Top of the hour questions

English General
1

Hello again

Continuing my ‘stupid obvious questions’ series I have another ‘top of the hour’ question using the given that mAirListDB creates 1 hour schedules which start at x:00:00 - two questions then …

• First the easy one - is it possible to create a template which covers 2 hour period (without splitting it into 1 separate 1 hour templates) in case someone wants to record a 1h 58min program as a single audio file?

• Secondly the more interesting one – Is there any way to make the first event in a schedule the trigger for the news jingle say starting at xx:59:50 i.e. before the ‘next hour’ schedule?

I appreciate that it is possible to put the news jingle as the last track on the previous/current hoir but it seems logical to me to keep the news jingle/news feed/news out jingle either as a sequence or package so you can’t have the situation where the last item is the news jingle but the next hour does not have the news scheduled.

Any thoughts on either of these?

Ron

2

  1. Just make the template as long as required and leave the following hour blank (that is, remove the assignment from the Hour Templates Assignment grid).

  2. If the news opener is longer than 10 seconds (that is, it is to be started at 59:50, but still playing at 00:00), you can juse use the Anchor cue marker (which is the reference point for the backtiming/fixtime calculations). Another possibility is to add a dummy item after the opener, set a fix time of 0:00:00 to that dummy, and set the timing of the opener to “Backtimed”. (To achieve this with the Mini Scheduler, add the dummy to the library first, note its ID, and use a “Specific item” entry in the template.)

3

The Very Best Way (IMHO!) is to put the news jingle at the end of the hour. This way, if mAirList needs to reload the Playlist after a shutdown, you don’t get the news jingle etc. playing out first. (After a reload, and assuming you have a fixed-time marker at :00:00 each hours, mAirList always plays the first item in the reloaded playlist, then drops following items so that the current hour doesn’t over-run the next fixed time marker.)

BFN
CAD