Song ending time error

[Oldies]

Hi...

I have come across a rather pesky little bug, which only seems to happen occasionally, and I have finally managed to get a screen capture for you.

Occasionally a song will load with the "end time" approximately one full minute before it is supposed to be. This only seems to happen after a short file (i.e., a jingle or a station ID.) It never seems to happen at any other time. This time it happened immediatately following a time announcement. It also does not seem to matter whether the files come from a generated playlist, or from a tracklist. Now in this particular case, I was experimenting with the queue function, but I have had this happen without doing this.

I have attached two screen captures: The first one (Exhibit A) with the wrong end time. The second one (Exhibit B) was right after I reloaded the same song directly into the playlist. Same song, no changes in anything.

Hope you can squash this little bug...

 

[djsoft]

Can you please specify what is the "End time" you refer to, is it the start time of the following track?

From the screenshots, on the first one, start time is indicated as 14:51:49 (Start Time is not "calculated" for the current track, it merely sets the current system time, so it's correct), the following track's start time 14:54:46 which seems to be correct as playing track is about 3 minutes.

I think more information is needed on what's wrong. Please also note about Track Lists, if (internally) a track is not yet selected for Track List, it will perform quick selection just to detect file type and approximate duration.

 

[Oldies]

By "end time" I mean the point at which the automation thinks the song is over, and starts the next song. In the first example, it ended the song and went to the next item at well before it was supposed to do so. In other words, it switches to the next song (where you see the blue at the end) in the middle of the song.

I don't think that this has anything to do with tracklists, as I have also had this happen with a regular generated playlist. with all tracks (songs and jingles) selected in advance.

The start times for the next song ends up being incorrect, as the automation will start the next song at the point where the blue zone begins, not waiting for the point at which it mixes with the next song. So, it ends up going to the next song early.

So far this has always happened to a song when it comes after a short (around 10 seconds) jingle or ID. And it doesn't seem to happen every time, which makes it tricky.

Here is what happens in order:

1. Jingle or ID
2. Song. When loaded incorrrectly, song shows up with large blue zone when it's currently playing.
3. Song 2 will start early (at the blue zone) ending song 1 in the middle.

 

[Oldies]

Hi,

I'm sorry if I didn't make this clear, so I'm going to document everything for you here.

For some reason, I can't get it to display the error in a regular playlist, at least not right now. However, I have managed to have it display the error with a playlist using track lists.

Here is what happened:

Exhibit A: 11:34:57 - Playlist loaded and ready to go.

Exhibit B: 11:35:13 - Del Shannon begins to play, with the next event (Jingle) set for 11:37:11. So far so good.

Exhibit C: 11:35:08 - Jingle plays a couple seconds early. No big deal here, this is probably because of end markers. Elton John begins at 11:37:13.
The start time for the next song has now been calculated to be 11:41:10. This is just under 4 minutes, which is normal, since the song is 3:56, just under 4 minutes. Again, so far, so good, but.... notice the large blue zone at the end...

Exhibit D: 11:40:10 - We are 1 minute away from the scheduled change, but close too the blue zone...

Exhibit E: 11:40:17 - When the currently playing song enters the blue zone (where it thinks the mix point is) it goes to the next song, one minute early. Log says 11:40:16, again a 1-second error no big deal. But the fact is, it did change too early.

Exhibit F: This is what the song looks like when it is loaded correctly.

Exhibit G: Just for further info, here is the Track Tool entry for the track.

Thanks.

 

[djsoft]

By "end time" I mean the point at which the automation thinks the song is over, and starts the next song. In the first example, it ended the song and went to the next item at well before it was supposed to do so. In other words, it switches to the next song (where you see the blue at the end) in the middle of the song.

The Mixing point (the red vertical line, but on your screenshot it matches the fade out indicator, the blue box) can be affected by the next song, if it has Mix Start set and/or if it has "Override previous track mix point" option set, and one more thing it can be configured this way in the Segue Editor.

When, on the second screenshot, you added this song manually, the following track is also different so that's why Mix point is different and therefore Start/End time also changes.

The start times for the next song ends up being incorrect, as the automation will start the next song at the point where the blue zone begins, not waiting for the point at which it mixes with the next song. So, it ends up going to the next song early.

In this case, Start Time seems to be correct as the next song starts on the Mix point and that's what Start Time shows.

So, the summary:

• you need to check if there are Mix Start points set
• check file types configuration if there are Override previous track mix point options
• check crossfades if Trigger mix at is correct there (you seem to have enabled "Start fading out on mix" so red line that shows mixing and blue box for fade out start at the same time)
• check segue editor configuration

 

[HMMMM]

It looks like you make have set up a track into or something on the track

 

[Oldies]

I have looked at everything and can't find any mix points that are set.

Normally, the mix and fadeout points are the same. When the track nears the end, it begins to fade on its own, triggering the mix point, and then RB fades it out the rest of the way, so that there is just enough overlap. I will say that in most cases, this works just fine. Yes, there are a very limited number of songs that may need individual attention, but, as I stated, most of the time it works just fine. (And I have also not worked on fixing of those yet, so there should be no inidividual mix/fade points set.)

There are no individual mix points set. I have enclosed the following:
Exhibits 01-04: Database (i.e., TrackTool) entries for all of the elements involved.

Exhibits 05-09: File types and fading settings.

Exhibits 10-14: I have re-created the events by manually loading all of the same elements that played in the previous session, saving them in a playlist and loading it into RB and playling it. Now, if the mix and fade points for all files are the same, then the same situation should occur. But, as you can see, everything plays as it is supposed to, and the Elton John song "ends" (i.e., mix point and fade point) are where they are supposed to be. (Edit: These will be in the next post, as the system will only allow me to post 10 files.)

The question remains though... if a file is loaded into RB with all its parameters (including both global and individual settings), should it not show up exactly the same, regardless of whether it was put there manually, or chosen by a tracklist?

 

[Oldies]

Here are the screenshots .... see previous post.

 

[djsoft]

The question remains though... if a file is loaded into RB with all its parameters (including both global and individual settings), should it not show up exactly the same, regardless of whether it was put there manually, or chosen by a tracklist?

It doesn't matter how a file is added to the playlist. One way it can be different, is when you open a playlist (or it's started via scheduled event or by some other means) and there are custom crossfades configured for this playlist. Those settings are stored in the .state file; you can also see if there are any custom crossfades set if you enable the "Custom mix" column in the playlist.

 

[Oldies]

No custom mix was ever set. That's why this is so mysterious. And it seems to happen only occasionally, and seemingly at random. I have also noticed that it seems to happen after shorter elements (i.e., IDs, sweepers, jingles.)

I am noticing that it mostly happens with tracklists loading into the playlist. The other day I had a generated playlist with nothing more than songs. I enabled an event which inserts a random jingle followed by a random holiday tune, and inserts them into the playlist every 15 minutes. When it did so, the inserted liner played, and the inserted tune played, but displayed the early (wrong) fade/mix time. I then took the same liner, and the same song, and inserted them manually into the playlist. This time, the song loaded normally.

Thanks...

 

[djsoft]

When it did so, the inserted liner played, and the inserted tune played, but displayed the early (wrong) fade/mix time.

Did it actually play it with the "incorrect" fade, or it was a display error and files played correctly?

 

[Oldies]

The first time, it faded early, at the "wrong" fade mix but when I loaded the tracks manually, everything was back to normal. It does the mix/fade at whatever point is displayed.

Also when a track is loaded from the tracklist, the "segue editor" option is not available.

I'm going to add one more note here: I seem to remember the first time this happened, I originally played a manually inserted jingle before a song. Since there is only one jingle for this category, I just enter the file manually (or the playlist generator does that.) Well at first I thought there was something wrong with the jingle, so I made a very small edit just to make it a different file. As it turns out, that is not the problem.

The only thing that seems to be consistent so far is that the problem always occrus after short elements, as I mentioned in a previous post.

 

[djsoft]

Thank you for the details, we'll check it.

 

[djsoft]

We were unable to confirm it here. Please download the latest RadioBOSS 7.0.0.5, if this happens again, please press Ctrl+F4 and make a screenshot (RadioBOSS window and a small debug window should be visible). Maybe this will provide some clues as to why this happens.