[EAS] EAS CAP for Video

[David Brant]

It seems to me that the inclusion of CAP could be a great benefit for TV, particularly during the early morning hours when there's nobody around to do a news bulletin.
Since CAP can include a graphic or video file as a resource, some good design and planning could result in a system that can get a picture of a missing child, or the projected track of a tornado on the air without involving any graphics creation talent at the station.
You could come up with a design that lets you select what event you want to leave as a simple crawl (not a major program interruption), or one that runs the crawl over a still graphic that is provided via CAP (or several in a slide show display), or run the header, then a video file from CAP (don't cover the audio from the file!).
The problem is, you have to get the data on the air. A still graphic or video clip has to be converted to a video format that is usable by the station, depending upon what formats they use. This would require, at the very least, some kind of standards for the aspect ratio (make it 16:9, but protect the 4:3). And the EAS/CAP decoder device has to support spitting out the video in the flavor you need.
Food for thought for the decoder designers!
David P. Brant, Chief Engineer
Fox Television Stations, Inc.,WHBQ-TV, Memphis, TN