Would somebody be kind enough to explain “soft timing” to me, please ?
I’ll try to do so. Let’s say you’ve set the soft time option for an ad trailer which should be played at 23.53 o’clock. Now it’s 23.50 and there are still three songs in your list to be played. mAirList will now play out one of the items to fill the time until 23.53 but skip the other two because they are unnecessary. mAirList doesn’t fade the song before the trailer ‘hard’ but it plays it out until the end even if it would be 23.54 when it ends. So this is the ‘soft’ alternative because it takes the fix time into account but doesn’t fade the current element when the fix point is reached.
I think I explained it much more complicated than it actually is… 
If you PFL an item in the playlist and set a fixed time, then choose soft fixed time checkbox, mAirList will jump to that item in the playlist at the given time, however, it won’t start it immediately. It will wait for the current item to finish first.
When the soft fixed time of the event is reached, it puts the trash can icon beside all items in between so you can tell the next event is going to be the soft timed one, nothing in between.
I think of it as a start next timed item in the likes of Simian. Where timed immediate/fixed timed events start immediately whereas soft timed means it’ll start after the currently playing item has finished.
That’s my understanding of it anyway. I find it very, very handy. As I like to time the playlists pretty close to the hour, but I don’t like songs being faded in to news. I like the last 30-40 seconds left to finish rather than be chopped off before news etc…
Gavin.
Thanks for that… So it’s what I’d call a “Polite Time Marker” 
So, in the following instance, would this be the correct use for it:
00:49:00 SONG
00:52:00 SONG
00:55:00 SONG
00:58:00 SONG
01:01:00 SONG
00:57:40 ID - SoftTime of “00:57:40”
00:57:45 AD
00:58:15 AD
00:58:45 AD
00:59:15 AD
00:59:45 NEWS ID
00:00:00 SAT FEED
ie: There is an over-scheduling of songs for this hour, but I’d like the :58 ID and Advert block to play near-as to top of the hour… I appreciate that my timings may not be 100% accurate - but would this be the idea ?
I’m used to an actual “Time Marker” playlist event, be it Soft or Hard - Dictating whether the action is immediate or after the current item.
EDIT: Gavin, thanks for that… You replied whilst I was composing this message… I get it now - it’s just a new name for something that I know by another
We must get Torben into a studio with RCS Master Control
That’s correct.
The only problem you may run in to using it, if a song were to start at 57:30 and it’s 4 minutes long… then everything will be running a little late :o) So you wouldn’t’ be scheduling long songs for the end of the hour.
Gavin.
EDIT: For Charlie, yes ;o) Although I can’t say I’m a Master Control fan. I used it for about 3 months once, but it seemed a headache to fix if something failed and you needed to do a reinstall. I was using an older version though where it had about 7 tasks running on the taskbar in order to run! I quickly move my interest to other systems easier to fix in advent of a bad meltdown.
…and those that don’t cost £75/$210NZD per month to lease, I bet
You hit the jackpot there!
Gavin.
Guys: does any of this ‘soft/hard timing’ work in V2.0.x, or only in V2.1.x?
I have to concentrate on the stable release as we are only a few weeks to going on air!
I was trying the ‘fixed time’ features for the first time last night (using ExtraPFL and Local save to an MLP) and it didn’t seem to be working as Gavin describes. 
I will have another try now that I have read this thread, then report back if I’m still having problems with it.
Supplementary question: is it possible to specify a HARD timed item in mAirList, preferably without needing to resort to Scripting? We are likely to be taking an external on-the-hour news feed, so I will want to fire a station ident jingle at ‘the right moment’ during ‘automated’ times, even if mAirList has to fade the current track early to be able to do so.
Thanks in advance for any and all help!
BFN
CAD
Automatic jumps to fixed-time items is only available in v2.1. There will be no backport to v2.0.
If you want to achieve similar functionality in v2.0, this will either involve using the scripting system, or you could try to use the event scheduler. It depends on the exact requirements.
Torben
PS: Did I mention that easyJet starts service from Dortmund to Edinburgh in May?