I’ve just bought a few licenses for version 4 I’m upgrading from 3, we store all the audio on a server using postgresql as the database backend, only recently put this setup in, life is much easier just having to update the database once rather than run down multiple studios and manually update, one of those wish I done sooner moments
I’m planned to do the upgrade Saturday, Any tips or things I should be aware of as I do it,? I know the database schema updates to 20 which 3x cant use, but is that it, I guess version 4 imports your settings and config ? Does it import the cartwall or is that something I’ll need to rebuild.
Trying to prepare as much as possible so the station isn’t off air longer than it really needs to be.
First of all, it might be helpful to know that mAirList 4.2 will install into a separate directory, and the old v3 installation will stay intact. So you can safely install the new version and transfer all settings while keeping the old version alive. The same is true for v4.3, which is currently beta but will be production-ready soon. It will install into a separate directory again, so you can transfer all settings from v4.2 and then eventually uninstall v4.2.
The database is an exception, once the schema is upgraded, it cannot be used with the old software version anymore. One option is to clone the database in PostgreSQL (save a backup in pgAdmin, create a new database, then restore the backup into the new database).
When you install v4 and run the configuration app for the first time, it will ask if you want to import the settings from an older version. Depending on the time v3.1 was installed (there was a change in the installation layout at some point), it may or may not appear in the list of older versions. If it doesn’t, you can still select the source folder manually. The source folder is the root data folder, that is, the parent folder of the “config” folder where the ini files are stored. If in doubt, you can run mAirListConfig for v3.1 and check the location (there’s a page named “Data Folders” somewhere).
The upgrade function will simply copy all ini files and similar configuration files to the new data directory, and takes care of some extra work like adjusting paths where necessary and possible. Most settings will stay intact, although there are a few exceptions, in particular the audio device assignments.
Are you using skins or layouts? They may require a bit more manual work…
Sounds straight forward, Thank you for warning about the audio device, I’ve been caught out on that before, some machines kept the assignment some didn’t. I’ll write them down, hopefully I wont be there all afternoon, I want a play with it before the presenters get to
The only skins file I made was to make the text on the browser window a bit bigger, I’m to lazy to modify the default layout much
We took a copy of the database and upgraded the copy - so our v3.1 installation is completely intact should we need to revert to it.
The audio devices config needed to be setup again, but this doesn’t take long.
We use a programmable keyboard and found that one of the keys didn’t operate as normal (it just sends F5 - which is a hot key for a player). Opening and saving the hot keys in mAirListConfig seemed to fix this.
Some of our scripts didn’t work straight away. In our now playing script we changed GetArtistsString to GetArtists, and we replaced four separate scripts to load / append playlists with actions.
We enabled Waveform on the players, but this covered up the time and status, so the players were made bigger in the layout tool to display everything. We noticed that the number of recycled items to show in a playlist had reverted to 2, so we updated the setting back to 5.
I think everything else worked OK. Good luck - it’s well worth doing.
Other issue is VT is set up but there very very quiet, although when you record in a external audio editor there fine, nice and loud, probably obvious I know, but I’ve been stuck in front of screens since dawn, my brains gone off
Hard to see it from your pic., but I presume the ‘extra folder’ appears to named as: one ‘blank’ space?
If I am correct, that probably means you have one or more tracks whose ‘artist’ field is blank, or may perhaps contain some odd characters like an ASCII 160 (non-breaking space). When you click the ‘new’ DB folder, which tracks are showing ‘inside’ that folder, if any? Do you see anything which those tracks have in common?
Hope that helps, and please let us know what the problem was, once you’ve fixed it!
Our Database has always been configured with the folders, are the artist names, listed alphabetically, A-Ha has its own folder , Abba has its own folder and so on.
The new folder is in the Artist sub group , there no name for the new folder, its a folder with no name, when I look at this folder it contains everything in the database, from songs, to adverts, jingles, it doesn’t matter if the audio contains an artist or title, the jingles only have titles, but the songs have Artist and titles, its all in there. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern , also if I go to an normal artist folder its in the proper place.
If I database search for a item it comes only once as it should. I would have expected to see two copies with the mystery folder and well as the normal folder. Its an intriguing problem.
It is actually a bug in mAirList. The node in the tree referes to the items with no artist set, but when you click it, all items are returned. I shall fix this.
[quote=“Torben, post:10, topic:8722”]Finally had the time to look at this issue.
It is actually a bug in mAirList. The node in the tree referes to the items with no artist set, but when you click it, all items are returned. I shall fix this.[/quote]
Thanks for looking into, also thanks for letting us all know. Version 4 is money well spent
