Unscheduled Automation

[phs]

Hi all,
We've just implemented RB Advanced at our local community radio station. It's going well, but we have one use-case I'm not sure how best to implement.

Our hosts are on-air at different times each day, sometimes different times each week, and of course some times they don't show up at all due to illness etc.

When there is no-one physically in the studio, we obviously need to keep broadcasting using some form of automation, but my problem is that this automation period isn't clearly defined. It could be for an hour between 2 presenters, or it could be for 8 hours overnight. What is a 1 hour period this week might be 4 hours at the same time next week.

The best solution I have thought of is having the Playlist Generator create a new 24-hour playlist each night that the host can load before leaving (on the assumption it will never be more than 24 hours between hosts!). The main problem with this is if the playlist is loaded 3 times throughout the day, the same tracks at the start of the list will play over and over.

We have disabled the "Repeat" and "Shuffle" functions as a lot of our hosts are of the older generation and already struggle with technology. I'd hate to start receiving phone calls because someone has accidentally enabled shuffle on their playlist.

At the moment we're using another software tool, but I'd really like to have a method to do this within RadioBoss so the scheduler can continue to do it's thing, and avoid having to maintain 2 playout systems. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[djsoft]

The main problem with this is if the playlist is loaded 3 times throughout the day, the same tracks at the start of the list will play over and over.

You can create a new playlist each time it's loaded, this way the playlists will be different each time.

We have disabled the "Repeat" and "Shuffle" functions as a lot of our hosts are of the older generation and already struggle with technology. I'd hate to start receiving phone calls because someone has accidentally enabled shuffle on their playlist.

If you don't need those features, you can disable them from the settings: http://manual.djsoft.net/radioboss/en/controls.htm

Do your presenters present physically in the studio, or they broadcast remotely?

 

[phs]

You can create a new playlist each time it's loaded, this way the playlists will be different each time.

What would be the most-automated way to do this? The majority of our hosts are not tech-capable enough to use the Playlist Generator themselves. I've had a hard enough time trying to explain drag-and-drop to some of them! Others are more competent and are doing voice-tracking etc. Unfortunately I have to cater to the lowest skilled hosts.

Do your presenters present physically in the studio, or they broadcast remotely?

They are physically in the studio.

 

[djsoft]

What would be the most-automated way to do this? The majority of our hosts are not tech-capable enough to use the Playlist Generator themselves. I've had a hard enough time trying to explain drag-and-drop to some of them! Others are more competent and are doing voice-tracking etc. Unfortunately I have to cater to the lowest skilled hosts.

If you need hosts to create a new playlist when they leave studio, the easiest way I suppose would be to create a scheduled event that will generate the playlist: http://manual.djsoft.net/radioboss/en/automatic_playlist_generation.htm

Make this event disabled, so that it would not run by itself. When someone needs to create a new playlist, they simply select this event in the scheduled events list and click the Run Now button.

You can name this event and change its colors to make its appearance prominent in the scheduled events list.

 

[phs]

That's actually a great idea. I had thought about using the scheduler, but didn't think about not giving it a schedule so it could just be run manually... I can give hosts a way to update the library too instead of waiting for the hourly Windows scheduled task too!

Thank-you

 

[phs]

Well I've created the task, but it's not quite working. When I run the event manually, it runs for about 2 to 3 minutes (I've increased the timeout in Options -> Scheduler -> "Maximum Time to Wait" to 900), then I get tracks. But they don't align with the Playlist Generator profile.

Refer to this screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/uA5HwbN.png

Some of the problems are:
[list type=decimal]
[*]The first track should be "Music - Rock" but it's skipped that and gone straight to the second item in the rotation (Sweeper)
[*]Items 7, 8 and 9 should be a single Sweeper, instead it's put in 3 sweepers.
[*]Track 10 should be a music track with "Pop" genre, not "Oldies" genre.
[*]The generated playlist should be 12 hours long, but after multiple runs, I only get 167 tracks each time which is less than 5 hours.
[/list]

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

EDIT: After generating the playlist manually and reviewing the log, I found these errors:

ERROR: Unable to find track that fits criteria (rule: norepeat-artist). Category: "Teaser 3x5s" 
> 7 errors.
ERROR: Unable to find track that fits criteria (rule: norepeat-track). Category: "Teaser 3x5s" 
> 10 errors.

I've disabled the no-repeat protection on the Teaser category now. I'll keep debugging that way until I either fix it or get stuck. I will report back!

EDIT 2: OK, after debugging based on the PLG log screen, it looks like I had some category errors and all looks good now!

 

[djsoft]

When I run the event manually, it runs for about 2 to 3 minutes (I've increased the timeout in Options -> Scheduler -> "Maximum Time to Wait" to 900), then I get tracks.

You can speed up the playlist creation process if you enable tag caching: http://manual.djsoft.net/radioboss/en/tag-cache.htm

 

[phs]

We already have that enabled... It just does take a while to scan through over 12,000 tracks for each of the categories in the playlist builder