RadioBOSS and forward planning of next week's content

Dmitry,

Our station runs 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  We have 12 volunteer presenters and only 1 person to organise the admin and scheduling of content on RadioBOSS - that's me.

We have news, community notice board events (CNB), adverts and shows that go to air automatically with RadioBOSS - and some of these have to be inserted and others removed from the scheduler when I'm not there.  I am in the studio 3 mornings per week and do most of the admin and scheduling on Wednesday mornings at 9am for the following 7 days.

Currently there are some CNB events that need to be inserted or removed on the 4 days when I am not there - so I have used remote login to alter these - but it's not always possible to do this.

To do a whole week's worth of CNB events in advance I have devised the following strategy:

1.  Create a series of standard playlists to hold the CNB events for each day of the week

2.  Create a single playlist to hold today's CNB events to go to air "today"

3.  Use the RadioBOSS scheduler to call up a DOS batch file on each day to copy the correct content into the today playlist

4.  Have the scheduler ONLY play the playlist called today  (news_cnb_00_today)

5.  The playlist strategy would look like this:

news_cnb_00_base
(contains a generic fill-in announcement about the events calendar in case there are no community events announcements available for a specific day)
   
news_cnb_00_today
(the playlist that is put to air each day by the scheduler)

news_cnb_01_monday  (event announcements for the next monday)
news_cnb_02_tuesday  (event announcements for the next tuesday)
news_cnb_03_wednesday    "
news_cnb_04_thursday    "
news_cnb_05_friday    "
news_cnb_06_saturday    "
news_cnb_07_sunday    "


Each night at midnight the RB scheduler runs a DOS batch file and copies the correct day playlist to the "news_cnb_00_today" playlist for broadcast.  It also copies the base playlist to the previous day's playlist to wipe current content and replace it with the generic message.

Example:

=====
@echo off
REM:  CNB rotation for Monday  (There are 7 different batch files - one for each day of the week)

copy "w:\1_station_msg\blocks\news_cnb_01_monday.m3u" "w:\1_station_msg\blocks\news_cnb_00_today.m3u"

copy "w:\1_station_msg\blocks\news_cnb_00_base.m3u" "w:\1_station_msg\blocks\news_07_sunday.m3u"

exit
=====


6.  I would do all of the admin scheduling every Wednesday morning at about 9am and that would cover all the events content for the next week.



Does this look like a reasonable strategy ?

Is there a simpler way to do it ?



Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
Dmitry,

Our station runs 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  We have 12 volunteer presenters and only 1 person to organise the admin and scheduling of content on RadioBOSS - that's me.
...
Thanks,  Jamie C.
Maybe if you use the new improvement: "Play one track from a playlist or folder" -> "Select one track from folder" -> "Newest". You can also use "Delete after playback" if you wish. So, after playing file RB delete it and you have all the time a clean/empty folder.

You can use bat command only for copy the file for the next day, without rename it or delete old files. You can use Task Scheduler in Windows for bat files, if you want to keep RadioBOSS Scheduler clean.
 

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Pety,

Our CNB (Community Notice Board) events calendar goes to air 13 times every day - from 6am to 6pm and 7 days per week.

I'm not sure the options you mentioned will work for us.


Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
Pety,

Our CNB (Community Notice Board) events calendar goes to air 13 times every day - from 6am to 6pm and 7 days per week.

I'm not sure the options you mentioned will work for us.


Thanks,  Jamie C.
Check by hours. It must delete the file after plays it the last time.
 
pety said:
radiodungog said:
Pety,

Our CNB (Community Notice Board) events calendar goes to air 13 times every day - from 6am to 6pm and 7 days per week.

I'm not sure the options you mentioned will work for us.


Thanks,  Jamie C.
Check by hours. It must delete the file after plays it the last time.
Unfortunatelly this command doesn't care about recurrence and delete the file after the first play.
So, there is a logical inconsistency. Thiis is aBUG.
Dmitriy will fix it.
 
Pety,

Okay ...

The DOS batch file strategy is so easy to set up and very reliable.  We have been using a similar DOS batch file strategy to rotate our adverts for 18 months now with great success.  It just works and we've never had a problem.


Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
Pety,

Okay ...

The DOS batch file strategy is so easy to set up and very reliable.  We have been using a similar DOS batch file strategy to rotate our adverts for 18 months now with great success.  It just works and we've never had a problem.

Jamie C.
Indeed! Playing file from folder is stil good enough, but without delete file. Deletion will be the job for bat file. In playlist you make 12 copies, isn't it?
 
Okay,

I've got all the DOS batch files in and running on RadioBOSS at Radio Dungog now.  Fingers crossed that I didn't create any typos with all the DOS batch files and links.


Jamie C.
 
pety said:
Unfortunatelly this command doesn't care about recurrence and delete the file after the first play.
So, there is a logical inconsistency. Thiis is aBUG.
Dmitriy will fix it.
I don't think it's a bug. The delete option only does that: deletes a file after playback... If it won't delete it, then it again can be considred as a bug: the delete option is on, but the file is not deleted after playback :)

radiodungog said:
Does this look like a reasonable strategy ?

Is there a simpler way to do it ?
Jamie, this should work. The only problem here is that a lot of things are involved here, therefore agood chance for something to go wrong... I've tried to think of a better solution but didn't find any. Please let me know if there are any problems with your current setup - maybe it'll help in finding a better solution.
 
djsoft said:
pety said:
Unfortunatelly this command doesn't care about recurrence and delete the file after the first play.
So, there is a logical inconsistency. Thiis is aBUG.
Dmitriy will fix it.
I don't think it's a bug. The delete option only does that: deletes a file after playback... If it won't delete it, then it again can be considred as a bug: the delete option is on, but the file is not deleted after playback :)
Yes, but if I only select the file to play it once and if the delete function doesn't work. In that case it is a bug.

BUT when in Schedule Event I have options for recurrence (hours button or repeat) the delete function should work only AFTER the last recurrence. Otherwise this file could be played in a simple playlist, not as recurrent EVENT in Schedule.

In this moment I think like a RadioBOSS engineer. What for is recurrence Event in SCheduler if I cannot use it?
 
Yes, but if I only select the file to play it once and if the delete function doesn't work. In that case it is a bug.

BUT when in Schedule Event I have options for recurrence (hours button or repeat) the delete function should work only AFTER the last recurrence. Otherwise this file could be played in a simple playlist, not as recurrent EVENT in Schedule.
[/quote]
I don't agree. When you use this option, you use it like this: "select random (or newest/oldest) track from a folder, play it, delete". If this event is set to be repeated, then it's perfectly OK: select one random track, play, delete; on next repeat, select another random track, play, delete and so on. If it doesn't delete the file, it will always play the same file, on each repeat, which is not what most users will expect...
 
djsoft said:
Yes, but if I only select the file to play it once and if the delete function doesn't work. In that case it is a bug.

BUT when in Schedule Event I have options for recurrence (hours button or repeat) the delete function should work only AFTER the last recurrence. Otherwise this file could be played in a simple playlist, not as recurrent EVENT in Schedule.
I don't agree. When you use this option, you use it like this: "select random (or newest/oldest) track from a folder, play it, delete". If this event is set to be repeated, then it's perfectly OK: select one random track, play, delete; on next repeat, select another random track, play, delete and so on. If it doesn't delete the file, it will always play the same file, on each repeat, which is not what most users will expect...
Let me see if I understood well. If I have a folder and only one file in it, when select random I can use repeat event? If it is so, still remain the problem with delete file and feed folder with .bat command. Maybe a solution for the future?
 
pety said:
Let me see if I understood well. If I have a folder and only one file in it, when select random I can use repeat event? If it is so, still remain the problem with delete file and feed folder with .bat command. Maybe a solution for the future?
RadioBOSS doesn't check how many files are in the folder. If the command says "play one file and delete" - it will do that. If it doesn't delete the file after playback - it will be definitely considered as a bug and unexpected behavior.
The feature was actually added to play one-shot announcements.

If you need to select one file, and repeat it, then using "Delete" feature is not an option. You can use playlist generator to select the track, save playlist, and have an event which will repeat the generated playlist. But this sound complicated...
 
djsoft said:
pety said:
Let me see if I understood well. If I have a folder and only one file in it, when select random I can use repeat event? If it is so, still remain the problem with delete file and feed folder with .bat command. Maybe a solution for the future?
RadioBOSS doesn't check how many files are in the folder. If the command says "play one file and delete" - it will do that. If it doesn't delete the file after playback - it will be definitely considered as a bug and unexpected behavior.
The feature was actually added to play one-shot announcements.

If you need to select one file, and repeat it, then using "Delete" feature is not an option. You can use playlist generator to select the track, save playlist, and have an event which will repeat the generated playlist. But this sound complicated...
I was trying to help Jamie. I use repetition in playlist for recurrent mp3 file :)
 
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