mAirList 1.5.31 released

Hi.

Another release … Here’s the change log:

  • Fading in automation mode will now start at “fade out” and stop at “cue out”, if set.
  • New notification types for cart players: ntCartPlayerStart, ntCartPlayerStop, ntCartPlayerEOFWarning (ordinary players continue to send ntPlayerStart, ntPlayerStop, ntPlayerEOFWarning)
  • You can set the font of the ASSIST/AUTO/… playlist toolbar through the layout.ini (section “Playlist0” etc., key “ToolbarFontSize”, “ToolbarFontName”, …). Toolbar and buttons will be resized accordingly.
  • Player: Enlarged default title/artist font.
  • Player: New options “show time in seconds”, “auto-truncate time”
  • Player: Bugfix: Setting Cue In in Extra PFL back to 0 is ignored when player is loaded.
  • Cartwall: New options “show ramp in seconds”, “show time in seconds”, “auto-truncate time”
  • file extensions are cut when dropping a file into the playlist
  • MIDI: you can use the variables $STATUS, $DATA1 and $DATA2 inside the commands to generate dynamic actions
  • Database playlist browser revised.
  • radioDB2: Adapted for Beta 3.1
  • mAirList is now optionally available as a installable Setup.exe
Fading in automation mode will now start at "fade out" and stop at "cue out", if set.
Interesting idea... I just tried it - Seemed to work OK. So, the idea being that if you have a Fade Out point set 20s before the Cue Out, you can override the default 2000ms global fade and get a 20s one ?

That would appear to be quite useful for manually edited playlists where you wish to override the defaults, and “talk down” the fades of songs, but still keep them playing.

Speaking of which - Will there be any support for level-ducking (for voicetrack+song intros) ? This would also require some sort of music category system as mAirList would need to know whether it was playing a Song, Sweeper, Jingle or VoiceTrack so it knew what to do with the levels/timings.

So, the idea being that if you have a Fade Out point set 20s before the Cue Out, you can override the default 2000ms global fade and get a 20s one ?

That’s exactly the way it works (at least it’s supposed to work ;):

  • If you have a Cue Out point, fading goes from Fade Out to Cue Out, fade duration is adjusted accordingly.
  • Otherwise, the fade duration set in the properties dialog is used, or, if not defined, the default fade duration.
  • When you fade out a track manually by clicking NEXT or STOP, Cue Out is ignored.
Speaking of which - Will there be any support for level-ducking (for voicetrack+song intros) ? This would also require some sort of music category system as mAirList would need to know whether it was playing a Song, Sweeper, Jingle or VoiceTrack so it knew what to do with the levels/timings.

This is an interesting issue, and I know that other people around thinking about voice tracking. I propose that, at some point after the release of mAirList 2.0, we discuss the requirements for voice tracking and how to implement them. I guess it will involve the introduction of additional markers, and a convenient way to adjust them, perhaps through a graphical cue point editor.

For the moment, I will concentrate on finishing the version 2.0 feature set, and keep my mind free of these fascinating ideas :wink:

Torben

OK, Torben… Sounds good.

Can I just push you for a Cartwall Fade time, as well ? When you have a 2500 or longer fadeout on the Main Playlist (to ensure a smooth fadeout), the Cartwall fade is the same as this setting, and as such - A bed/tag combination can still be playing if the tag is really short.

Oh, sure, the Cartwall still needs a default fade duration setting.

However, by now, you can set the fade duration individually for each item through the cart player’s Properties dialog.

Torben

Have a small problem with latest release.

I have 1 layout set as a cartwall (with browsers for audio). When running as a 3 horizontal x 10 vertical wall I get the error message TmAirListcartWallPlayer.indexoutofbounds(30). All that is displayed is the audio browser.

However if I set the cartwall as 10 horizontal and 3 vertical (or any number I chose) all runs OK.

Any ideas?

Confirmed and fixed for 1.5.32. Thanks for reporting. Expect an update during the weekend.

Torben

Torben,
I agree about the new features - I think you’re pretty much set-up as far as v2.0 goes, unless any more bugs are found?! I think you’ve cleared up the playlist-delete vs history problem, haven’t you ? It hasn’t happened for a while, so I think it’s ok.

The voice-tracking would be a really good addition - Even more so with a graphical editor that can move the items around (example from another system below). Of course, some intelligent timing/fading will have to be applied to the code. I’m just trying to think of an easy way for mAirList to know what type of audio it’s playing. In our scheduler, we can include the category with each playlist entry:

00:00:00 MU CURRENT Lily Allen LDN D:\Songs\Lily Allen - LDN.mp3 00:03:30 ID SWEEPER Demo FM New Music D:\Jingles\Demo FM - New Music.mp3 00:03:35 MU NEW Razorlight America D:\Songs\Razorlight - America.mp3

That’s obviously over-simplified, but we use MU for songs, ID for jingles and VT for voice-tracks. If mAirList can recognise the type of audio (from my example), it would then know how to segue each item within the playlist.

Here’s the tracker from BCX:

You can move the items around, you don’t even need a voice-track - If you want to drag a quiet song intro over the ending of the first song, you can. The segue points are only overriden for this single event. The sloping fade on the song above allows you to fade-out quicker, especially if you want to bring in the next song early.

Tony, the cartwall bug has been fixed and version 1.5.32 is available now.

Torben

Many Thanks Torben, will download when next home. Away at work just now!

Here’s a link to some voice tracking software that might be of use for discussion and design information. http://www.11software.com/manuals/vtrackerlt_manual.pdf

Fading in automation mode will now start at "fade out" and stop at "cue out", if set.
Ah!

That explains why the tracks I have marked with a Fade and a Cue Out point take so long to fade out!

opt homersimpson y q
D’OH!
opt homersimpson n q

Some of the MP3s I’m (intentionally!) using for testing are ‘badly ripped’ ones which have a two-second silence at the end of them. (NB: These files were not created by me!)

I had been wondering for some time why those files all seemed to take forever to fade out in Automation mode. Now I know why!

I was hoping that Cue Out could be used to ‘trim on-the-fly’ a file which, on PFL, is found to have silence at start or end. (Yes, I know that you should not use files which are like that—but this is the real world ;-). )

I understand the concept of fading from Fade point to Cue Out, but perhaps this should be optional? I think this would need to be a new Configuration option in General or Miscellaneous named Always use Playlist Fade Out time in Auto mode.

BFN
CAD

Talking of badly edited .mp3’s, I suppose we’ve all been guilty of that at one time or another, and as a result I went looking for an mp3 editor and found this little gem. It’s great.

http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html

mp3DirectCut certainly looks interesting and I’ll definitely check it out, but in most cases all I really want to do is a both-ends Auto Trim with a ‘gate’ value of about -50dB. For some inexplicable reason, this is rarely a Feature which exists in most audio editing software (especially the freeware!), and using DSPs (or whatever plugin) to do this at ripping time—or in something like Audacity—doesn’t always seem to work properly >shrug<.

I can’t recall whether WavePad has been mentioned here, but its Auto Trim function works a treat and AFAIK it is one of the features which remains working after the demo. period for the ‘Masters’ features expires (mine isn’t quite expired yet, so I can’t definitely confirm this yet). Adding a single (also free) DLL allows ‘direct’ editing of MP3s in WavePad, though again I’m not sure whether the audio is being converted on the fly to do so.

The download page is here:
(link removed)
and I suggest you use the (click here to install) link because this links direct to the install file.

If you want to edit WMA files, or to write MP3s, the page you need for the extra DLLs is here:
(link removed)
(you might not find it otherwise!).

Tip: AutoTrim defaults to a lame value of -20dB. If you set it manually to -40dB or lower (e.g. -50) it will annoyingly reset itself to -40 (!). Despite this, I still like the product. It has a few novel features like spectral displays, and you can even leave that dreadful ‘task pane’ thing (YUK!) open if you really want to. :wink:

Just my tuppence worth…

BFN
CAD

links removed by Torben as the destination is reported as malware now (feb 2013)

Fair call, Chris: Now that I have tried mp3DirectCut, I recommend it to anyone needing to directly eidt/trim/normalize/fade MP3s.

The GUI is a bit weird and tricky to figure out at first, but it’s a great little program, as Chris said!

BFN
CAD

Another old thread revisited.

A simple voicetrack facility would be useful: I envisaged an insert command from either the menu or right click inside a playlist.

This would insert a link into the playlist enabling a voice track to be recorded now or later. When the link is clicked it opens your specified audio recorder/editor or a dedicated recorder within mAirList.

Record the file and save into the specifed directory.

Any other thoughts?

Kind regards Tony