Just a quicky, is there any chance that with the cartwall, you could design a second option so that rather than having the various cart sets in the drop down box, you have them as tabs along the top of the cartwall, in the same way as you can set the browser to have the tabs?
I agree with you also, this would be a great idea to have, although it sounds rather complicated - mind you, i know nothing about writing software etc!!!
I do mean copying the file into the playlist. This would allow us to instantly insert commonly used elements (found on the cartwall) into the playlist for playback.
Could there be a toolbar button (similar to Cartwall PFL) to revert all Cartwall buttons to “collect-mode” (ala Jazler) allowing you to drag ‘n’ drop them rather than instantly playing them ?
It’s to stop the Cartwall acting as “instants” When the collect button is depressed, any Cartwall button is added to the sequence/playlist rather than played immediately. This would cater for users who liked to drag ‘n’ drop into the Playlist from the Cartwall, and those who want the Cartwall to play instantly.
Your neighbouring colleagues at VCS employ the “collect” feature on their dira! cartwall application, too.
What Charlie said: in Jazler! and JazlerShow!, the cartwall looks like this (this image is from the Jazler! site):
On the right is a bank of carts just like a mAirList cartwall, with up to 150 carts (if I recall correctly?) in each cart set (Jazler! calls these ‘Banks’ :P). Thirty carts are visible at a time: to see the others in the ‘bank,’ you click the Up/Down arrow buttons (which explains why you NEED a ‘stack’ in Jazler!).
The buttons along the bottom of the screen at the left-hand side work like a mAirList Cart Set (click the button to load the cartwall slots with carts from a different ‘set’.
Normally the cartwall area is ‘click to play.’ When you click the COLLECT ‘toggle’ button to activate COLLECT mode, which draws a red line around each cart in the ‘cartwall’ as a reminder, clicking any cart in the cartwall copies it to the first empty slot in the ‘stack.’
On the left is the ‘stack’ area (01, 02, 03, …), which works exactly like a mAirList Playlist in AUTO mode.
After you’ve loaded carts into it, you can click any cart in the ‘stack’ to play the whole stack from that cart onwards, until either the end of the stack is reached or until the operator clicks STOP ALL. Any carts which were ‘above’ the cart you started from will remain in the ‘stack.’ The ‘stack’ does not ‘loop back around’ to the start!
Finally, FADE MIX is another toggle button. When ON, it will fade out any playing cart when another starts; for the stack, it will honour any fade out points you have set up for your carts (just like a mAirList Fade Out cue point). When OFF, all carts play to EOF, including carts in the stack.
I hope that explains it in enough detail?
So YES Torben, if you could add something like ‘collect’ mode to the mAirList cartwall, we could then drag/drop them to a Playlist. Ideally, while ‘collect’ mode is active, any ‘click’ function set up on the Cartwall would be temporarily switched off (until ‘collect’ mode is deactivated). If you could implement all of that in v3, I’m sure many of us here would be VERY happy people!
Speaking as a fellow programmer: PRECISELY! I knew you would appreciate that. The detailed description off the top of my head is possible because a) we use JazlerShow! right now at our station, and b) I wrote a user manual for it some years ago, for use by our presenters. (Torben: I can mail you a copy of that manual if you wish?)
Two minor addenda to my previous post:
No need to implement a FADE MIX button: I was just explaining its function. In mAirList terms, and assuming you don’t want to create a new ‘stack’ object :D, users would easily implement the ‘stack’ as a ‘playerless’ Playlist. Hence no need for a FADE MIX … if you have Fade Out or Start Next points set, the Playlist would work as usual. I think you would still need the usual AUTO/ASSIST switching, rather than ‘forcing’ that Playlist into AUTO by means of an OnStartup notification script.
The grey and blue bar between the stack and the cartwall in JazlerShow! is a vertical progress bar (!). Imagine a leaking thermometer and you’ve got it.
And one correction (courtesy of my old manual!):
“Although JazlerShow! moves the deck view up as each deck in a Sequence starts playing, it does not clear any decks. When the Sequence is finished, the decks are still loaded, as you can prove by clicking the Go To Start button. This may feel ‘alien’ if you are used to programs—Sonicart for example—which do unload decks after playing them; but leaving the decks loaded is a better simulation of real cart players!”
I’m trying to remember whether there is already a Playlist config. option to NOT remove Items after playing them? If not, then perhaps a new ‘stack’ object is needed, after all! :-\
The important ‘new’ thing for mAirList is a COLLECT toggle button (to temporarily disable any ‘click’ actions on all the cartwall players, and simultaneously allow copying of items by dragging from cartwall players and dropping on Playlists). The idea of changing the border colour of each cartwall player when COLLECT is ‘on’ is also an excellent visual reminder. Of course, in mAirList, this ‘CartwallDragModeBorderColor’ colour would need to be configurable in skin.ini. ;D
Does anyone have a better suggestion for the COLLECT button’s caption? (I’m thinking that Jazler! might have a sense of humour failure if a button labelled COLLECT suddenly appeared in mAirList! ;)) Perhaps it should read PLAY MODE when ‘off’ and DRAG MODE (or whatever) when ‘on?’ Further suggestions welcome!
PS: I’ve just remembered that the JazlerShow! image on the Jazler! site (in my previous post) is a v1.0 screenshot and that v.1.51 (the downloadable version) also has a SEQUENCE button. Considering Jazler! abandoned JazlerShow! (v.1.51) in 2002 (!), that’s pretty impressive (NOT). It’s too late at night to go into details about SEQUENCE right now, and I don’t think it would be needed (?) in a mAirList equivalent of a ‘stack’ Playlist.
Starting with mAirList 3.0, items will not be cleared from the cart stack. In fact you can cycle through the stack or jump back and forth (with an extra set of buttons).
Ah. I presume you are referring to the ‘cart stack’ one can create INSIDE a Cartwall Player, yes?
The point of this whole request is to add the ability to set up a ‘cart stack’ OUTSIDE the Cartwall, in either a standard Playlist, or a new ‘StackPlaylist’ object.
The concept is that a presenter can ‘grab’ one or more Carts (probably from different Cart Sets) to create a ‘cart stack’ on-the-fly very quickly; creating a Cart Stack INSIDE a Cartwall Player takes much more time, and requires the ‘correct’ Cart Set (containing the Cart Stack) to be loaded in the Cartwall to be able to play the stack.
While the ‘Cartwall internal’ Cart Stack is great for ‘known’ situations, such as a show feature which always uses the same jingles etc. in the same sequence, the point of the ‘external’ Playlist/‘stack’ is that you can assemble a ‘stack’ as the mood takes you (maybe a station ID from the Station Cart Set, then a personal namecheck jingle from your personal Cart Set, then a year-check jingle from the station’s Sung Years Cart Set, ending with something from the Sweepers Cart Set, to run over the intro of the tune that is NEXT in your main Playlist). Does that make sense?
To Charlie: I see where you’re coming from, but I’ve always hated the term Instant (or Instants). Whenever I see that anywhere in a playout system GUI, I aways find myself saying out loud: ‘Instant what exactly?’ I also think that because the button function is to allow/disallow ‘collection’ of Carts into a separate Playlist, it should be captioned with a word implying that ‘collection’ is on or off.
Maybe the answer, to borrow part of Charlie’s suggestion, is to caption the button something like Gather ON / Gather OFF? I still like my original idea of DRAG MODE / PLAY MODE, the more I look at it. I prefer buttons and controls that ‘do exactly what they say on the tin!’