Presenter friendly time display

Andrew · August 3, 2009, 3:40pm

Hi Torben,

I’ve seen this on another playout system and it’s useful:

At the top of the screen the time is shown not only as ‘10:15’ but also in another field as ‘15 minutes past 10’

or as ‘10:47’ and also as ‘13 minutes to 11’

It’s useful for a presenter who glances at the screen and can immediately see that 10:47 is ‘13 minutes to 11’.

Not an important new feature perhaps, but one that many presenters will use.

Regards

Andrew

Torben · August 3, 2009, 8:38pm

Ehm, isn’t that something which should be considered a basic skill of a presenter?

Andrew · August 3, 2009, 9:37pm

Thats probably true, but I’ve never turned down anything that helps to eliminate mistakes.

Cad · August 4, 2009, 3:56pm

Andrew: I have implemented a version of this as follows:

In mAirList Config, GUI, Other Screen Objects, add two screen objects: an HourCountdown with a time format of nn:ss (or nn if you want ONLY minutes, but min plus sec is better IMHO) and a text format of %s; and a static text object with the text to the hour.
Use the Layout Designer to display and adjust the initial position of your new objects.
Ensure that both objects use the same font, font colour, and background colour. You can set this in in skin.ini (unless you are using the default layout, in which case you won’t have that file). Check the actual ScreenObject names in screenobjects.ini, then look for the corresponding names as headings in skin.ini and make any changes needed:

[ScreenObject2] Color=#663366 FontName=Verdana FontStyle=1 FontColor=#FFFFFF
Color is the background colour, FontColor is the text colour, and FontStyle 1 is bold (0 for normal, 2, for italic, and 3 for bold italic). To change the Font size, you need to go back into Config and Edit the Screen Objects.

Use Layout Designer again to finalise the sizes and positions of both objects.
It should end up looking like 25:13 to the hour on the screen after you’ve lined them up, and it will work like a continuous countdown timer on the screen.

A tip: If you want a ‘coloured block’ around your live countdown, add one or two StaticText objects in Config (with no text in them), then colour the BACKGROUND of both the same BACKGROUND colour as your main countdown objects, and finally size and position the new ‘empty’ objects as described above to put them above and below your two ‘countdown’ objects.

Not precisely what you wanted, but I hope you’ll find that useful (possibly MORE useful) than what you were originally looking for. (Minutes PAST the hour should be obvious if you also have (e.g.) an LED clock open in your mAirList Browser!)

BFN
CAD

tony_wilding · August 4, 2009, 4:50pm

I’m sure this was requested long ago by Charlie or myself but Cad that is a neat trick adding the little bit of text…

Andrew · August 4, 2009, 9:26pm

Thank you CAD, I’ll give it a try.

Cad · August 5, 2009, 12:36pm

Hee hee! With my programming hat on, adding MEANINGFUL and APPROPRIATE static text to ‘some data or other’ to make it truly useful to the end user is a VERY well-worn path for me.

On my mAirList, the end result looks like this in situ:

If I were announcing the time on air at that moment, it would be clear that I should say ‘it’s 34 minutes to one’ (or whatever) and NOT ‘33 minutes to one,’ because I’m showing the seconds as well. That’s why I suggested that Andrew should do the same.

If anyone wants the associated INI files for the example above, send me a PM. I usually have the LED clock showing in the mAirList Browser just below the countdown shown above.

This example does contain the two extra StaticText objects positioned above and below the two Time objects (as mentioned previously to Andrew) to give the appearance of a ‘box’ around them. The Time objects are literally the height needed for the text, hence you need the two ‘border pieces.’ The ideal would be to specify a Rectangle Object and its background colour, with the ability to ‘nest’ the two Time Objects (each having a TRANSPARENT background) ‘within’ it, but I appreciate how much work that would require for Torben to implement!

BFN
CAD

number_6 · August 6, 2009, 10:41pm

can we get the over run/ under run for the hour in this as well please?..alan

Cad · August 7, 2009, 1:15pm

Alan: I’m not quite sure what you mean by over-run/under-run. BUT if you mean whether your last record will over- or under-run the hour, then no that isn’t possible using ScreenObjects.

I think I am right in saying that because mAirList is not’tied’ to one-hour playlists, it doesn’t have the sort of facility you’re looking for as such.

Your best option would be to ensure that the Playlist shows backtiming (which shows the projected on-air time of each Playlist item) and get your presenters to do the ver simple primary-school level arithmetic needed to work this out for themselves. Is there any genuine reason why they can’t do that (e.g. they’re blind or have some mental disability)?

PS: ‘I can;t be bothered’ or ‘I’m too important/famous to do that’ do NOT count as genuine reasons in this case!

BFN
CAD

Piet2105 · August 7, 2009, 9:03pm

Hi,
i just read the thread and i was wondering a little bit why do so complicate with the two overlayed parts.
You can add directly the text “to the hour” at the config screenobject. Only type after the variable the text you wanted.
Then you can place only one box in the layout designer.

Or do i missunderstnad what wanted?

Greets

number_6 · August 7, 2009, 9:58pm

hi cad :-)…im old school as well but with the new-school of presenters …i use the term presenter very lightly… they cant work to the second to take things that come off “the pipe” its a display that tells us how much in mins and seconds we are over/under in the present hour …eg…if we have 6 tunes left the total time of those 6 tunes is subtracted from the countdown to top of hour…from the “other screen objects”…as in … the “news-in needs” 12 seconds but the total of the jingle is 24 seconds (the rest of the news bed)we then over run by 13 seconds and take the news “off the pipe” at EXACTLY 00 00 on time of day clock we then have just 1 bar of “news in” from the bed…we then can see how over/under we are if we need to make a 10 second link or end 1 tune early…its probally just a paddy-thing we do or we have had myraid too long…we run in auto even when we are live

Cad · August 9, 2009, 1:52pm

[quote=“Piet2105, post:10, topic:6162”]why do so complicate with the two overlayed parts.
You can add directly the text “to the hour” at the config screenobject[/quote]
Correct, that is also possible, and nothing wrong with making it a single item.

I have two reasons for making the two parts separate:

You can easily change the font or style of the two parts independently (you can have one part bold and one part not bold, for example).
The fixed text stays absolutely in the same place on screen. When the time and text are a single item, I find that the ‘to the hour’ text ‘moves about’ on the screen as the time changes; I personally find that distracting. Making the text a separate item stops the ‘jitter’ happening.
–
BFN
CAD

Cad · August 9, 2009, 2:10pm

Number 6: No offence intended, but your lack of punctuation makes it very difficult for me to understand what you are trying to say!

You have a 24-second news opener jingle, correct? Do you mean that the first 12 seconds of that jingle is intended to play before the hour, or do you mean something else? In other words: the news in jingle is for playout at EXACTLY nn:59:48?

If that is correct, and if you run in AUTO mode all the time, then the easiest and most reliable way would be to make the news in jingle a FIXED TIME item. If you do that, then a) the jingle will always fire bang on time, and b) the music before it will be auto-faded by mAirList. This method requires even less thinking on the part of your, uh, ‘on-air talent.’

Depending on how you receive your news feed, you could potentially automate its ‘activation’ on the hour. For example, if you put the news feed through a Line In on the PC, you can use mAirList to ‘fade it up’ bang on the hour and ‘fade it out’ after a set time (or alternatively, put a BREAK in the Playlist between the two, do that a human would need to ‘fade it out’ by restarting the Playlist).

Myriad, eh? We looked at that software and were quite impressed by it … until we found out that it would rename all our audio files to (for example) 123454.mp3, at which point we had a major sense of humour failure and decided that nothing else Myriad could offer would compensate for that really poor design decision (which is obviously intended to ‘lock you in’ to Myriad forever).

BFN
CAD

number_6 · August 9, 2009, 10:24pm

hi cad…sorry about that…i understand all your saying and i can get air list to do that its easy air list is great… its just this last thing that would make it better than anything i have ever seen/used…i will try to xplain better…what im getting at is… the under run/ over run… timer display that myraid has in their software…what it does is looks at all the items you have in the current hour btween the hour markers… i know air list dont have hour markers… they are handy things…it then displays if you have an under run of mins and seconds or an over run of mins and seconds…under run displays in black over run displays in red…so if you have 1 xtra tune btween the hour markers it will display + 3.50 (if the tune is 3.50 long) if we remove an item it will then subtract the lenght of the item from the display and leave you if your lucky an under run to do your last link before top of the hour… or in the case i was talking about the “news in” jingle total lenght is 30 seconds but we know the last 20 seconds is just the news music bed so what we do when taking IRN off the feed is have an over run in the current hour of exactly 18 seconds so then the “feed” appears just as the news music bed has started to play after the station ID and news sting in the 30 second generic jngle we all have to use…hope that makes more sense than my last attempt :-)…alan

Cad · August 10, 2009, 5:02pm

Alan: To do what you’re asking in mAirList would require a script to be written, then executed either on demand, or when an item is added to or removed from the Playlist.

You would need to add Hour Markers for the script to work. To add an ‘Hour Marker:’

Select the Playlist by clicking on it.
Click Insert, Dummy to add a DUMMY Playlist item.
Right-click the DUMMY item, then click Properties.
In the General tab, change the Title to TOP OF HOUR.
In the Options tab, set a Fixed Time of nn:00:00.
Click OK.

The script could then easily calculate the difference between the estimated start time of the TOP OF HOUR and the previous item, to give you your ‘over-or-under-run’ time.

The REAL problem is being able to display the result somewhere. I’m not sure whether a script can (for example) change the text within a ScreenObject.

But finally, I still don’t understand WHY you need the calculation at all? Just set the News Opener to have a FIXED time (see above) and mAirList AUTO mode will do the rest!

BFN
CAD

number_6 · August 10, 2009, 5:40pm

thanks for that cad…its probally just the way we have been doin things for too long and become dependant on some features which others ignore or never even noticed they were there…airlist is really good and i will be using it on my next project i will just change the way i train people to use the play out system… the time of day down right hand side of play list is enough info to do what is needed even with our strange way of doin things…again thanks for your time …alan

number_6 · August 13, 2009, 12:22am

hi again cad…i found the correct explanation for what i was trying to say…this should make a lot more sense …Over / Under Run

The Over / Under Run indicator is only visible when you are running in Live,

Auto or AutoFade (or the Preview Live and Preview Auto) playout modes, and

is used to show whether the remaining Log Items in the hour would lead to a

excess or deficit assuming they are all played ‘back to back’ with no pauses

between items. This means that you can easily see whether your live or

automated show is going to end at the ‘top of the hour’ or whether it is going

to overshoot or finish early.

The Over / Under Run is calculated in real time so if you are in Live playout

mode and it is indicating that you will under run by 20 seconds (indicated by a

minus sign and the font turning red) then it means that if all the Log Items left

500

in the hour are played out automatically then the last item in the Schedule Log

will finish exactly 20 seconds from the end of the current hour.

As we are in live mode in the above example, if we were to change the Segue

Type on the current Log Item to a Red (stop) Segue Type then at the end of

the current Log Item, Myriad would stop and wait for you to manually restart

playback by pressing the Go button or the Play button on the Cart Player that

the Log Item is cued into. At this point, the Under Run indicator would start to

count down to zero as every second that Myriad is not playing is adding a

second onto the overall length of the Log Items in the Schedule Log. So this

means that if we were to talk for exactly 20 seconds and then press the Go

button then the Over / Under Run would be corrected.

It works the same way if you have too much in your hour. The Over Run

would be indicated as a positive number.

This indicates that currently, if all the Log Items in left in the current hour are

allowed to play in their entirety with no pauses in between then the last Log

Item in the hour will finish 1 minute and 47 seconds into the next hour. That

means that if you are working towards taking a news bulletin at the end of the

hour, you will need to either drop something from the Schedule Log or fade

out a couple of items early in order to reach the ‘top of the hour’ correctly.

In practice, you can use the Over / Under Run indicator to help you present

Live Assist shows and shows presented when Myriad is in Auto Playout

Mode. If you switch to AutoFade mode, the Over / Under Run indicator should

always read 00:00.00 as Myriad will be automatically managing the fading of

items in order to have an Overrun of zero.

Cad · August 13, 2009, 6:29pm

Alan, I can see how that would work and even be helpful if you have a playout system which is designed around and requires an ‘Hourly Log,’ especially if it doesn’t show you the estimated on-air time of each not-yet-played item in the Playlist (or Log, if you prefer).

mAirList is much ‘freer’ than that. Although mAirList can import ‘logs’ from the likes of StationPlaylistCreator, RCS, and most other music scheduling programs, mAirList doesn’t HAVE to use ‘log’ files.

I think you already said yourself that the live backtiming, coupled with some kind of countdown to the hour timer on the screen, would do the equivalent job.

BFN
CAD

number_6 · August 13, 2009, 8:40pm

i agree the back timing will do the same job …was just letting you see what i was trying to say…cheers…alan

tuesdaydrive · August 11, 2021, 7:02am

Hi Andrew,

I realise I am late to this conversation (by 12 years) but I just wanted to check to see how you went with this?

Although Torben is on the right path, I fully support your suggestion as I too would find it wonderfully useful. You’re spot on in supporting a tool that eliminates mistakes.

Cheers,