Hi,
At southern sound we are trying to take the news throughout the night by automating it.
We have everything correctly connected to the delta 1010 but Mairlist just does not want to automate the news.
What are we doing wrong.
Looking for answers to help us. Thanks.
I think you have to elaborate a bit… Where do the news come from anyway? An ordinary audio signal as live feed connected through your sound card?
Yes, it is a live feed through the delta 1010 card. We have tapped at the plug that plugs into the fader that takes the news from SNR,
and that cable goes to the input of the card.
The idea is that when the news in jingle plays, it fades the music playing and the pc then switches the live news feed to the card so you hear the news and when the news finishes, then the station jingle plays and back into the station log. We need this to happen every hour.
Hope this explains a bit better. We must have this working as in August our station is doing an FM Rs~L to celebrate our 40th birthday, and we also plan to be live online too. Oh, and we do not have to have the fader up.
Let me try and fill in the blanks a bit here. Southern Sounds Programmer / Engineer here, hello hello
Mairlist is getting the signal from the sound card Using the Live feed from the insert menu, to mute and un-mute when required.
I’ve set up a small playlist that handles, turning the news feed on and off, that’s supposed to load every hour, Action on start is set to unmute, duration Is set at 2 minutes then Action on stop mutes the channel again.
We run an hourly event to load each hours playlist . Made up with the mini scheduler, working well 
I’ve tried two ways to fire the news. The news lead is supposed to fire at 59.47. I’ve tried using Hard Fixed times, to fire off the ident, load the NEWS ON OFF playlist as its called, what’s happening, is it gets to 59.47 each hour, completing ignores the news lead in waits for a song to finish then fade up the news late, or what I’ve seen happen when its got to when the news ident is supposed to fire the songs after this have got at – at them, its thought the playlist was empty and ran the emergency.
Second way I tried was The Events list Set an event to run news lead in again at 59.47, load the NEWS ON OFF list. This event got completely ignored, despite saying it’d been executed. I excepted it to behave the same way as the hourly log does and fade whatever its playing. The two events seem to clashing, just for info the hourly logs are set to fire at 2 minutes past each hour and they always do.
Its just the getting the news bit going thats proving tricky, maybe I shouldn’t try these things at 3am lol
I think the most convenient solution is to use mAirList’s “Live Feed” element here. Just recall what it does: It runs for the specified duration (enter a value in the Duration field), recording audio from a sound card input, and playing it on the player’s sound card. So it can be used like an ordinary “file” item, but the audio does not come from a file, but from a sound card input.
That means you can use “Live Feed” items like any other item in your playlists, hour templates, …
Here is what I would try:
-
Add the Live Feed item to the DB Library (through the Add menu in the toolbar), adjust sound card and duration as needed, save it, and note its ID in the Library. Also the ID of the lead jingle (I think you have already done so).
-
It’s more convenient to have the lead and the news at the top of the playlist. So in each hour template, the first item shoud be the lead, and the second the news feed. The lead must have a “fixed” timing.
-
How do we get it to start at 59:47 instead of 00:00? Two possibilities here:
(a) Set fixed time of news lead to 00:00:00 in the template, then edit it in the Library and set the “Anchor” cue point to 00:13:00 (i.e. the point where the actual news should kick in). This will make mAirList subtract the 13 seconds in all fixed time calculations.
(b) Set the fixed time to 23:59:47 in the playlist. Not really obvious, but it does the trick.
I prefer solution (a), so the beginning of your template should look like this now:
- News lead (hard fixed time, 00:00:00, Anchor set to 00:13 in the Library)
- News live feed (normal timing)
- Music
…
-
Don’t place any other fixed time items at the end of the template or so!
-
Final step: Adjust your hourly event so that it runs shortly before the top of the hour, e.g. at xx:58:00. Instead of “Load and play database playlist”, use “Append database playlist”. Don’t forget to tick “Load the playlist for the next hour” option (remember we’re still in the previous hour when the event runs).
Now at xx:58:00, mAirList appends the playlist for the next hour, but contines to play for the moment. At xx:59:47 (thanks to the Anchor), it will skip to the news lead, then play thew news feed for two minutes, and then continue normally.
That’s brilliant, the next time I’m at the station and the next scheduling run is due is Sunday I’ll try it then and report back. Appreciate your help
I was also looking for just this sort of guidance, thanks Torben. I have created a Live Feed (Infinite) in the playlist and set the lead for fixed time of 00.00.00 with the anchor at 59.59.45. Set the event to append the playlist ( load next hour ) at xx.58.00. This happens but it immediately starts the next track on the old playlist which runs until the lead fires at the correct time. How do I stop this happening as you say it should not change whatever is playing at 59.58.
[quote=“Torben, post:5, topic:9141”]I think the most convenient solution is to use mAirList’s “Live Feed” element here. Just recall what it does: It runs for the specified duration (enter a value in the Duration field), recording audio from a sound card input, and playing it on the player’s sound card. So it can be used like an ordinary “file” item, but the audio does not come from a file, but from a sound card input.
That means you can use “Live Feed” items like any other item in your playlists, hour templates, …
Here is what I would try:
-
Add the Live Feed item to the DB Library (through the Add menu in the toolbar), adjust sound card and duration as needed, save it, and note its ID in the Library. Also the ID of the lead jingle (I think you have already done so).
-
It’s more convenient to have the lead and the news at the top of the playlist. So in each hour template, the first item shoud be the lead, and the second the news feed. The lead must have a “fixed” timing.
-
How do we get it to start at 59:47 instead of 00:00? Two possibilities here:
(a) Set fixed time of news lead to 00:00:00 in the template, then edit it in the Library and set the “Anchor” cue point to 00:13:00 (i.e. the point where the actual news should kick in). This will make mAirList subtract the 13 seconds in all fixed time calculations.
(b) Set the fixed time to 23:59:47 in the playlist. Not really obvious, but it does the trick.
I prefer solution (a), so the beginning of your template should look like this now:
- News lead (hard fixed time, 00:00:00, Anchor set to 00:13 in the Library)
- News live feed (normal timing)
- Music
…
-
Don’t place any other fixed time items at the end of the template or so!
-
Final step: Adjust your hourly event so that it runs shortly before the top of the hour, e.g. at xx:58:00. Instead of “Load and play database playlist”, use “Append database playlist”. Don’t forget to tick “Load the playlist for the next hour” option (remember we’re still in the previous hour when the event runs).
Now at xx:58:00, mAirList appends the playlist for the next hour, but contines to play for the moment. At xx:59:47 (thanks to the Anchor), it will skip to the news lead, then play thew news feed for two minutes, and then continue normally.[/quote]
I now have auto news happy days, thanks Torben
In our studio 1 our automated news does work ok, but in our studio 2 the computer does not for some reason save the very same settings as in our studio 1. Both the computers are the very same, sound cards are the same, and the playout software is the same. Can anyone help, and point us in the right direction as it is getting a pain in the neck. Thanks. :-X
Its fixed., although can someone give me a hint, Sometime said studio fires news ident when supposed to but sometimes starts the top of hour song, plays a bit of song then switches to news feed. Our other studios behave
Also fixed I think, we’ll see