Generating a large number of 1 hour playlists - suggestions please

[radiodungog]

Dmitry and crew,

Currently we generate a 12 hour playlist (using Playlist Generator Pro) to cover daytime content from 6am to 6pm each weekday (Monday to Friday).  The playlist contains songs and station IDs.  Our adverts, community noticeboard announcements and news bulletins are inserted in real time by the scheduler.

Instead of generating such a large 12 hour playlist I was thinking of generating a large number of 1 hour playlists to help control the content a bit better.  Because song lengths vary so much a single 12 hour playlist can easily develop structure "creep" where the content structure gets a cumulative timing error with what goes to air.  For example: The song that is needed to go to air immediately after the news (at top of hour) is never in the right spot.

And with live presenters the timing of the songs gets further and further out of sequence as the show progresses.

By generating and running 1 hour playlists we can delete leftover songs and re-synchronise the format every hour after the top of hour news bulletin.  This reduces the cumulative errors and "creep".

We will probably extend this philosophy to customise the music content so that music styles are more appropriate for the time of day, like:

06:00 to 09:00 - Breakfast music mix

09:00 to 15:00 - Day time music mix

15:00 to 18:00 (or 20:00 during summer) - Drive time music mix


The way I plan to generate these 1 hour playlists is using Playlist Generator Pro as follows (assume day time music for 09:00 to 15:00 for 6 hours):

1. Set up the structure, categories, and settings to suit, and include a text comment in the structure to identify the start of each hour cycle.  Our preference is to have no songs repeated during that week - so settings need to be included to cater for that.

2. For a week, set the "Total playlist length" to 32 hours (6 hours per day * 5 days, plus a bit extra)

3. Shuffle the source music playlists (those playlists we have to store the different music categories we use -  1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, 2000's, Gold, Easy, Crossover Country, whatever.

4. Run Playlist Generator Pro and save results to a master file like:  Daytime_20140113.m3u

5. Open Daytime_20140113.m3u and using the "text comment" lines as the starting point for each of the hourly cycles, save each one to another static playlist file like:

Daytime_01.m3u
Daytime_02.m3u
Daytime_03.m3u
Daytime_04.m3u
Daytime_05.m3u
Daytime_06.m3u

Daytime_07.m3u
Daytime_08.m3u
Daytime_09.m3u
Daytime_10.m3u
Daytime_11.m3u
Daytime_12.m3u

etc.

Daytime_30.m3u

6. Set up a schedule so that these playlists go to air at the right time - Monday to Friday - 09:00 to 15:00  (I'm not quite sure how to do this part yet)

7. Then on each Sunday go through the whole process for the next week again ... starting at point 3 above.

8. Our adverts, community noticeboard announcements and news bulletins would continue to be inserted in real time by the scheduler.


Have I made any mistakes with the above strategy ?

Any suggestions on how to do it better ?

Any suggestions on a simple way to get each hourly static playlist block entered into the scheduler ?



Thanks in advance,  Jamie C.

 

[djsoft]

Your idea is good, and this is already planned for the future (RB 5.0.2 I think) - Pl Gen Pro will generate a number of playlists automatically. All those playlists will share the same "no-repeat" buffer, but each playlist will begin with the starting category - this eliminates the problem you've mentioned:
Because song lengths vary so much a single 12 hour playlist can easily develop structure "creep" where the content structure gets a cumulative timing error with what goes to air.  For example: The song that is needed to go to air immediately after the news (at top of hour) is never in the right spot.

Everything you described seems correct, except that it's a lot of manual work - I suggest you to wait for 5.0.2, with it you won't need to split playlists manually.

 

[radiodungog]

Dmitry,

That is GREAT news.  I think many RadioBOSS users will find this feature very useful.


Thanks,  Jamie C.

 

[pety]

Dmitry,

That is GREAT news.  I think many RadioBOSS users will find this feature very useful.


Thanks,  Jamie C.

Indeed that will be awesome.

 

[radiodungog]

Dmitry, Pety,

I have worked out how to put them to air with the scheduler - and that is to set up the scheduler to broadcast Daytime_01.m3u to Daytime_06.m3u every day - and at 11:45pm at night use a DOS batch file to renumber the playlists so the increment downwards.  We are already doing this with our advert blocks with great success.

By doing this we only need to have 6 items listed in the scheduler instead of 30 items - which makes things less cluttered.


Thanks,  Jamie C.

 

[pety]

PGPro can do that automatically in Scheduler - to generate at indicated time random tracks from specific Library, Playlist or Folder with specified duration. Becouse it generates randomized tracks you do not need to renumber the playlists.

 

[radiodungog]

Pety,

Yes, but by generating a BIG master playlist for the whole week and then dividing it up into 30 x 1 hour playlists (like that described above) we get a guarantee on no repeat tracks .... so this is best done once per week OR even once per 3 weeks if we want the "no repeat" rule to work for 3 weeks.  So this means waiting for those features in 5.0.2


Thanks,  Jamie C.

 

[pety]

Pety,

Yes, but by generating a BIG master playlist for the whole week and then dividing it up into 30 x 1 hour playlists (like that described above) we get a guarantee on no repeat tracks .... so this is best done once per week OR even once per 3 weeks if we want the "no repeat" rule to work for 3 weeks.  So this means waiting for those features in 5.0.2


Thanks,  Jamie C.

Understand. Nice work Jamie.

 

[RadioDave]

I might be able to help in the near term. I wrote a program called, "ClockList", which is designed to build short term playlists. It will use the RadioBOSS tags for "last played" to avoid artist / song duplication.

Until 5.0.2 is available, this might help?

It's free, if you'd like to try it.

http://radiodave.us/files/ClockList1013.zip

Unzip the file into a directory, then install the MSI.

It will install into C:\Program Files (x86)\ClockList

I run it every 30 minutes to build the following half-hour's playlist. My library only has 3,500 songs, stored on an SSD, so it runs pretty fast.

Docs are at http://www.radiodave.us/CLDocs

Who knows - might do the trick for now

 

[djsoft]

Thanks Dave!

By the way RB 5.0.2 has just been released. Generating multiple playlists in one run via command line is now possible:

Example:
PlaylistGeneratorPro.exe -preset=MyPreset -out=C:\playlist_%nn.m3u8 -n=10

This command will generate 10 playlists and save them under the names:
C:\playlist_00.m3u8
C:\playlist_01.m3u8
C:\playlist_02.m3u8
...
C:\playlist_09.m3u8

While generation, the same no-repeat buffer is used among all the playlists, which means tracks won't be repeated (just set the extended no-repeat period in the settings).

More information: http://manual.djsoft.net/radioboss/en/plgen_command_line_interface.htm

 

[pety]

PlaylistGeneratorPro.exe -preset=Rom-Foreign -out=C:\playlists\Feb01_%nn.m3u8 -n=12

Doesn't work ! 
Is it anything wrong in that command?

 

[djsoft]

Can you please give some specifics on the problem e.g. are there any error messages, are there any playlists saved, etc.

Note that generating a playlist can take some time: probbaly the PlaylistGeneratorPro.exe sits in the Processes and does it work...

 

[pety]

Can you please give some specifics on the problem e.g. are there any error messages, are there any playlists saved, etc.

Let me see if I understood what this command does.
It will automatically generate playlists and will save them into a specific location. Is that right ?

 

[pety]

It doesn't work anymore.

Right now I listen in RB a stream (URL).
When I start command RB stop for a short period (1 sec maybe) the audio and continue to play.
But the command doesn't have any effect.

 

[pety]

HA HA HAAAAA!
I didn't put "run " in the beginning of the command. It works !
BUT
There is a problem. The command doesn't use Capitals for naming file.

 

[pety]

The command:
run PlaylistGeneratorPro.exe -preset=Rom-Foreign -out=C:\playlists\Feb01_%nn.m3u8 -n=12

The file name:
feb01_00.m3u8

It should be:
Feb01_00.m3u8

 

[pety]

I have a request for this command.

For example, I want to start from 12 with counting. How can I do that?

feb01_12.m3u8
feb01_13.m3u8
feb01_14.m3u8
........................

feb01_24.m3u8

 

[pety]

I might be able to help in the near term. I wrote a program called, "ClockList", which is designed to build short term playlists. It will use the RadioBOSS tags for "last played" to avoid artist / song duplication.

Until 5.0.2 is available, this might help?

It's free, if you'd like to try it.

http://radiodave.us/files/ClockList1013.zip

Unzip the file into a directory, then install the MSI.

It will install into C:\Program Files (x86)\ClockList

I run it every 30 minutes to build the following half-hour's playlist. My library only has 3,500 songs, stored on an SSD, so it runs pretty fast.

Docs are at http://www.radiodave.us/CLDocs

Who knows - might do the trick for now

Hi Dave. Did you remove the file from that location? I would like to try your playlist generator. Thanks !

 

[djsoft]

Let me see if I understood what this command does.
It will automatically generate playlists and will save them into a specific location. Is that right ?

Correct. It will generate several playlists and save them to a location you specified in the -out= parameter. I'd recommend using a spearate folder for it, to avoid overwriting of important files.

I didn't put "run " in the beginning of the command. It works !

That's good Without the run command RB will treat it as a music track.

There is a problem. The command doesn't use Capitals for naming file.

I've added it to the list of bugs, will be fixed in 5.0.3 update.

 

[RadioDave]

I mis-typed the location for ClockList - the current version is here:

http://www.radiodave.us/pics/ClockList1013.zip