Load all tracks from news folder once + bed

[andreigherghe]

Greetings Bernd,

We're really happy to be using ProppFrexx in our entire network. We have a fully digital, lossless transmission (FLAC/OGG) from the studio to the transmitter.

We have the following scenario:

A folder called *news*, in which we have separate audio files for each subject. After recording another new "piece", we just move it to the folder. After something gets old, we archive the file.

We also have a news bed, composed of 3 sections (intro/loop zone/outro), and a separator jingle/stinger.

Ideally, ProppFrexx would load every file from that folder, in the following fashion:

-Bed Intro
-Bed loop + first audio track (1.wav)
-Separator
-Bed loop + second audio track (2.wav)
-Separator
...
-Bed loop + n'th audio track (n.wav)
-Bed outro

We tried using the news section from Advert & News, but that requires inserting each news file manually. We also tried a FTE with a script that follows that order, but we couldn't figure out how to iterate through the files exactly once (since the count variable is not always equal to the number of files in the folder).

Is there any way to accomplish that?

Thank you!

Kind regards,
Andrei Gherghe - Radio Terra

[radio42]

I am afraid, that this not automatically possible by a simple script.
I am currently not sure, if it is possible by the News Management (I need to check this later today).

[radio42]

Sorry for coming back quite late. However, what you try to achieve is possible by the News Management.
Each News category is stored in its own sub-folder (underneath the 'news' folder of the given Advert-Storage-Path; e.g. if your Advert-Storage-Path is 'C:\Adverts' the News category 'ABC' is stored in the folder 'C:\Adverts\news\ABC'.

By default all audio files contained in that news category folder are used (you don't even have to assign the tracks manually, but can simply update this folder manually).
When editing a News category you further have the following options:

News Opener: The news opener is an audio track which will be used in a resulting news block playlist as a track preceding the effective news tracks.

News Separator: The news separator is an audio track which will be used in a resulting news block playlist as intermediate tracks inbetween two subsequent news tracks.

News Closer: The news closer is an audio track which will be used in a resulting news block playlist as a track succeeding the effective news tracks.

Soundbed Track: The soundbed track is an audio track which will be used as a background track for each individual news track.
As such, when a regular news track is being played, this soundbed track is played as well in parallel looped mode.

Attenuation: The dB value to use to lower the volume of the soundbed track.

Track Usage: Defines how tracks should be scheduled within a news block (if multiple tracks are assigned to this news category).
Note, that the 'Sequentiual' mode ensures, that newest tracks (last modification date) are played first. The 'Priority' mode uses the 'Rating' meta tag to sort the entries (a higher rating is served first).

Max. Age: Defines the maximum number of days an audio track can have (related to its last modification date) before it will be automatically removed. A value of 0 (zero) disables the automatic removal.


Within the Overlay Scheduler you can now assign a News category to an overlay entry, plus define a maximum number of news tracks resp. a maximum news duration (which would limit the news tracks to pick; e.g. set these value to a high enough value to always pick all news tracks).
As a result, the news tracks would be picked from your given news category folder and arranged like this:
- News Opener
- News Soundbed + 1st news audio track
- News Separator
- News Soundbed + 2nd news audio track
- News Separator
...
- News Soundbed + Nth news audio track
- News Closer

Sounds like exactly what you wanted to achieve!

[andreigherghe]

Thank you for the solution, but when we tried it with a maxCount of 9, it played the 3 tracks, 3 times. So it behaves more like a "count" than a maximum.

We also encountered one more problem, probably from the configuration. To test the history, we made a category with 20 songs. We set the global song history to 15, and both Media Library & Script history to 0/disabled. And yet tracks were repeated even one after another, after 7-12 songs. SupressGlobalHistoryCheck is disabled, in the script. Moreover, any SupressHistory is disabled. We researched the forum for documentation regarding the history, but even after applying some of the steps we found, it didn't work.

Is there any option we may have missed?

Thank you for your support, and may you have a great day!
Andrei

[radio42]

Regarding the 'News': I guess I see what you mean. That indeed seems like an unwanted behavior (which was even not desired)!. I'll try to fix that in the next release!

Regarding the Global Song History: I can not reproduce this and even made an explicit test, but all was working as expected and no repeats have been encountered with the global history range. This is how I tested the scenario:

Settings:
1) I created a new media library called 'Test' containing 20 tracks each having a different Title, Artist and Album.
2) I created a new 'Test' Script with a single script-line: Mode=Random, Entry='Test', Count=1
The script and script-line did not use any options!
3) I set the Global Song History to a total Count of 15!
In the 'More...' options I also selected the 'Use Extended History Check' and 'Force TAG Reading' and the did NOT select any 'Use Strice Check'. I set the 'Albums' and 'Artist' option to '5 or 30 min' and the 'Title' option to '10 or 0 min'.

Now to the real test:
1) I created a new and empty playlist window
2) from the context menu (right-click) I selected 'Add - Add Tracks from...'
3) In the 'Add Tracks to Playlist' dialog I now selected 'Script' and my 'Test' script and specified to add 50 tracks... and clicked OK.
4) Now I manually compared the playlist entries

Result:
All duplicate tracks are at least 15 entries apart (most of them are around 17 track apart)!
Just like expected, that was never a track repeated after at least playing 15 other tracks.


So I am not sure how you tested things? Maybe you had the 'UseLastTrackOnFinalFail' script option set? Or your 'Artist' or 'Album' history settings have been too high with (only) 20 tracks? Please post your exact history settings as well as how you tested things?

[radio42]

The News issue is already fixed in the new v4.0.2.0-beta - so "Check for Beta Versions..."

[andreigherghe]

Thank you, a wonderful day ahead!

[andreigherghe]

Hello again,

The method you provided is working perfectly, including the news manager. I found a small inconsistency, not sure where is it coming from.

We manually split a news bed into 3 separate files: intro, loop part, outro.
After setting the attenuation for the bed to a fixed amount (e.g. -10dB) *in ProppFrexx*, we manually attenuated the last second of the intro, and the first second of the outro to that same level, overwriting the files.

With small recordings (5-7 seconds), it is flawless. The bed is attenuated instantly, without any fades, as the fades are provided in the intro and outro. Not Fading Length for the "bed" category is set to the maximum - 300s.

However, with a 50 second recording, the loop part is being faded to a null volume level. And then the outro picks up from -10db.

I made a quick sketch to make it clearer.

proppfrexx.jpg (35.85 KiB) Viewed 11878 times

We're enjoying every single feature of ProppFrexx ONAIR, and by getting some small things out of the way, it really shines.

Andrei

[radio42]

Please provide all your sample files - to take a look at.
There is for sure some inconsistency within your existing files (e.g. some conflicting existing cue- or volume points), as the logic is of course no different between a 7 sec. and a 50 sec. file.

[andreigherghe]

I've sent you the test files via PM.

Thanks!