Container skips at switch to auto mode

[xdjorik]

Hi,

For our news we use a container with the news-file.
If a deejay is in assist mode, and switches to auto mode during this news, the play-out of this file is ended and starts the next track.

Has anyone this problem too?

[Anna_On_Air]

I tried to reproduce this, but here it’s still running after switching between Assist and Auto.

But it seems there are anyway some more problems with the News-Container. For example I can’t use it for automation.

[RuVo80]

Is the track after the newscontainer a soft/hard fixed timed item?
This could be a cause

[xdjorik]

Hey, I have found out when things are going wrong!

Player A: is playing the outtro of a song
Player B is playing the jingle ( or started news)

At pressing Auto, both players stop and the next track in the playlist is started.
In my opionion the last started track should continu playing in auto mode ( and maybe the first track ( Player A in the case above) can be stopped.

I seems this is a bug in Maitlist (6.3).
I understand that 2 playing players can confuse the auto what to do, but it is very annoying if a track is skipped by pressing the auto button.

So maybe @Torben can fix this unwanted feature

[RuVo80]

I have a few questions to check if it is really a bug.
Are you using the standard auto button? or have you created your own auto button?

If you have created the button yourself, what is the command you give?

• Enable Automation
  or
• Start Automation Playback

The last Command is not only activating the automation, it also have a start function. Perhaps this can be an issue when several items are playing at that same moment. The first command only activates the automation.

[Torben]

Sorry, unable to reproduce this here:

• ASSIST mode
• Start song (Player A)
• Start jingle (Player B)
• While both are playing, turn on AUTO
• Nothing is skipped in that moment
• Jingle will play until EOF, and song will continue to play
• Thereafter automation continues with next item

What am I doing wrong?

[Tondose]

@Torben

What am I doing wrong?

Maybe you are doing it right.

[xdjorik]

Sorry for the late reply.

We use a button, it triggers: Automation 1 on / automation 1 off

Should work.

Maybe its because we have chosen to use one player in automation mode. Ill try to change that and see it it will make a difference.

[yann_primitive]

Hi, do you have any clue on that problem ? I have the same problem but without containers !

In assist mode, when I put AUTO ON while the last track is playing at the end of the show, the track is skipped to the next item in playlist, but not every time… very strange.

I use both players in automation, AUTO mode is switched by the AUTOMATION 1 ON/OFF cmd.

[Stefan_Hillen]

@yann_primitive

There is an option to “automatically jump to fix-timed elements in automation mode” (translated from the german version) in Config → Playlists → Playlist 1 → Options .

Maybe that causes mAirlist to jump to the next item immediately after going into auto mode esp. when there’s a (hard or soft) fix-timed TOTH after the show?

[yann_primitive]

This happened today, a track was remaining in playlist at the end of the show (after the last actually played), when I switched to AUTO ON, it skiped the current to the last.
And yes, there is a soft fixed time TOH jingle just after (13pm).
Is this a mechanism to catch up time before the soft fixed time item ?

@Stefan_Hillen thanks, I unticked the option.
I’d like to prevent that it skips to next element when I switch AUTO ON, but I’d like to keep the behaviour that it skips automaticaly to the soft fixed time when it’s possible, at the end of a track. Will it continue to work like that ?

[Stefan_Hillen]

@yann_primitive

Is this a mechanism to catch up time before the soft fixed time item ?

Maybe @UliNobbe can tell you more about…

I use the way to have the LAST SONG backtimed to the TOTH / End of the hour (with a soft fix-time) and overplan the say 5 minutes before it with 2-3 songs. This way the last song will always be the last song in the list and the Playlist will have some buffer if there’re elements that were skipped by me or were missing (like planned interviews etc)…

But the end of the PL will always be “LAST planned Song” → “TOTH” so there’s no need to skip automatically songs because after the last song it will always play the TOTH.

This

@yann_primitive

but I’d like to keep the behaviour that it skips automaticaly to the soft fixed time when it’s possible, at the end of a track

…would be obsolet then.

Maybe this will work for you too?

[yann_primitive]

I tried “automatically jump to fixed time elements in automation mode” OFF, and yesterday when switched to auto mode ON while a track playing 2 or 3 minutes before 13pm, it skipped to the next one (soft-fixed 13pm Start of the hour), whereas the track wasn’t ended.

Overmore, I have some specials blank playlists for some shows that don’t use mAL to play music. I use hard fixed time items to resume the playback. With “auto jump to fixed time” OFF, at the end of these shows the playout doesn’t resume…

So I prefere keep “auto jump” to ON.

However, it seems to fix the problem described here : Append from DB playlist overlap the newly appended playlist doesn’t overlap anymore with remaining items from previous playlist.

To use backtimed items you have to put ON the “auto jump”, i’m right ?
And how de you backtime the last item, I use mainly “fill with music block” or it can also be a pre-recorded news/interview…

[MaartenVN]

Does anyone know the root cause of this or still have the same issue?

We recently made the switch to mAirlist and had this happen a couple of times, without any clear root cause.

Our presenters use the ASSIST mode during their program, then sometimes switch to AUTO for hand-over to a different presenter or to go fetch a drink. We noticed that sometimes the track that was started during ASSIST mode is faded out instantly when switching to AUTO mode. The weird thing is that it doesn’t happen consistently.

I cannot consistently reproduce it, but I have seen it happen a couple of times:

• There was no hard or soft fix time element in the playlist at the time
• I have seen both container items as tracks being faded out way before the end when it happens

We have some changes from the default settings that may be related to the issue, but since I cannot see the code, I am not sure if they are related:

• We have disabled “Use only a single player in automation mode” (our studio has motorized faders, so we don’t need a single player during automation).

• We also have the following background script, because we want to automatically start playback when AUTO mode is enabled, to mimick the behavior of our old playout software & to prevent silence during automation.

// Called when Automation is Enabled
procedure OnAutomationOn(PlaylistIndex: integer);
var
  playlist: IPlaybackControl;
begin

  // When automation is enabled for the first playlist,
  // start automation playback (to make sure we play in case of idle)
  if (PlaylistIndex = 0) then
  begin
      CurrentPlaylist.AutomationPlay();
  end;
end;

• We have “Update backtime with current time when idle” enabled.

We are running mAirlist v8.0.8.

[Tondose]

@MaartenVN

We have disabled “Use only a single player in automation mode” (our studio has motorized faders, so we don’t need a single player during automation).

This does work indeed, but I strongly recommend not to do so in automation. The load on the fader mechanics is immense, this has been the foremost failure cause for the P&G faders at our station.

[MaartenVN]

We only move the faders up when automation is enabled, and move the fader of the player that is not playing down when automation is disabled, so they are not constantly moving, only when switching between assist/auto. (We also have a button for each channel to move the faders up/down, but that is only used by presenters manually).

We have been using these controllers for 3 years now without any issues, they are originally designed for DAW usage, which has a lot more motorized fader movement than what we are using them for, so we should be good (fader replacements are also super cheap, so if they end up failing I can still replace them). The controllers are also separate from the mixer, which is the more expensive part of our setup than the controllers.

But thanks for the heads-up @Tondose!

[MaartenVN]

I tried removing the custom script we have, but we still had the same bug happen multiple times today again. But it appears to happen at random, and I cannot consistently reproduce it.

Does anyone have a consistent way to reproduce this or have the same problem?

Tracks randomly fading out when switching from assist to auto is not ideal for our listeners and presenters…

[MaartenVN]

Found another forum post that seems to be related to the same issue:

Auto Mode Question

I wonder if you can answer a question. I sometimes have to switch from Assist to Auto during a live show as I need to leave studio for a few minutes. Often when I press switch to auto during a song playing, It will fade out the playing and skip to the next one when I don’t want it to, causing me to have to stop and recue then hit play, then off it goes normally unit I get back and take control again Why does it do this ? Any idea

[MaartenVN]

I found a consistent way to reproduce this bug in a fresh installation & configuration of mAirlist v8.0.8.

1. Create a fresh configuration of mAirlist v8.0.8. You do not need to change any settings, just add your existing database that has generated playlists.
2. The playlists in your database must have a soft “Start of the Hour” marker. The item type doesn’t matter, I am able to reproduce this with containers, tracks, jingles, …
3. Start mAirlist - it starts with an empty playlist window in “Assist” mode.
4. Load the playlist of the current hour using the “Database Playlist” → “Load into Playlist” (or using a startup action or event, like we do in our studios)
5. Start the first track below the hour marker, that is loaded into Player A using the play button of the player.
6. Wait for Player A to reach the EOF.
7. Start Player B using the play button of the player (second track below the hour marker)
8. Wait for Player B to reach EOF.
9. Start Player A (third track below the hour marker)
10. After a couple of seconds: hit AUTO to switch from ASSIST mode to AUTO mode.
11. You will see that the current track that is playing in Player A will instantly fade out and jump to the next track, even after only playing the track in Player A for a couple of seconds.

I have seen it happen in other scenarios as well, but this is the first consistent reproduction I am able to achieve. This post explains the issue with containers, but like I explained, the track type or class doesn’t matter for this to happen.

To visually show this reproduction, I created a short video. I placed 2 jingles as first items in the playlist, so we don’t have to wait for tracks of 2-3 minutes:

Reproduction Video

Hopefully this can help @Torben to investigate and fix this issue.

[Torben]

The “Start of hour” item is still active/unplayed, I think this is what confuses the algorithm.

Can you try to turn on the playlist option “Automatically mark non-playable items as played in assist mode” so that it gets marked as played as soon as you start the first song?