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How to handle daylight saving time switch in BCS / TurboPlayer

When daylight saving time change approaches!

New version:

The upcoming switch to the daylight-savings time on //dd-mm-yyyy (2 am CET) involves some difficulties for planning and executing a schedule. We advise the following steps as preparation so you can get a good night's sleep instead of worrying about TurboPlayer:
 
During the daylight-savings time switch the clock will be set from 2 am to 3 am. There are two possibly ways this switch can be executed. Either via the internal Windows-clock function that automatically adjusts the time or via a custom 3rd party time synchronization tool.
 
If you're using the internal Windows-clock function the actual time at which the synchronization occurs is uncertain. The observed range of this varies from a couple of minutes after 2 am to over 1 or 2 hours later.

Therefore this is the worst case scenario. There are two ways to deal with this:
 

  1. Do not use the "Start on time" start mode at all. But use a chain of elements set to "Sequenced" start mode to keep the playout running. Of course, an inital command to get the chain running should be triggered before the time switch. (e.g. Start mode "Manual" or "Start on time").

  2. Deactivate the automatic adjustment of the clock for this night (this needs to affect the Turbo, BCS and BUS machines) and schedule normally. Switch the time manually when a staff member is in the studio again. This way you can react if something happens during the switch.


If you're using a 3rd party tool for time synchronization, the time at which the switch occurs should be predictable. In this scenario it is sufficient to plan one "Start on time" element straight after the synchronization time (allow a few seconds to pass but less than a minute is sufficient).

Additionally we suggest to set all import modules in BUS to "do not import past shows". This is based on the fact that some filesystem / operating system combinations seem to change the change date upon the time switch.

In this case BUS would detect these files as new and would therefore re-import old shows. With the flag enabled, BUS will not false import anything. 

If you have further questions or need advice please contact our support team.




 Older version:

The upcoming switch to the daylight-savings time on //dd-mm-yyyy (2 am CET) involves some difficulties for planning and executing a schedule.


In some rather rare cases TurboPlayer didn’t react properly during this switch and didn't start the next sequenced element automatically after the time synchronization occurred. Therefore automatic playout came to a halt. Fortunately, this affected a very small amount of installations.

Although the problem occurs very rarely we advise the following steps as preparation so you can get a good night's sleep instead of worrying about TurboPlayer:
 
During the daylight-savings time switch the clock will be set from 2 am to 3 am. There are two possibly ways this switch can be executed. Either via the internal Windows-clock function that automatically adjusts the time or via a custom 3rd party time synchronization tool.
 
The problem in TurboPlayer affects the automatic start of sequenced elements. StartOnTime elements are executed normally, therefore you need to plan StartOnTime elements shortly after the time synchronization as a security measurement. This way, even if a sequenced element won’t be started automatically, the StartOnTime element will.
 
If you're using the internal Windows-clock function the actual time at which the synchronization occurs is uncertain. The observed range of this varies from a couple of minutes after 2 am to over 1 or 2 hours later. Therefore this is the worst case scenario. There are two ways to deal with this:
 
1) We advise you to plan several StartOnTime elements in short intervals in order to cover the critical range during which the switch can occur. The first potential StartOnTime should be shortly after 3 am (e.g. 03:01) and from there you should place a StartOnTime every couple of minutes for at least 1-3 hours, just to be safe.
2) Deactivate the automatic adjustment of the clock for this night (this needs to affect the Turbo, BCS and BUS machines) and schedule normally. Switch the time manually when a staff member is in the studio again. This way you can react if something happens during the switch.
 
If you're using a 3rd party tool for time synchronization the time at which the switch occurs should be predictable. In this scenario it is sufficient to plan one StartOnTime element straight after the synchronization time (allow a few seconds to pass but less than a minute is sufficient).

Additionally we suggest to set all import modules in BUS to "do not import past shows". This is based on the fact that some filesystem / operating system combinations seem to change the change date upon the time switch. In this case BUS would detect these files as new and would therefore re-import old shows. With the flag enabled, BUS will not false import anything. 


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