OM Timeslot Scheduler

For the last month, Denver Open Media has been running automated rules based scheduling from cron jobs on all three of our channels. We are excited to release stable versions of Open Media Timeslot Scheduler and Open Media Playback Servers (OPS) that are fully functional. Here is a break down of the functionality the new code provides:

DrupalCon has just started and this has already been a very productive trip. When we first arrived in Europe, I met with Oliver Gibson from the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation. GMCVO is funding some MERCI development that will improve the integration with MERCI make it much easier to use MERCI as a staff driven solution. After a few days of sight seeing in London, we were off to Vaxjo, Sweden to work with Daniel Westergren on adapting the Open Media modules for his hosted environment. To do, we needed 2 things.

I've been working hard on getting manual scheduling working correctly here at OMF. I just committed a new version of OM Timeslot Scheduler, which has a lot of changes. All output created by new functionality is separated off in a grey experimentation area only visible to user 1 and certain roles. Scheduling now supports the pairings module. There is also a non-pairings system section that I could use some help debugging, as it's hard for me to test on our system.

After looking at what Jack Brighton has been doing with FieldFrame in Expression Engine (which AFAICT is really similar to Drupal's CCK), hearing BAVC's desire to stick with PBCore, and knowing that CPB is actively working on requirements for PBCore 2.0, I took another look a PBCore. What I found was that most of the terms the beta stations wanted to include in a new standard were really similar to an existing PBCore term.

We started locking CCK fields that are referenced by TVframe so that stations could tell the difference between fields they've added and could edit and fields that would likely cause a problem if modified. Yesterday we had an issue where PCM needed to alter a setting in a locked filed, so I thought I'd post the instructions for unlocking fields for everyone. There might be other ways to do this, but I use phpmyadmin to access the locked column in the content_node_field table.

Portland Community Media, in partnership with Denver Open Media, has created documents explaining the rules of scheduling Producer> Project> Programs. The document includes rules for series programs, scheduled on a quarterly basis, as well as individual programs that get scheduled on a first come, first served basis.

I have also included rules on how PCM schedules filler programs.

The focus of this discussion is:
- to communicate current scheduling rules and guidelines
- to discuss other methods of annual, quarterly or daily scheduling rules used by other media centers