I’m trialling mAirList as a possible solution for a hospital radio station in the UK.
I’ve got it up and working in our production studio as a live-assist solution, and I’m now trying to understand scheduling and automation. I’ve got the version 3.1 manual, but the wiki seems to have been removed and I’m struggling a bit to get my head around things.
I’m trying to create a set-up where DJs can come in, move to live-assist mode and do a show, and then select auto and have the PC take over. I don’t know my DJ schedule as people jump on and off air when they are available, and I need to make sure there’s always something available as an automation backup. I want a DJ to be able to choose auto mode, and the system to start playing music, whether it’s at the top of the hour or otherwise.
I have understood the mini scheduler to the extent I am able to generate a playlist for a given hour, but I’m having trouble properly understanding how to turn those hourly schedules into a flexible automation.
I presume I should have events scheduled to load playlists on the hour? But what happens if automation starts in the middle of the hour, and queues up music that overlaps into the following hour’s playlist? Might it trigger mid-song if the top of the hour runs round?
Does anyone have a worked example or any links I can follow to better understand?
Once you have set up scheduling (and playlists are ready for the current days and possibly the next few days in the playlist editor), you only need a single event that runs at the top of the hour.
For a mixed auto/assist scenario, I propose to use the “Append database playlist” action in that hourly event, and set a fixed time of 00:00:00 for the first item in each of your hour templates. So that:
In AUTO mode, the playlist is appended, and mAirList notices the fixed time of the first element and immediately skips to it.
In ASSIS mode, the playlist is appended so that the DJ has the next batch of songs to play - but no fixed time is processed or so.
Thanks very much for the reply Torben, I think I’m struggling because maybe I’m thinking about automation in the wrong way. Here’s my scenario:
A DJ comes in to do a show at 09:50. He goes into ASSIST mode, and wants to choose his own music from the database.
At 10:30 he activates AUTO mode and wants to walk out of the studio door.
When going into ASSIST mode will the current playlist remain? Is it possible to clear the current playlist when you go into ASSIST mode?
When going into AUTO mode, does the DJ have to perform some extra activity to load a playlist, or is it possible to have a playlist load automatically?
As a rule, our DJs don’t work off playlists. They are only there to fill the periods when there are no DJs. Maybe this is the problem…
I am at a student radio station and we are running V4 so there may be a few differences but probably not much.
We generate a weeks worth of music every Monday at 0200, this does a playlist for every hour of every day that is 1 hour long from start to end. We get the software to append the playlist 7 mins before the hour. Our presenters will come into the studio and normally keep all our imaging items on the list and replace our song items with their own… The good thing about it is that if they did decide to leave before the end of the hour all our presenter has to do is make sure that the software is in AUTO mode. In the event that they forget to put in AUTO mode we have an event that puts the software into AUTO on the hour.
When you switch from AUTO to ASSIST it leaves the playlist as is but won’t advance to the next track, this is when the presenter can talk and then manually start the playlist again when they want music. I don’t you can set it so that when you go into assist it clears the playlist but you can make a button do that i believe (i would imagine you have this feature in V3).
When switching to AUTO mode the presenter won’t need to perform extra steps as long as you have set an event to load the playlist at a predefined time this will load it in automatically for you.
Our Presenters have access to our music database so can play what ever they want just make sure that you tell your presenters not leave the studio in ASSIST mode when they leave as if it stops it won’t start unless someone tells it to or you run an event to put it in AUTO and Stat Playback.
Simplest way I can think of clearing the playlist when assuming Assist mode.
Shortcut key such as CTRL+ (whatever F Key you wish) to run a script. The script simple loading a blank playlist. Any audio currently in the players should continue to play (untested).
To restart automation load the current hour playlist (if resuming automation during an hour) run the script available for this in the script forums by Charlie Davy. If resuming automation in the following hour run the script just before the end of the current hour and click Automation. Any currently playing audio should be allowed to finish. Again the script is available in the script forums (from Charlie Davy). Remember to use a shortcut key to run the scripts rather than looking through mAirList menus.
[quote=“sarab, post:3, topic:9111”]Thanks very much for the reply Torben, I think I’m struggling because maybe I’m thinking about automation in the wrong way. Here’s my scenario:
A DJ comes in to do a show at 09:50. He goes into ASSIST mode, and wants to choose his own music from the database.
At 10:30 he activates AUTO mode and wants to walk out of the studio door.
When going into ASSIST mode will the current playlist remain? Is it possible to clear the current playlist when you go into ASSIST mode?
When going into AUTO mode, does the DJ have to perform some extra activity to load a playlist, or is it possible to have a playlist load automatically?
As a rule, our DJs don’t work off playlists. They are only there to fill the periods when there are no DJs. Maybe this is the problem…[/quote]
Sorry I forgot to add, that you need to use the mAirList config tool to setup the remote or hotkeys.
Decide which key combination is needed for each script, I suggest a combination so as to try and avoid standard windows commands, and then in the config tool under remotes select the key combination to run the required script. Repeat as needed. Save and exit config tool.
First I generate a week’s worth programming in the DB. Than I export it to specific files for each hour using the export function. I go to Mairlist and try ti create event each day, every hour at 56 minutes past the hour. In the ADD tab I select append playlist. Than I am prompted to enter the location for the playlist. I tried using actions replace the day with values but it still wont load the file unless I specifically point to that direction.
Why do you do this? This does not make sense at all.
Just use “Load and play database playlist”, and the playout will fetch the playlist directly from the mAirListDB schedule. No need to mess around with playlist files.