Handling Missing Files in News Container Playback

English mAirList 7.x
1

Hi mAirList Team,

I have a question regarding the handling of missing files in the News Container feature. The documentation and configuration options seem to suggest that the News Container supports “optional files,” which I assume means that if a file is missing or unavailable, it should be skipped without causing errors during playback. However, in practice, I’ve noticed some issues:

  1. When a file is missing from the News Container at playback time, instead of being skipped, it causes an error that interrupts the playback process.
  2. Missing files added during the initial setup of the News Container don’t seem to trigger any warnings, but the playback still fails if those files are unavailable.

I was under the impression that the News Container is designed to handle such scenarios dynamically by ignoring unavailable files, especially since it supports optional items. Is this functionality intended to work as I described, or am I misunderstanding its design? If it is supposed to work this way, is there perhaps a setting I need to enable to avoid errors caused by missing files?

Additionally, is there any up-to-date documentation that explains how the optional file support in the News Container is meant to function, or should I look into an alternative approach like scripting to achieve this flexibility?

Thank you for clarifying, and I appreciate any guidance you can provide.

Best regards,
Marco

2

There is a checkbox “Failsafe container playback” in the playback options in the item properties.

When enabled, the container will just skip missing files, and play the rest.

When disabled (the default), the container will refuse to load and play altogether if any item is missing.

This works in the same way for any kind of container item.

1 Like
3

Thanks Torben,

Exactly what I was looking for. This option works like a charm.

Sometimes I struggle with mapping the desired functionality to the provided options. Do know whether (all) the available options are described somewhere in detail? That would be great help.

In the meanwhile I’m glad you could point me in the right direction. Overall I’m very satisfied with mAirList and its support. Keep up the good work!

Kind regards,
Marco