Emergency Buttons - for when the main playlist screen goes blank for no reason

Dmitry,

Every now and then our main RadioBOSS playlist screen goes blank - and the presenter says "I didn't touch a thing ... it just happened ... ".  Well, that happened to me last Wednesday when I was doing a 6 hour shift.

I was running RadioBOSS in auto and hitting the "pause at end of track" button (or inserting a stop command in the playlist if I was quick enough) after every song so I could announce the next song to be played.  Because we have the option ticked to delete the song after being played we normally have a pretty clear screen (played songs deleted, upcoming songs only displayed) - but because I was pausing and stopping the songs the already played songs started to build up.  So I decided to delete them one by one ....  I did that but I must have deleted one song as the scheduler threw in a few adverts ... anyway the whole playlist went blank.

I got up and called out through the studio door "HELP" and the regular presenter came in and we both worked out the last scheduled event that created our music playlist (from a list of about 40 scheduled items in the list), we hit the "run now" button and it was inserted in the main playlist and started playing.

Whew !  When you are doing a live show the pressure is really on when everything goes silent for half a minute.

Boy that was a long story ....

So ... a really nice feature to have would be some icon buttons at the top where the jingle buttons go or next to them that can call an event like the scheduler does - but operated manually in an Emergency. We could easily use 5 buttons and maybe more as shortcuts to some of the events we have scheduled like:

generate Auto-Easy-Music-Day-12hrs
generate Auto-Easy-Music-Night-12hrs
generate Auto-Emergency-Music-2hrs
news.m3u

or whatever ....  those commands above are ones we currently use in the Playlist Generator (old version)

So a presenter makes a mistake, loses everything from the screen and just hits one of these new icon buttons and he's instantly running again.

Does that make sense ?


And another thing, the scheduler window is very small.  I know you can drag it and resize it but that is a bit fiddly.  The columns on the scheduler are not necessarily arranged in a useful order for presenters.  Let me see if I can remember the order:

Time to next event
Time of next event
Something else ... not sure
Command
Description

Well for us the Description is a plain English description of what the event is about and this can be easily understood by the presenter - no computer language required for that.

The Command field is handy for a tech head but not the presenter - so it can be moved to the right where it will most likely be hidden by the playlist window.

I'm not sure if these columns can be physically dragged and moved - they might be able to - but upon program closure and reboot that layout is not saved.

Two interesting suggestions and hopefully of use to many other RadioBOSS users.


Thanks, Jamie C.
 
Hmm... Playlist can't become blank for no reason. Probably scheduled event with "Cleat playlist" option started, you pressed Ctrl+Delete accidentally or something like this...

There's Edit->Undo command so you could just undo the last operation on the playlist.

But the idea you proposed is good. I think we should extend "Jingles" feature (1-9 buttons on the toolbar) so they could perform any custom action.

For Scheduler columns, thay can be resized and dragged, and I just tested it - layout is preserved after program restart (I'm talking about RB 4.9 beta, but I'm sure it worked the same in previous versions).
 
Dmitry,

Yep, using Jingles buttons would be a good option.  The reality is we are looking at an easy fix for the presenter to buy himself some time and keep the station running without any dead air time.

I'll check the scheduler for dragging the columns tomorrow morning our time.


Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
The reality is we are looking at an easy fix for the presenter to buy himself some time and keep the station running without any dead air time.
I think we should fight the cause, not the consequences. Determine why playlist gets cleared and prevent it from happening in the future.

Extended "Jingle" buttons will be added in RB 4.9.x or, maybe, during the beta.
 
Dmitry,

It's very difficult to see what causes it.  I was there in front of the screen and it just went blank .... not even an entry in the log at the left bottom screen.  Weird.

I keep on telling the others that when the studio door is locked and RadioBOSS is operating automatically we don't have these problems.  The problems only happen when a human is in the studio :)

And we are trying to do more and more live presenter programs to improve how we sound to the listener.


Thanks, Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
I keep on telling the others that when the studio door is locked and RadioBOSS is operating automatically we don't have these problems.  The problems only happen when a human is in the studio :)
Which means humans are the cause :) I think playlist is emptied because users do something... Please collect more information on this issue. Maybe we'll figure out a solution.
 
I know this topic may be stale now - but I have experienced similar problems (this evening during live show). I'm sure it is "something we did" but it's hard to know what.
I have seen it when I have tried to use "N" to select the Next Track, everything in the scheduled playlist disappears leaving only tracks that were manually added.
It's very scarey when it happens, but next time I will try "Undo" as suggested.

It looks to be a combination of factors, I just haven't figured out what!
 
Maybe you added a some tracks in a playlist with clock icon. This is the right behaviour.


Try to make new playlists and in Event window check "Do not delete scheduled tracks from playlist after playback (tracks won't be marked with the "clock" icon)".
 
howebzar - please try pety's advice. Scheduled tracks are removed automatically when you play manually added track.
 
Sorry for the slow response on this. Just did some testing and I think David you have solved my problem...but I would say...weird behaviour! Why would you ever want all the following tracks to disappear when you click "Next Play"...may be working as designed, but probably needs a re-design...it's given me and my presenters a few moments of anxiety.

If no re-design, then perhaps a bit more explanation of what that tick box actually does...but thanks anyway, problem solved.
 
howebzar said:
Why would you ever want all the following tracks to disappear when you click "Next Play"...may be working as designed, but probably needs a re-design...it's given me and my presenters a few moments of anxiety.
Can you please give more detailed explanation on this issue?

howebzar said:
If no re-design, then perhaps a bit more explanation of what that tick box actually does...but thanks anyway, problem solved.
Do you refer to the "Do not delete scheduled tracks from playlist after playback" check box?
 
djsoft said:
howebzar said:
Why would you ever want all the following tracks to disappear when you click "Next Play"...may be working as designed, but probably needs a re-design...it's given me and my presenters a few moments of anxiety.
Can you please give more detailed explanation on this issue?

howebzar said:
If no re-design, then perhaps a bit more explanation of what that tick box actually does...but thanks anyway, problem solved.
Do you refer to the "Do not delete scheduled tracks from playlist after playback" check box?
I think that this is THE MOST not understandable issue in RadioBOSS.
I saw this issue at most people wich I trained.


The playlist is made before.
Playlist is loaded.
Operator add some new tracks (as new requests).
When the track is played the other content disappear.


Maybe an explanation in HOW TO section will be necessary.
 
pety said:
I think that this is THE MOST not understandable issue in RadioBOSS.
I saw this issue at most people wich I trained.
Can you please provide more information on what exactly is hard to understand? It's possible to redesign things to make them easier to use.

pety said:
The playlist is made before.
Playlist is loaded.
Operator add some new tracks (as new requests).
When the track is played the other content disappear.
In this case the "Do not delete..." option is the solution.

pety said:
Maybe an explanation in HOW TO section will be necessary.
Not everyone reads the how-to section :)
 
djsoft said:
howebzar said:
Why would you ever want all the following tracks to disappear when you click "Next Play"...may be working as designed, but probably needs a re-design...it's given me and my presenters a few moments of anxiety.
Can you please give more detailed explanation on this issue?

howebzar said:
If no re-design, then perhaps a bit more explanation of what that tick box actually does...but thanks anyway, problem solved.
Do you refer to the "Do not delete scheduled tracks from playlist after playback" check box?

Hiya - I didn't mean to start an argument here chaps!
I will have looked at the "Do not delete" tick box before and simply didn't understand what it did and when.
It just seems odd to me that deleting tracks from a live playlist is ever a good thing...why not just leave them there? So make "Do not delete" the default when adding tracks by schedule. If someone really wants all their scheduled tracks to disappear by magic when they ad something manually...make that an option ;)

Anyway, now I understand that box, the problem seems to have gone away, so I'm happy.
 
howebzar said:
Hiya - I didn't mean to start an argument here chaps!
That's, actually, a good thing - a lot of improvements are made because of arguments :)

howebzar said:
I will have looked at the "Do not delete" tick box before and simply didn't understand what it did and when.
It just seems odd to me that deleting tracks from a live playlist is ever a good thing...why not just leave them there?
It was designed like this from version one. The point is: you have a long playlist playing and scheduled commercials, announcements, stations IDs are played - if they are not deleted, the playlist will become full of those items. That's why the default behavior is to delete.

howebzar said:
So make "Do not delete" the default when adding tracks by schedule. If someone really wants all their scheduled tracks to disappear by magic when they ad something manually...make that an option ;)
I think we'll add a feature: default option set for new events.
 
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