On Tuesday, October 6th, join us for our web seminar geared towards K-12 schools looking to stream television to the classroom.

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.

“The old way of distributing television to each classroom was just too cost prohibitive for our new high school. The SnapStream Server gave us the ability to integrate video into our curriculum at a lower cost.”- Rich Trudeau, Director of Technology for Plymouth Public Schools

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
Cost: Free
When: Tuesday, October 6th; 2:30 – 3:30 PMCST

Sign me Up!

Hi there, Daniel Mee from SnapStream Enterprise Support here. I’m writing to tell you about an exciting change to our line of TV servers: a brand new hardware platform!

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.

SnapStream’s TV search feature is one of the most powerful features of our servers, because it allows you to find mentions of just about anything in your TV library instantaneously. But even some seasoned users of the SnapStream Server may not be aware of all of the options that are available for tweaking and refining searches. Did you know that there are commands that allow you to group search terms, filter your search by date, channel or program?

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.

On Tuesday, July 14th, join us for our web seminar geared towards K-12 schools looking to stream television to the classroom.

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

Sign me Up!

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

Sign me Up!

Tired of managing VCRs or TiVo’s? Looking for a better way to monitor press coverage? Register for our special web seminar geared towards Public Information Officers in government. The City of Austin will be the guest speaker and will be discussing how they were able to cut the costs associated with maintaining 12 unreliable VCRs by moving to a more cost-effective, unified solution – the SnapStream Server.

The City of Austin will discuss how they:

• Digitally record and archive all TV coverage
• Allow cross-departmental access to those recordings
• Instantaneously pinpoint mentions of interest
• Create clips from full recordings
• Use past coverage for training purposes
• Monitor newscasts
• Create daily media reports
• Respond appropriately and quickly to TV coverage

Event: Learn how the City of Austin monitors TV
When: June 2nd, 2009; 2:30 CST
Guest Speaker: City of Austin

Sign me Up!

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