I schedule my playlists in an external program (Music1) and import them afterwards in mAirList. Sometimes, an hour of scheduled music is a little bit shorter than exactly 60 minutes. The next hour will then be a little bit over 60 minutes.
Since upgrading from mAirList 5.1 to 5.2.4 Build 2977, mAirList inserts a silence at the end of the hour and waits for the next hour to start at the top of the hour (I allways use Automation Mode). This did not happen before, when using version 5.1
In the Config -> Playlists -> Playlist1 -> Options Tab, I now see that “Automatically jump to fixed time items in automation mode”, “Wait for hard fixed time items” and “Wait for soft fixed time items” are all checked. What do I have to do in order for avoiding these silences at the end of a playlist?
First of all, you should make sure that all playlists contain at least 60 minutes of audio, especially when using hard fixed times for the top of the hour.
The “Silence (infinite)” is simply mAirList’s trick to implement the “wait for hard/soft fixed times” options. When mAirList arrives at the fixed time too early, and the respective option is checked, it will insert a Silence item and then wait for the fixed time to be reached.
Depending on your setup (and desired behaviour at the TOTH), it might be favorable to use soft fixed times, and turn off the wait option for soft fixed times.
I don’t use a Hard fixed time marker. The TOTH is inserted when the playlist is loaded by mAirList.
If I schedule all the hours with more than 60 minutes of music, e.g. with 30 seconds more each hour, than I will end up with 300 seconds too much after 10 hours and possibly, mAirList will then skip a song. I don’t want that to happen. Everything worked OK in Version 5.1 but something to the TOTH behaviour changed in version 5.2. I have no idea what. Where can I find more information in the manual or wiki about this TOTH behaviour and hard/soft fixed times?
I’m not aware of any significant changes in the handling of fixed times between the versions, other than some bugfixes perhaps to work around strange situations. And there is actually no “magic” in what mAirList does.
If you just want to play the hours one by one in a row, without any synchronization at TOTH, you don’t need any fixed times at all. Just do it this way:
In the Hour Template, remove any fixed times from the Start of Hour or End of Hour items (set them to “Normal” timing, or remove them altogether).
Schedule the hourly playlist reload event a few minutes before the top of the hour, e.g. at xx:55:00, so that it will append the new playlist in time even of the previous playlist ends early.
Use the “Append database playlist” action in that event.
Don’t forget to check “Load the playlist for the next hour (instead of the current hour)” option in the action properties - remember that it’s still xx:55:00 or so when the action is run.
Make sure that “Set fixed time on first element” is unchecked.
Now at xx:55:00, mAirList will simply append the next hour’s playlist to the playout, and it will start playing when the last song of the previous playlist has finished.
Thanks Torben,
I don’t have or use an Hour Template. The playlists are imported from a .tpi input file wich is split at “Fixed Time”.
I load the playlist of the next hour exactly as you describe, with only one difference: the “Set fixed time on first element” is checked. I have unchecked it now and this seems to do exactly what I wanted the playlists to do. Thanks.