How would you go about having mairlist auto recover from say the event of a Powercut?.
If the computer crashed and booted up, it would automatically open the mairlist application on boot, then I suppose have a emergency action to start to import the playlist and start playing the music?
Would there be anyway in starting the music from where it crashed? My first thoughts this wouldn’t be possible as the playlist is cleared everytime you reopen mairlist?
Notification script to start mAirLlist in automation mode and also load a playlist.
We do this by using a set of emergency short playlists (perhaps 4 tracks and a jingle with a cut of silence as the last track - 3 seconds). This cut of silence loads another short playlist again of 4 tracks, jingle and silence.
This sequence will repeat to the hour end when the events scheduler takes over to load the next hour playlist (based on date time format) at around 1 minute to the hour.
You could however ignore the method described above instead loading from the notification script a playlist based on current hour. However as yet we have not tried to jump to the current point in the hour. That level of scripting beyond me.
editsee here:
http://forum.mairlist.com/index.php/topic,5727.0.html
edit
You don’t need a script for that in the recent versions… Just go to mAirListConfig -> Actions -> Actions after Startup.
Ideally, you would invest in a UPS to keep the server, playout PC, and and mixers etc. going for at least 30 minutes. Many modern UPSs can e-mail you a warning when they ‘cut in,’ so you know that this has happened.
But back in the real world … (!)
Torben’s suggestion is probably the easiest and most generally useful.
Your ‘emergency’ playlist could include a COMMAND to run a script which does things like append the playlist for the current hour/day, and then take a stab at binning tracks before (say) the current hour or ‘close to’ the current time.
BFN
Cad
Another reason to move from earlier versions of mAirList.
Now where’s that treasurer!
Hi Guys,
I’ve been thinking more about this and wonder how hard it would be to create a script to do the below.
Check the time currently.
If the time is between eg. 9am and 10am
Look for the Dummy Track eg. “–9AM Top Of Hour–”
and dump anything before it
My playlist is a .M3U file with a 24 hour playlist inside from Powergold Scheduling, and at the moment I’m not using the MairlistDB Playlist Option. I can however for markers into the power gold scheduling such as Top Of Hour Markers.
Any thoughts any tips would be appreciated 
Cheers,
Ethan
I can offer you this (rather dated, v2) script as a starting point:
[code]// Moves to the next hour’s Top of Hour Maker
// Reads the first 5 characters to match-up with a hh:58 DUMMY
// Usually, I specify a hh:58 PRESENTER LINK and/or a hh:58 AD BREAK marker in StationPlaylist Creator
// Which ever is found first is jumped-to during Automation. This event runs at 56:30.
//
// by Charlie Davy - February 2008
var i: integer;
begin
for i := CurrentPlaylist.GetHistoryCount to CurrentPlaylist.GetCount - 1 do
if copy(CurrentPlaylist.GetItem(i).GetTitle, 1, 5) = FormatDateTime(‘hh’,now) + ‘:58’ then begin
PlaybackControl(0).AutomationJumpSoft(CurrentPlaylist.GetItem(i));
break;
end;
end.
[/code]
BFN
Cad
Thanks guy,
I can adjust this to whatever I want but it’ll show in “TITLE”
eg. TopOfHour-9am
Cheers,
Ethan
OK, my excuse is that until you asked the question, I never had a saved playlist longer than an hour.
But the answer is …
embarrassed cough<
mAirList does this automatically, by default.
To prove it, try this:
[ol][li]Start mAirlist.[/li]
[li]Put mAirlist into ASSIST mode.[/li]
[li]Load a day-long playlist file.[/li]
[li]Make sure that your top-of hour markers show in mAirList as Hard timed items.[/li]
[li]Empty the mAirlist Playlist (click any Playlist item, then press Ctrl+A, Del).[/li]
[li]Put mAirlist into AUTO mode.[/li]
[li]Click PLAY.[/li]
[li]Load the same day-long playlist file.[/li][/ol]
mAirList will skip to the last Hard timed item in the Playlist with a time before the current time of day, delete all items before that, and start playing. Items following that Hard timed item which over-run the next Hard timed item will be skipped as well, and will be shown with an ETA of — in the mAirList Playlist.
Yes, this can mean an ugly ‘next’ top-of-hour; perhaps wth the last item in the (amended) hour playing for 23 seconds or something silly like that just before the next ‘o’clock;’ but it’s basically what you would hope sensible, modern playout software would do, as best it can.
So in short, if your playlist file contains Hard fixed-time items timed for the top of every hour (hh:00:00 for example), mAirList will always start playing it from the top of the current hour, dropping tracks from the end of that hour as needed to ensure it hits the next Hard fixed-time item (usually but not always a top-of-hour) without any under-run.
Note that this means it’s best not to have items like news intro jingles at the start of an hour, or to put it another way: make sure stuff that says ‘it’s o’clock!,’ or ‘news on the hour from … FM’ is just before a fixed-time item and not after it. 
It sounds weird if your station re-starts at (say) 27 minutes past the hour, and the first thing the listener hears is ‘news on the hour from … FM!’ Worse still if said item is followed in the Playlist by a two-minute Stream item playing the news feed which won’t be there at that time during the hour, and will therefore be silent or worse. Ouch!
BFN
Cad
Oo awesome thanks very much Cad!
Sorry for all the “beginner” questions. Is it possible to put a Dummy File into my 24 Hour Playlist export. This track would be a dud, it does not exist. I only want to use is as a top of hour visual and hard fixed item marker to help fix up the queue where possible.
As I can’t save a “dud” file into the MairlistDB and I’ve tried saving a .MMD file for the DUD file, it still doesn’t work.
Would I need to create a 1second long silent audio track and put this at the top of my hours?
Try Mr. Davy’s method, described here:
http://forum.mairlist.com/index.php/topic,4555.msg32342.html#msg32342
BFN
Cad