Sweeper interfering with scheduled events

[Chris Deacon]

Today I had a strange glitch: In the first hour, my (program A) playlist had about six sequenced events that were supposed to play one after the other and finish at 58 min. The second hour had a two hour event (Program B) scheduled to play at the TOTH, preceded by a sweeper.

What actually happened: the sweeper kicked in before the two last events in the first hour (the program outro) had played; Program B started as scheduled; at the end of Program B, two hours later, the last two events of Program A played to air! What did I do wrong? Shouldn't the current events in the playlist take priority over any sweeper?

 

[djsoft]

It looks like it worked as intended. Before inserting a sweeper, RadioBOSS checks for several conditions: amount of time to "sweep", event start time (the event for which a sweeper is configured) and such, if the conditions are met and it found a suitable sweeper, it's inserted regardless of what is playing in the playlist.

 

[Chris Deacon]

But that's the point - on this occasion, the sweeper wasn't smart enough to take into account the circumstances. The problem is that the sweeper took precedence over events that had already been loaded to play in strict sequence. The sweeper should not have played at all if the previous event had still to run up to the hour. And it certainly should not have pushed the un-played events to the end of the following event!

 

[djsoft]

The problem is that the sweeper took precedence over events that had already been loaded to play in strict sequence

Yes. The sweeper doesn't check what's in the playlist. This is by design.

 

[Chris Deacon]

Does it also take precedence over a scheduled adblock?

 

[djsoft]

Does it also take precedence over a scheduled adblock?

Sweeper is inserted into the playlist and will play as regular track, it does not have any special priority. If ads event starts with "Play immediately" option, it will interrupt the sweeper (or play before the sweeper starts).

 

[Chris Deacon]

Many of our hour block programs can end at indeterminate times, so it is best if the ad we want to play at the program’s end is enqueued just like when they are used in a music playlist so as not to interrupt the track. If there is a sweeper lined up to play out the hour, why can’t it recognise that an ad has been scheduled? Does the sweeper settings have to allow playing one or two tracks as a sweeper rather than one longer sweeper.

 

[djsoft]

If there is a sweeper lined up to play out the hour, why can’t it recognise that an ad has been scheduled?

It does not prioritize files based on their type. The order in which tracks are played depends on when events started, when, and with what options. Music tracks, ads, sweepers are all simply "tracks" from program's point of view.

 

[Chris Deacon]

Many of our hour block programs can end at indeterminate times, so it is best if the ad we want to play at the program’s end is enqueued

So if I understand you, enqueuing a scheduled ad event does not look feasible if there is a sweeper programmed and we must always "play it immediately"? That would seem to be a deficiency of the sweeper function...

Would adjusting the desired sweeper length to accommodate an enqueued ad block be a workaround here?

 

[djsoft]

So if I understand you, enqueuing a scheduled ad event does not look feasible if there is a sweeper programmed and we must always "play it immediately"? That would seem to be a deficiency of the sweeper function...

Yes, you should run ad event with "immediate" option and enable sweepers for it. Actually sweepers was designed for such use cases - when you want to run an event at exact time and avoid interrupting music tracks.