Hi Torben,
Any chance of including a countdown clock that counts backwards to the top-of-hour ?
I was thinking the same thing only last night!
Where do you want it to be located?
I suppose the text-clock would be a good place, or maybe a standalone object ?
Good idea! Maybe it is also possible to give this function like the text clock - i can be activated or not.
Greets,
David
How about it being part of the TEXT/LED(if possible) Clock? Just click on them and it will toggle between time and countdown?
Should we start a poll?
A) Extra object.
B) Clock can be toggled.
Sounds fun
Torben,
Here are 4 examples…
Master Control, DARP, BCX3 and DPS.
I like the DPS one. Means I dont even have to think on the spot. But its not helpfull if you are trying to hit the news at the TOTH tho…
I think it should be an extra part. Clock is clock and remaining time is something else which should be displayed separately. For example I would like to place the countdown time somewhere below the playlist.
Thus: Option A! thumbs up
I agree about it’s positioning - maybe it could form part of the Playlist GUI ? The idea being that you know how long your Playlist (or Break segments) are, so you can then start the Playlist when the Countdown matches the Playlist duration…
Come to think of it - generally the only thing I will use it for is when playing audio, so putting it there would do me fine!
What I hadnt thought about until Charlie posted the screenshots was the 19 Mins To 5. Its an interesting idea - does anyone find this usefull on air?
Interesting discussion yet again…
Being in the digital age we have 2 philosphies in radio here…
One is to tell the time digitally.
“…Classic Gold, it’s five forty nine…” or for oldies (whats an oldie) it’s
“…Classic Gold, it’s eleven to six…”
Me, I’m an oldie and in the real world, if someone asks me the time, I, like mosts folks I know, round off the time and say it’s around ten to six, but in radio parlance I would always say the time to the nearest minute and not say “it’s eleven MINUTES to six” just “it’s eleven to six”
Thats what I teach my school and sudent radio people to say as an alternative to digital time.
The local Classic Hits station, demographic 25 - 49 says “it’s 5 forty nine… eleven to six”
What a mouthful, but you get used to it.
Finally, putting the time in letters or “11 to 6” format as near as configurably possible to the “just played” item in the playlist makes perfect sense to me.
I can hear myself saying, “…Classic Gold, One Oh Seven point 3 with Elton John, and Song For Guy… It’s 11 to 6… Coming up soon…”
and, for the record, how I hate " …it’s eleven AWAY from six…"
I start to twitch uncontrollably when I get to “…it’s twenty two to ten…” though… sigh!
and I really spit the dummy when some idoit tells me “it’s 3 and a half to six” HALF minutes ??? as if we plan our lives around half minutes, unless we’re holding our breath of course, or a radio persenter… they tend to be stupid enough not to figure out what the time is before they look at the clock, get the information locked inside their pea sized brain and then open their mouths… (you get the point, I’m sure)
All this harks back to my Radio New Zealand training (virtually word for word transcription of BBC training manuals) circa 1975.
(Takes another pill)
I always do time checks off-the-cuff, just as if a stranger had stopped me in the street to ask the time - I wouldn’t say “well it’s twenty-six little minutes past the big hour of two, and stay tuned for the latest travel news…”
examples: 10-to-6 / 20-past-8 - I don’t bother with odd minutes, unless it’s drive - the nearest “five” is good for most people.
To mattgreen: see http://forum.mairlist.de/viewtopic.php?t=1074 where I proposed a formatting string system for clocks etc. (so yes, we HAVE discussed this before!).
To Chris Diack: Personally I insist that my presenters say ‘minutes’ so it is always ‘eleven minutes to six’ and not ‘eleven to six’ which is both very poor English and also confusing (Eleven what to six? Eleven pigs? Eleven nervous breakdowns? Eleven marriages? Or eleven MINUTES?). I do grudgingly permit missing the ‘minutes’ out if it’s a ‘nearest five’ timecheck, so ‘twenty to six’ is allowed but ‘twenty-three to six’ is not and will earn the ruler-over-the-knuckles punishment.
To Torben: I think the ‘countdown to hour’ clock should be a separate GUI item like [Clock] and [Date]. Perhaps its section should be named [HourCountdown]? If its skin.ini section supports a Format entry to allow formatting similar to [Date] and [Clock] then one could use a format string like:Format=nn mins ss secs to Hour
to produce for example 11 mins 23 secs to Hour. The default Format would beFormat=-nn:ss
which would display for example -11:23.
BFN
CAD
Will be included in v2.1.24, as an extra object, with the skin.ini formatting options Cad suggested.
First of all: The countdown is a very nice new feature, thanks for that! But as always, Torben, I’ve got a special wish. I’d like to overlap the status bar at the bottom of mAirList with the countdown. With the progress bar I managed to overlap the status bar but with the countdown it’s impossible… Any idea what I could do?
Perhaps you can add an option to hide the status bar? My problem is that I’ve only got 1024x768 pixels…
Such an option will be included in mAirList 2.1.25.