I am currently using 2.1.41 build 454 and am having problems finding a way to cope with variable lenth inserts.
I am using Station Playlist creator to create my playlists (M3U files) which are hour long playlists. I currently import an audio file for an ‘on the hour’ news bulletin, but the length is not always constant.
Because I am loading the next hours playlist directly after playing the news file, I keep getting various delays and gaps between the end of the news & the loading & playing of the next playlist.
I cannot schedule the news into the M3U files, as these have been created in advance and the news inserts are edited and updated every few hours.
Create one news jingle per hour (news-00.mp3, news-01.mp3, …).
With each news jingle: load it into mAirList, go to the Properties dialog and on the “Options” tab adjust the “fixed time” as needed. Save the settings to an MMD file or ID3 tag, such that they get restored when the file is re-inserted into mAirList.
Make Station Playlist Creator insert these jingles as the first element of the news break, followed by the news audio file.
Go to mAirListConfig and enable the “automatically jump to fixed-time items” playlist option.
Voila.
A while back, I have written a script which can even handle fixed-length ad breaks before the news, and “backtimes” them so that they will be finished exactly when it’s time for the news opener. You can find it in this German thread: http://forum.mairlist.com/index.php/topic,2031.0.html
The explanation is German, but the code is quite easy, perhaps you get the idea. It also needs to be adjusted for the current mAirList release (insert “Factory.” before all “CreatePlaylistItem” etc. calls). Let me know if you need help.