC) and by genre (show me mentions of “Obama” on comedy programs).

Another feature of TV Trends are hot and cold words… These are the top ascending (hot) and descending (cold) words on national television. For example, as I write this blog post, the top rising terms, the top hot words, are “north korea” and “two american journalists” — references to the two American journalists that have been sentenced to hard labor in North Korea.

While many types of analytics are available for other media (see Compete, Alexa, Trendrr) until now, there hasn’t been a way to track and analyze what’s being said on traditional television.  TV Trends attempts to offer some insight into the world of traditional “offline” television…

And behind the scenes, SnapStream TV Trends is powered by SnapStream’s TV recording and search technology. SnapStream’s TV search technology allows organizations to record LOTS of TV and then search inside those TV shows for mentions of their city government, “breaking news” on a competitive local TV station, an elected official, a natural disaster or anything else anyone might be looking for on TV. You can think of it like a cross between a DVR on steroids (one SnapStream Server can record 10 TV shows at a time) and a search engine. This technology powers TV trends and it’s behind TV monitoring at organizations such as E!’s The Soup, XM Radio, NBC, Current TV, the U.S. Senate, University of Southern California, University of Texas, City of Austin, and the City of Chicago. If you use a clipping service or, worse, a bank of VCRs or DVRs, to keep track of what’s being said on TV about your brand or whatever, you should give SnapStream Enterprise a look.

So try out TV Trends and let us know what you think! Post your questions and feedback here in the comments or on twitter (we’re at @snapstream).

Join us for our web seminar (June 23rd, 2:30 PM CST) specific for the communications offices of elected officials, and learn how your office can leverage TV content to interact with your constituents in a more responsive and efficient way.

Many government officials across the country are currently using SnapStream to aid them with television media monitoring. They are able to simultaneously record news channels (including CSPAN, CNN, Fox News, etc.) plus any internal cable TV feeds 24×7 and then search the closed-caption text for keyword mentions to keep track of legislation issues and media appearances. And with the relaxation of the Franking Rules this past January, they can now take advantage of SnapStream’s clipping feature to increase their online video presence by uploading video clips to their YouTube, House or Senate page.

SnapStream is currently used in the offices of elected officials to:

• Track TV mentions of officials, staff and legislation
• Create clips for online distribution
• Distribute TV using the existing office network
• Record & search thousands of hours of TV
• Eliminate manual search of video tapes and clipping fees

When compared to TiVos/DVRs, VCRs or clipping services, SnapStream provides dramatic improvements in cost and convenience.

Event: How Elected Officials Enhance their Media Monitoring Efforts
When: June 23rd, 2009; 2:30 CST

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