IRIS Technologies Support Bulletin - January 19, 2007

Daylight Saving Time changes affect scheduling

In 2007, the schedule for beginning and ending Daylight Saving Time has been changed. The new schedule was passed into U.S. law over a year ago as part of the Energy Policy Act. Instead of beginning on the first Sunday of April, Daylight Saving Time now begins on the second Sunday of March (this year, on March 11). Instead of ending on the last Sunday of October, it now ends on the first Sunday in November (this year, on November 4).

For many people, these changes are simply a minor change to the calendar. But for those of us concerned with scheduling of unattended operations, the new law makes an already complicated situation much more confusing. This bulletin is to let our customers know about the issues and how to work around them.

If you are not using any IRIS Technologies products for scheduling, then these changes do not affect you. But if you are scheduling with our products, you will want to take note of these issues, and probably be standing by on the morning of March 11 to make sure things happen correctly.

The scheduling in Video Commander Professional Edition is managed according to the hardware clock within your NED or NEDstation server, and that hardware does not change its operation just because there is a new law.

You will need to turn off Daylight Saving Time (since it would still make changes according to the old schedule) and change the clock manually. Then plan when someone will be available to change the clock (whether through remote Internet access or physical access to the network). For any scheduled changes between the official transition time (2:00am on Sunday, March 11) and the time when someone will be able to change the clock, you should schedule your events artificially one hour later than they should actually occur. For example, if you want an event to occur at 5:00am that day, you should enter it in Schedule Lineup as occurring at 6:00am, to reflect the fact that 5:00 will actually occur an hour later than the server thinks.

Changes to the server clock, and turning off the Daylight Saving Time function, are done in the iNED Browser. Select your NED or NEDstation server, go to the "System Properties" tab, and click the "Set" button next to the time display.

The scheduling in Otto Playback Director is managed according to the clock on your PC. Simply stated, if your computer handles Daylight Saving Time correctly, Otto will too.

Microsoft has a description of the support for the new time changes for different versions of Windows in a white paper: Preparing for daylight saving time changes in 2007. Review this paper for information specific to your Windows.

VideoTizer can be scheduled in different ways, which determine how changes to Daylight Saving Time will affect you.

If your VideoTizer is scheduled through the Schedule Lineup application in Video Commander Professional Edition, refer to the section above about Video Commander. On the other hand, if your VideoTizer is a stand-alone system using the internal (on-screen) scheduler, the schedule is not aware of time changes (old or new rules), and any clock changes must be done manually anyway.

If you are using the PC-based VideoTizer Scheduler application, you can expect problems. That program uses the computer's clock, like the Otto Playback Director described above, but also internally adjusts times according to the old rules, so we expect events to display and/or start incorrectly. For these and other reasons we do not recommend continued use of the VideoTizer Scheduler: you should consider an upgrade to the Otto Playback Director or Video Commander Professional. If you continue to use VideoTizer Scheduler, you should turn off Daylight Saving Time on your computer and adjust the clock manually, to minimize the problems.

If you are curious about the issues and complexities of Daylight Saving Time, you might be interested in the Wikipedia article on the subject.

We hope this information has been helpful as you prepare for scheduling changes. If you have a current support agreement, feel free to contact IRIS Technologies Technical Support with your questions.