Solved: Content Server not working correctly

CochiseRon · ‎09-20-2012

Hello,

I am having problems with my Tandberg Content Server. For several years, we have used the Tandberg Content Server (TCS) in combination with our Tandberg Management Server (TMS) to schedule and record video conferences. I schedule 60 video conferences a week to roughly 20 rooms, using the TMS. Of these, about 14 video conferences per week are recorded.

Originally, I only had one recording alias on the TCS set up, and it worked fine. But I recently added a second recording alias, due to the growing number of requests for recordings of the video conferences. It seemed to go okay.

Now, however, the Content Server isn't working quite right. It will record two different video conferences at the same time, but once it's finished encoding them, the link that you get to send to people is messed up: often (but not always) the link merges two seperate video conferences together in one video. Two one-hour video conferences will be merged together in one two-hour recorded conference.

The problem only occurs with video conferences that occur at the same time. Strangely, if I search the Content Server's F drive, under Data/Media, the recordings are all there, and they are seperate. They are only joined together on the Content Server link.

I have made sure that we are indeed recording on seperate recording aliases.

Because the videos in the Data/Media bin are always labled something like O1110292903-0593923929.wmv, I can use guesswork to reconstruct a valid URL to get a working link, but it's a lot of extra work: I want to be able to log in to the Content Server admin interface and be able to send someone a link in a few minutes.

Any ideas on what's going wrong? I created a trouble ticket with Cisco earlier in the week, but have not heard back from Cisco tech support, so I thought I'd open it to the Cisco community.

Patrick Pettit · ‎09-27-2012

HI Ron. Good morning. Since our webex the last time, I do believe we can use participant templates in the mean time until we find out whats going on when using TMS this way. When using the recording drop down and all the systems aren't registered to Gatekeeper seems to be the trigger here, but to get you running, this is what I propose we try and do here.

You may have to purge the Content Server out of TMS so TMS doesn't "know" about the IP address of the Content Server.

You will have to examine your routing and preferred MCU in routing here, and make the two changes:

Administrative Tools>Configuration>Conference Settings. All the way at the bottom you will see:

I had to change this to Always and Preferred MCU type in routing to MPS. This is logical since this is the only MCU you have and you need the MCU in each booking (from my understanding of what you said during the webex).

So:

1) Jot down all the conferences that have the Content Server involved, and remove the recording from each conference.

2) Purge the Content Server from TMS.

3) Add participant template with just the IP address of the content server: Booking>Participant Templates and build one like shown below. The number field should be the address of the content server and IP zone should be IP zone for your system.

Go ahead and save the template.

Make booking with this template and another endpoint (don't add the MPS since it should automatically). Check the connection settings and the MPS should be call the IP of the TCS and the other endpoint.

Click Save conference.

If the conference saves ok, build another with a different room and same template again, and click save conference.

The caveat is that when calling the IP of the TCS, the TCS will use what you have configured as the default recording template under Configuration>Site Settings

Just choose which one you want to use all the time if you can.

The way it shows on the TCS is:

Caveat here is that you would have to go in the TCS, and change the name of the recording to what you want it to be displayed on the TCS. Navigate in TCS - Management>Recordings>Edit Recordings and change the name at the top to what you named the conference in TMS.

If you can, give this a shot on your TMS. The important piece is to remove the recordings from your previously scheduled conferences, and then purge the TCS from TMS. Then add the template. If you get a routing problem when doing so, book the meeting as you would without the recording alias, and navigate to the MPS and dial the IP address of the TCS to get it recorded.

If a Gatekeeper was involved here, it would be much better and more likely wouldn't have this problem because TMS will route to the recording alias via gateway prefix (gateway mode on TCS) to the TCS and it wouldn't append each conference together.

This workaround may work for you, so please let me know if it does or not.

Thanks in advance.

VR

Patrick

View solution in original post

Patrick Pettit · ‎09-21-2012

HI Ron. Can you list the TMS version and TCS version your running as well? When you book the recordings, do they fall on the same MCU also?

Just trying to picture in my head on what may be happening, so we can try and possibly recreate the issue maybe.

VR

Patrick

CochiseRon · ‎09-21-2012

Patrick,

Thanks for the response. The Content Server was originally on version 4.9 or so. I was told that upgrading to the latest version of the software would almost definitely fix the problem. They advised me to upgrade to v5.3. However, I could not do this because the latest version of the software that the hardware supports is v5.1. I upgraded to Cisco TelePresence Content Server v5.1 Build 3121 last week. It did not fix the problem.

On the TMS, I'm on version 12.2. This week, I was told that upgrading the TMS to version 13.2.1 would fix the problem. I'm attempting that install this morning.

On the MCU, yes, we do use the same MCU for both recordings.

CochiseRon · ‎09-24-2012

Upgrading the TMS did not resolve the problem.

Patrick Pettit · ‎09-24-2012

Thanks Ron. Can you list out the steps on how this is being booked etc? I'm curious to see if the same problem persists between S5.3 versus S5.1. Are you able to do this? If your able to do so, let me know the exact steps so i can try and setup a recreate here on ours to see if theres something there. Also, send me private message with the TAC SR case here if you can also. If you include this information in the case, i can try and see it there. The Transcode engine log, OT Log as well may prove useful also.

VR

Patrick