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AudioVAULT university

M

moconnor9627

I work at a small 4 station cluster in the midwest. We have 3 programmers that are in charge of programming, air shifts, production, scheduling, Pro and College sports feeds, engineering and 2 of the 3 programmers are High School Play by Play annoucers too. So needless to say we stay very busy and having an automation system that is reliable and one that we are using to its full capacity is important to make our jobs a little easier.

We use an older audioVault system, not the new flex but it seems that it has the full capability of doing all we need and more. We have our regular issues with it but i think that is due to programmer error, from lack of knowledge of the program.

With some of those issues, management is having a Smartcaster sales person come in to give us their pitch. AV is the program we used to replace smartcaster and NOW THEY WANT TO GO BACKKKK! NOOOOOOOO.

I am a younger chap, and want to learn AV correctly....

so what i am asking is, has anyone gone to the AudioVAULT university? the 5 day class they offer at the BE headquarters in Illinois. Is it worth it? $1300 is a lot to go to mgmt and ask for. So i just want to know if anyone else found it usefull?
 
If you need the full training, I would say you should go.

I've never been and did all my learning via the help file and talking to BE... However, I know people who have gone and they said it was a worthwhile experience.

Really though, you could learn it on your own.
 
I took their RF class and found it useful, but my guess would be that the current class is on flex not vault 2.
 
What are your issues? I have a LOT of AudioVAULT experience. Been using it since 1995 at various stations. Have used it for satellite automation, program time-shifting, live. Mostly V8.43 and some 9, now on AVFleX. You are probably correct in that it is a programming error, not a fault of the AV.
 
I used Smartcaster for years, and am now pretty happy with AV. Flex has its issues, but for the most part I've had an easy time using AV10 and the new Flex. I think that most things AV can be learned on your own, but I'll admit I know nothing about the class. It seems like when you take cost and time into consideration, it might be a luxury that can't be afforded.

I got along well with Johnny at Smart Systems, but seriously.... for the money they're getting for Smartcaster and their new Skylla... AVOID IT. Better support and better software sticking with BE.
 
chriscollins said:
If you need the full training, I would say you should go.
Click to expand...

I will second that. When we converted to AudioVAULT several years ago the owner chose a more expensive alternative - he paid BE to ship a field tech out to us for a few days, to:

1) Help us with the initial configuration of the Vaults for our formats

2) Train the staff in how to use them

3) Train me in the esoterica of the audiovau.ini file and other sysop matters.
 
Now that Dale brought that up, maybe you should see if you have the budget to do a 2 day marathon visit from BE... Used to be 750 a day. That way, you could have one on one training and staff training.

It might be more beneficial to you than the university.
 
No system like this will run correctly without proper training...not AudioVault, not Smartcaster, not any of 'em. Computers are very efficient servants, but they only do what they're told to do, and if they're not told properly what to do, the result is the kind of programming errors you mention...and programming errors are not the exclusive domain of AudioVault. Any such system you use has its own set of instructions and its own quirks. Without training it's only a matter of time before something goes seriously wrong that you won't be able to fix.

I know of people who have built their own PCs to run AudioVault and have therefore only paid for licensing and (in the olden days of the AV100 system) the audio cards, saving a ton of money. But none of that means a hill of beans unless the people who have to use the system know what they're doing with it.

I'll echo Dale and Chris on paying an AV tech to visit your facility and spend as much time as necessary setting up the system correctly and doing training. The AV University course (which I've taken) is a good overview, but it won't teach you how to handle database errors, program closures, or any of the other things for which you need to dig really deeply into the system.
 
Can you not download the University book from the support section of the website? That's where I obtained it from for my 9.** system.

I agree on having a tech come to your site. When my station first installed the system in 2000 (av100 server beasts) we had an install technician come down for several days.

When we obtained a station that needed a particular setup (on-air/production same studio using a RIOT box) we again had a BE install specialist onsite for the installation.

Having paid support with BE helps tremendously as they can remote into the system (if you have it configured) to troubleshoot.
 
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