ProppFrexx Advertising

[Steve FamilyRadio]

Hi Bernd,
We are noticing that in our ProppFrexx advertising schedule, not all planned campaigns are actually being played in the correct ad breaks.

Context:

Ad breaks run through overlays such as 07u20, 07u40, 08u20, etc... (2 slots per hour, from 7 in the morning till 7 at night - day recurrence 1 playout)
The campaign schedule appears to be correct in the dynamic.cfg files.
The overlays are usually processed, but the actual playout sometimes contains fewer or different spots than expected.
So there seems to be a difference between what is “scheduled” and what is actually selected by the advertising engine.
Which has been a problem with our customers who get a report from us, after we planned the commercials - they don't hear there adds at the time it's stated in the order confirmation report.

Could you please check:

Why ProppFrexx does not play all scheduled campaigns from dynamic.cfg in a processed ad break.
Whether settings such as Random=True, EnsureMinLength=False, MaxPerHour, campaign counters, or the advert library state cause campaigns to be skipped at runtime.
Whether dynamic.cfg is used as a fixed schedule, or only as input for runtime selection.
In slot management, i can see how many campaigns are planned in a slot - but the play time is there 0:03 seconds.

We are also considering playing ad breaks as fixed playlists/containers (pls format), so we can determine exactly which spots should run in each break. Could you advise whether this would be the best approach, or whether the current advertising engine can be configured more accurately?

I can't find a lot of information about ProppFrexx Advertising, except for a video where 2 slots where configured (morning and evening).

Thanks in advance for looking into this.

[radio42]

Is it maybe that your slot time is to short to play all ads?
In order to know what is exactly wrong, I would need way more info.

At best you zip you entire Advert Srorage Path all files all sub-folders and send it to me.
Plus the detailed information on how to reproduce your issue. What exact campaign is missing? In which slot exactly.
I need concrete examples.

I am not aware of any issue and that something is not working as designed in the Advert and News management.

[Steve FamilyRadio]

Hello Bernd,

our timeslots our 360 - 480 seconds - we have 24 of them during the day
I have compared the dynamic.cfg vs the playout.log - and noticed that spots were not being played.
Just to be sure I have replanned everything in a clean folder - but still had the same problem.
I have send you a mail with a link to download the zip file of our advertising folder.

LoadAdvertSlot loads fewer tracks than scheduled:
About two minutes before each ad break, ProppFrexx logs how many advert tracks it found, e.g. LoadAdvertSlot 2 Advert-Tracks (4 Total) found. Across almost every block, the "found" count is consistently 2 lower than what is scheduled in the dynamic.cfg files.

Example (20 June): 07:20–08:40 loaded all 6 correctly, but 09:20, 09:40 dropped to 2, and 10:20/10:40 to 0.
Crucially, 11:40 loaded all 6 correctly again — so the same configuration sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
This happens at load time, before airing — it is not a cut-off-during-playout issue, so slot length is not the cause (there is nothing to truncate when only 0 or 2 tracks are found).

Is dynamic.cfg a fixed schedule, or only input for a runtime selection that can drop entries? If runtime, which settings drive it (Random, EnsureMinLength, MaxPerHour, campaign counters, advert library state, priority)?

I hope you can find the problem!
Thanks in advance for looking into this!

Greetings, Steve

[radio42]

I will investigate…!

Give me some time, as I am on the road from Wednesday to Friday. So may be I can only look into it after that.
Thanks

[atlantic]

It has also occurred to me that when using Dynamic Planning, the scheduled items are not always played at the exact planned time.

[radio42]

I double checked the code and I hope I found the issue - it was indeed an internal edge case with sorting the campaigns multi-keys.
I will build a new version this evening!

[radio42]

A new v4.5.3.1 is available - which should fix your issue.

[Steve FamilyRadio]

A new v4.5.3.1 is available - which should fix your issue.

Thank you!
Will be testing this week.

Greetings,
Steve