I think it might be of use if you could create quickly a variety of advert containers in a very similar way to playlist generation. You would have a layout similar to the hour planner but it has a settable maximum duration be it a 3 minute advert break or a 30 second break you could choose. It would look to populate the adverts from a single folder and the same with any jingles or idents. As such a sub set of rules should apply to adverts such as duration of advertising campaign and plays per hour.
Not too sure how the whole thing would work but basically its a advert template and that is then integrated into the playlist.
Actually such a feature already exists, although it is somewhat “hidden”, because it is very generic: Sub-Playlists.
Open mAirListDB, go to Admin -> Configuration, and then to the “Sub-Playlists” tab. Below the “Master Playlist” (ID 0), enter the name for a new sub-playist (ID 1), eg. “Advertising” and a target duration, e.g. 00:03:00. Save and restart mAirListDB.
From now on, you will see another set of tabs in the playlist editor: One for the Master Playlist, and one for Advertising.
So basically, sub-playlists allow you to save not only one playlist (the Master Playlist) per hour, but multiple playlists.
The cool thing about this feature is that it works with the Mini Scheduler: You can use the scheduler to generate the contents for the sub-playlists; check out the Hour Template Assignments dialog, it has extra tabs now as well! And inside an hour template, you can use elements like “next from sub-playlist” or “sub-playlist as container” in order to copy the contents from the sub-playlist into the master playlist.
Thanks for the Help, Another quick question related to this. I have used the function to insert the sub playlist as a Container. Is there any way to set a colour of this container or does it have to stay as plain?
