I’m the programmer of a hospital station, some time ago we were asked if we would run a 24 hour service. Its been a year in preparation and training presenters on Version 4 using the VT feature.
Everybody picks there own music off the system, I will only scheduling the automated hours.
The issue I’ve come across is not all of our guys are totally computer literate they can use the system in live assist no problem, with the nature of the station its voluntary, and there can be time were presenters don’t turn up.
To get round the possibility of presenter non appearances. I’ll schedule a full day so they’ll be no dead air.
What I had thought of doing was running one Mairlist on auto (I don’t really want them messing with a running log) and allow presenters to load a second Mairlist and start their show from that once they’ve stopped the first. I’ve seen on the config screen you can run more than one Mairlist at a time “Allow only one instance box” is not ticked. I cant load a second ,it pops mairlist back to the front of screen again.
That would require the Multi Instance option in your license. And you need a “second installation” of mAirList, which is usually achieved by downloading the Zip distribution and unpacking it somewhere (but NOT in C:\Program Files).
Regarding the license, please get in touch by e-mail.
Once you have the multi user licence to permit running 2 instances of mAirList, rather than stop the instance running in automation do you have a spare fader on your mixer? *Edit Oh and enough outputs on the soundcard *Edit
If so install and set up the live assist copy of mAirList and route an input to this second fader. This way the automated copy can
be left running at all times, simple fading on the mixer between instances of mAirList.
A second PC would make things simpler but reducing the cpu demand.
*Edit
Using a second PC would require the audio to be stored centrally on a nas, similar network or shared folders.
*Edit
Sorry for the delay in getting back, been rather hectic in the run up to 24 hour launch and equipment failure at the wrong time, I had the not so smart idea of letting the recently trained VT presenters a chance to try out their new skills for Christmas Day. I under estimated the time it would take to train 30 presenters.
We went 24 hours on the 1st Jan. What I decided to do is split the logs into one for Monday, one of Tuesday and so on, The last live presenter will start the log after they finish if a presenter doesn’t show up the logs will keep running, or if they do appear they can hit “new” when the news is running.
I liked the idea of multi instance, The treasurer gets nervous when I spend money his first words when I saw him last wasn’t hello rather “How much money have you spent now”.
Since we’ve a VPN server I can amend logs from home if I need to, I’ve set so I can dial in to the playout systems to fire other logs or in some cases help a stuck presenter out
I’m monitoring the situation to see if the process works or not. Its an exciting time but its been hard work
Just a little question from myself, is there the option to do the shows live. I am the a committee member at an online student radio station and our presenters do their shows live, we use a PostgreSQL database and when combined with the schedule feature if our presenters fail to turn up at the end of the previous show it will automatically switch on and play the standard playlist.
Basically, the DJ will just switch from AUTO to ASSIST mode at the beginning of the live show, and then back to AUTO at the end. If he doesn’t show up, the playout will continue to run in AUTO mode.
After some feedback from presenters, I’ve gone down the road of using the Event Scheduler and loading the playlist hourly after finding the information on another thread as how to do that.(Thanks for that) Think there happier because is less busy as the team describe it. I was just loading one large playlist before.
I’ve just now noticed an odd problem 2 out of 4 studios we have, if you close Mairlist on some machines and open it back up the event scheduler clears and is empty, on the other two, if you close and re-open the event is still there. No need to reload it.
Is there a config setting I’m not aware of ?
Thanks as always
Graham
It doesn’t matter who is logged on to machine, user or administrator its the same
Another quick question, I use an event called Hourly. It only loads one hour at the time, at the top of hour it then loads and runs the next hours list, what I cant work out how to do is. Example I use an other event to load a voice tracked show say 2 hours but what happens when it hits top of hour it drops the VT show and starts to run hourly again.
I cant work out how to stop it loading the hour list when the VT shows are running, then when those are finished, flip back over to the hour lists again, its fine if I’m in the building I just load them myself, but how can do it on its own?
Do you use a database, we do and using the mAirlistDB program we can generate a playlist using the mini scheduler on the playlist tab. When one of our presenters prerecords their show they save a playlist file for each hour and I then come in once they tell me and load it onto the right hour, you just have to remember to save the changes to the hour.
If you don’t mind me asking which hospital do you broadcast at as if it is near us we could arrange a time for one of our guys to come over and have a looksie. As we have been using mAirlist for a while and some of the team know it pretty well.
his first words when I saw him last wasn’t hello rather “How much money have you spent now”.
Think there happier because is less busy as the team describe it. I was just loading one large playlist before.