CONCEPT Cited by 1 source
Broadcast FACS/FAX pre-show check¶
FACS/FAX ("facilities checks") is the pre-show rehearsal gate before every live broadcast — a battery of Audio/Video tests run during rehearsal that catches venue-side issues before they ever reach viewers. It is distinct from in-flight production monitoring (during-show) and from post-mortem review (after-show): FACS/FAX is a pre-flight checklist.
What it covers¶
Per the 2026-04-17 Human Infrastructure post, FACS/FAX runs include:
- Specialised Audio/Video sync tests — verify per-leg A/V alignment is within tolerance
- Latency tests — end-to-end contribution-path latency within spec
- Quality tests — video + audio signal quality gates
- Closed-caption validation — caption stream present, correctly timed, legible
- Backup-switcher touring — walk through every backup input to confirm each is present, healthy, and switches cleanly
Why it's a discipline, not a one-off¶
Live broadcast has "no ability to pause or roll back", so any failure not caught before airtime ships to millions of viewers. FACS/FAX institutionalises pre-show verification of the parts of the pipeline that are most likely to have drifted since the last successful event:
- Venue-specific hardware (per-venue, not shared with other shows)
- Contribution-leg health (routing, latency, loss)
- Redundancy state (all three legs live, not just the primary)
- Metadata insertion (captions, SCTE)
These are things that should have been correct since the last check, but cheaply checking is much better than assuming.
Seen in¶
- 2026-04-17 — sources/2026-04-17-netflix-the-human-infrastructure-live-operations — Netflix names FACS/FAX as the pre-show verification discipline in the BOC before every show.