Google Radio Automation (Scott Studios)

We have previously used Scott Studio’s SS32 system (http://www.google.com/radioautomation/products.html). Our music files are .WAV files but have the file data placed in an unusual area of the wav file. mAirList plays the wav files great but cannot read the data contained in the file which includes the segue points and title and artist. I have uploaded a sample file. You can see the proprietary information when you open it in a text editor. Does anyone have any kind of converter for this? Or could someone develop one to move the information to the correct place in the file so it could be read?

SAMPLE .WAV FILE: http://www.nprag.com/SP9114.WAV
Title: ID - Guess What
Artist: Beau
Start Date: 3/14/2008
Segue Point: 4.3 seconds from end of file
Length of file: 6.3 seconds

Heelllp! :slight_smile: Thanks!

This seems to be a proprietary format (unlike the metadata written by mAirList, which is standard XML stored into standard ID3v2 etc. tags). Unless someone can provide a documentation, writing a proper import/conversion utility will be difficult.

Perhaps Charlie has heard about this format? He knows every single automation system in the world (and prefers using mAirList g). Charlie?

Sorry, I’ve no experience with SS32… I looked at the file in Adobe Audition, and the tags do not appear. The Artist and Title DID show up in BSI’s InfoEditor application, but the Segue field was blank.

The only bit I could “see” (in Notepad) was the following:

9114 00:02 5 031408999999
Which suggests: Cut ID, Seg 2sec from end-of-file?, and the start date is in there, too. If we take 6.3 secs as the file length and 4.3 sec as the Seg point, the 00:02 seems logical - I’ve only ever seen the “reverse seg” marker with AudioEnahnceDPS and BCX3 and they do it in milliseconds.

Obviously, they’re adding their own “scot” header chunk to the file in the same way BWF headers are implemented. But I would definitely need more information about the structure of that chunk.

If it’s any help, the Natural Music scheduler should be able to read the proprietary info in SS32 files.

BFN
CAD

Indeed it can - it needs the file Spotdta.asc which, I assume, is SS32’s database file. You can then export this data to either an SS32 database, comma/tab/pipe-delimited text file.

The spotdta.asc is imported into natural music but I can only see the filename in mairlist. Is there some way that an export of the information from natural music could be used to name and give characteristics like length and seg point to the .wav files via the mmd files?

-Beau

Cad has written a very neat script to import data FROM the MMD into Excel, and I think he was going to have a go at doing the opposite: Excel into MMD files. This would obviously be of use to you as you can easily import NM5’s Data Export file (whether comma, tab or pipe delimited) into Excel :slight_smile:

Yes, Charlie, I was going to write an ‘export to MMDs’ spreadsheet macro/VBA program in Excel, for exactly this sort of reason (mass import of ‘other’ playout system’s data into mAirList). I haven’t had enough free time to do so yet, though it shouldn’t be too difficult to write (famous last words!).

One thing anyone using such a spreadsheet would need to grasp is that they would need to copy the data into that spreadhseet from the spreadsheet containing the data exported from the ‘other’ system, because the layout of the ‘export to MMDs’ spreadsheet has to be fixed (think about it!). The spreadsheet layout will be identical to the existing ‘import FROM MMDs’ spreadsheet.

I’ll try to get this written soon, but no promises!

BFN
CAD

Well I guess I’ll just have to wait for a script from Cad. Hey Cad…wanna brighten the holidays over here?! :slight_smile: How about an import script!

-Beau

I will try to get this done sometime soon, but as I said before: no promises. Iam very busy with all sorts of projects right now, including visiting a mildly ailing Bally Doctor Who pinball machine tonight, to see if I can fix it for the owners.

If I haven’t done anything on this by the start of 2009, you can nag me again then, but please: NOT before then. Thanks in advance. :slight_smile:

BFN
CAD

Beau,

I’ve just started a new thread in Scripts for the ‘export to MMD’ Excel spreadsheet project:
http://forum.mairlist.com/index.php/topic,3374.0.html

See you there!

BFN
CAD