Playout date and time simulation and summer / winter times

English mAirList 6.x
1

Next weekend will see the first winter-to-summer time transition that we’ve experienced while using the mAirList scheduler. We have noted the previous discussion about the challenges of these transitions and we believe we have set up our playlists accordingly.

When we attempted to verify the correctness of the scheduler’s behaviour it seemed that the playout software’s simulated time did not mimic what will happen in real time. Specifically, the clock went from 01:59:59 to 02:00:00 when it should have gone from 01:59:59 to 03:00:00.

At the top of the next hour, the simulated clock advanced from 02:59:59 to 03:00:00.

Superficially we concluded that the simulated clock is unaware that the winter-to-summer time transition occurs on Sun 4 Oct.

Can anyone confirm that this is a known issue with the date / time simulation within the playout software?

Thanks in advance.

Cameron

2

That’s correct. The actual time zone handling and calculations depend on operating system functions which are only available in the “real thing”, not the simulation.

3

Thus, a simulation involving changing the OS-time itself might work?

Punctual regards

TSD

4

Thank you @Torben and @Tondose for your timely responses.

Tondose, manipulating OS time is something we considered. However we are reluctant to roll clocks on production machines back and forward. If the transition doesn’t occur as we expect we’ll set up a dev VM that will allow us to better understand how to prepare for the transition.

Cameron