Practical questions

English General
1

Hello,
I have practical and general questions about mAirList.

-Clock autofill for 60 min hours

  • If i made a clock with exactly 60 min with voices tracks inside (like dummy item for view emplacement for speak)
    After generating playlist and records voice tracks, i have underrun, clock have 58 min.
    In this case, how to fill audio automatically this 2 minutes before the next hour ? I dont want to have a silence when is on air :slight_smile:

- Audio Backup
In case of bug, crash or electrical problem, is it possible to have another computer with mAirlist launched and create
a “backup system” to continue playback. Like “if i have 10 seconds of no audio, run audio from another computer (with the same playlist)” ?

- Forcing playlist to have 60 minutes or similar time
Is it possible to create precisely 60 minutes clocks ? With a 30 secondes margin of error : if playlist have 59min 30 sec = ok or 60min 30 sec = ok, if not, recalculate to corresponding ?

- Advertising Floating Time
Is it possible to have an advertising spot placed automacally in floating time ?
If i want a spot placed 10 times a day in “off hours” or “peaks hours”, mAirList can generate randomly ?
Like i define my off hours and peaks hours and after mAirlist put spots into them.

- Voice Tracking
Two questions about Voice Tracks. Actually, in the module, i can speak over a RAMP but i dont speak over the OUTRO of a music track.
Is it possible to have the same ramp fonctions in a OUTRO to lower the volume ?
Second question, if i want to speak over a bed ? Like this : Jingle Intro, FX elements, bed (i have a similar exemple in a free software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INcCH8wUPt4 )

- Hooks
Is is possible to play automacally hooks in the main playlist ? I would like to play a jingle file like this “In the next quarter, you listen this”… and mAirlist select hooks of 3 next files (with fx jingle between each file), play only hooks and back to main playlist.

- Last question, generating playlist.
I would like to make an event or automatism to generate playlist ONLY IF there is no playlist already generated.
Like all day at 23h55, if no playlist for the next day > generate playlist for the next 24h. This is for backup solution if i forget to generate playlist ::slight_smile:

Thanks in advance for your responses.

2

No responses ? … :frowning:
Anyone can help me please ? 8)

3

Too many questions at a time :slight_smile:

Just a brief answer:

  • Autofill: Actually this is what “fill with music” is supposed to do. And it does work normally. Maybe the expected durations of some of your schedule items do not match the actual durations? Consider overplanning a bit.

  • Audio backup: Most studios have a dedicated silence detection unit for that. Not part of the automation software.

  • Exactly 60 minutes: Not possible, because, in theory, it may lead to a situation where the scheduler is recalculating over and over again, for a VERY long time. If you’re into theoretical computer science, read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem

  • Advertising: You can actually schedule any spot into any hour with the built-in ad scheduler. (You have to select the hours manually anyway.)

  • VT: The automatic volume envelope will be improved soon.

  • Automatic Hooks: Also on the to-do list.

  • Create an event and use the “Generate playlists” actions. There is an option about not overwriting existing playlists. Good idea to use that kind of event; I usually propose to let it run hourly just before loading of the next playlist.

4

Thank you Torben for your precisions.

[quote=“Torben, post:3, topic:11074”]Too many questions at a time :slight_smile:

Just a brief answer:

  • Autofill: Actually this is what “fill with music” is supposed to do. And it does work normally. Maybe the expected durations of some of your schedule items do not match the actual durations? Consider overplanning a bit.

  • Audio backup: Most studios have a dedicated silence detection unit for that. Not part of the automation software.

  • Exactly 60 minutes: Not possible, because, in theory, it may lead to a situation where the scheduler is recalculating over and over again, for a VERY long time. If you’re into theoretical computer science, read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem[/quote]
    >> it’s possible, i used in the past 2 automations systems do that : GSelector (from RCS Software) and Open Radio (From Audio Research).
    When playlist is generated, it always calculte to do 60 min clocks (with a marge of error definited before like 30 seconds).

[quote=“Torben, post:3, topic:11074”]- Advertising: You can actually schedule any spot into any hour with the built-in ad scheduler. (You have to select the hours manually anyway.)

  • VT: The automatic volume envelope will be improved soon. >> :slight_smile:

  • Automatic Hooks: Also on the to-do list. >> really good !

  • Create an event and use the “Generate playlists” actions. There is an option about not overwriting existing playlists. Good idea to use that kind of event; I usually propose to let it run hourly just before loading of the next playlist.[/quote]

5

[quote=“flybelgium, post:4, topic:11074”]it’s possible, i used in the past 2 automations systems do that : GSelector (from RCS Software) and Open Radio (From Audio Research).
When playlist is generated, it always calculte to do 60 min clocks (with a marge of error definited before like 30 seconds).[/quote]

Let me clarify my point. The goal is to find a subset of songs from your library (with, say, 10,000 songs in it) that sum up to exactly 60 minutes. In the general case, it is not possible to identify such a subset without trying all possible combinations, which are exponential wrt. the number of songs (1000099999998*…). That algorithm would be very inefficient, it would take almost “forever” to generate a single hour.

On the other hand, it would be possible to design an efficient approximation algorithm that is able to find a “fair” solution within reasonable time. “Fair” means, not exactly 60 minutes, but possibly slightly more than that, as you said above.

These algorithms are very clever and very hard to design (given all the other constraints like folder select, artist separation, …), and they are mostly found in professional music scheduling software like MusicMaster and RCS which have been around for decades and specialize on these algorithms.

On the other hand, mAirList’s main focus is playout and automation, and the Mini Scheduler is not on par with these dedicated music scheduling systems. There is always the option to run them side by side then.

I can think of a few optimizations that could address the issue you raised. I will look into it. But honestly, we will never reach the level of these dedicated systems.