Now that I fully understand TRIGGERs (and I love them!)…
Would it be possible to have a similar facility—but limited to START Commands—which is triggered when a cart ends (or Stops)? This would allow a ‘chain’ or ‘sequence’ of carts to be played with a single click, a bit like the Sequence stack in JazlerShow!.
There would be a new Cartwall right-click menu item named something like Sequence… or Chain… which would hav a submenu similar to the existing Trigger… submenu, but containing only START entries.
Example: cart 1 has its Sequence set to START 2, and cart 2 has its Sequence set to START 3. When cart 1 is started, carts 1, 2, and 3 play in sequence.
It would also be easy to add a new Sequence node to the XML schema of the MLC file.
The problem might be finding a name no longer than TRIGGER to put in the State of the Cartwall players. I think it would need to be SEQ (short for SEQUENCE) or CHAIN. I can’t think of a situation where anyone would want to set up both a TRIGGER and a SEQUENCE/CHAIN on hte same cart player, so the problem of displaying (say) TRIGGER SEQ in the State text area would not arise (!).
Would anyone else find this idea useful? If not, I can live without it.
Such a function would be handy … Rather than tie up a series of players in auto.
Actually, there is a very good reason I prefer a separate Playlist [i]reserved[/i] for ads.: you can set up individual ad. breaks as MLP files, then schedule those into your 'ads.-only' Playlist (in my case, Playlist 2) using the Event Scheduler.
During automation hours, each ad. break MLP to be Loaded (using Events) into Playlist 2 looks like this:Ad break sting
Ad 1
Ad 2
Ad 3
… etc.
Ad break sting
COMMAND: AUTOMATION 1 NEXT
BREAKand in Playlist 1, ad. breaks are played using this sequence:Last track before break
(optional station ident)
COMMAND: AUTOMATION 2 NEXT
BREAK
(optional trail/promo)
Track after break
You just have to ensure that Events load each set of ads. into Playlist 2 at least ten minutes ahead of expected playout time, to account for main Playlist ‘slippage,’ or else add a fixed time somewhere to force eveything into sync.
Is there still demand for this feature, now that we have container items?
Currently, you select multiple files from the playlist and drag them into a cart player. A container item will be created automatically. You can also drag an M3U or MLP file from the Explorer onto the player.
I still have not tried V2.1, because of pressures here as Leith FM will launch soon, but I don’t think containers will really do what I need.
What I need is for presenters to be able to ‘sequence’ carts themselves on the fly, in the Cartwall, from a loaded Cart Set. No messing about with dragging, dropping, or going to Browsers or Explorer; no wasting time navigating to the right place, finding all the right files, then mucking about with Playlist files.
That would all be FAR too much effort when all you want to do is ‘run together’ two or three of your station a capella/sweeper jingles which are all in the Cartwall anyway! And probably you have <60 secs. to set it up.
Plus, everyone I’ve shown mAirList to thinks it is Very Strange (but useful!) that there are start-of-cart TRIGGERs but no end-of-cart SEQUENCEs to match.
