Live-Assist Mode

The top menu bar provides options to set up PlayIt Live.

 

The File menu contains:

Settings: Configure the user interface and audio devices.

Exit: Close PlayIt Live. A confirmation box will be shown.

 

The Manage menu contains:

Tracks: Manage track audio items. See Manage Tracks.

Track Groups: Manage track groups (like smart folders) containing tracks. See Manage Track Groups.

Logged Tracks: View recently played tracks for reporting purposes. See Logged Tracks.

Playout Policies: Manage rules to create a unified sound. See Manage Playout Policies.

Playout Pattern: Manage the pattern of track groups that will be used for playout. See Manage Playout Pattern.

Clocks: Manage hour templates used to generate the playout log. See Manage Clocks.

Clock Schedule: Manage clock hourly assignments used to generate the playout log. See Manage Clock Schedule.

Playout Log: Manage the overall, day-to-day output of your station. See Manage Playout Log.

Advert Campaigns: Manage advert campaigns for playing adverts (commercial spots). See Manage Advert Campaigns.

Advert Log: Manage the advert log, the log of adverts and when they will play. See Manage Advert Log.

Advert Play Report: Export a report of when adverts were played for affidavits. See Manage Advert Play Report.

Scheduled Events: Manage events that can be triggered to happen at a specific time or when PlayIt Live starts. See Manage Scheduled Events.

Priority Streams: Manage priority streams which can be used to override normal live-assist automation and bring in a live presenter/DJ via a remote stream. See Manage Priority Streams.

Users: Manage users who can log in to use the software. See Manage Users.

 

The Tools menu contains:

Missing Track File Analysis: Find and resolve tracks that reference files that have been moved or deleted. See Missing Track File Analysis

Duplicate Track File Analysis: Find and delete track files that have been added to PlayIt Live multiple times. See Duplicate Track File Analysis

Track Play Analysis: Used to determine the number of plays tracks have had during a date/time range. See Track Play Analysis

Monitored Folder Status: View the status of your monitored folders and force a re-scan if necessary. See Monitored Folders Status

 

The Plugins menu contains:

Plugin Manager: View the list of currently installed plugins and create new ones.

 

The Help menu contains:

Online Documentation: A link to the documentation page on the PlayIt Software website.

New to PlayIt Live? video: A video showing how to use the basic features of PlayIt Live.

Open Application Data Folder: Opens the PlayIt Live application data folder. Only perform this step if requested by PlayIt Software Support.

Open Sound Control Panel: Opens the Windows Sound Control Panel. Allows you to see and configure any attached audio devices.

Licence Information: View your currently applied licence information and allow you to update your licence.

Spec Check: Verify if your computer meets the minimum or recommended specifications to run PlayIt Live. See Spec Check Window.

About PlayIt Live: View that latest version and check for updates. See About PlayIt Live.

The notification bar is used to provide important information to the user without disrupting their current activity. Warnings will be displayed here if there are any setup issues or a track fails to load.

 

The players at the top load tracks from the playout log in the expected order. Players can be assigned to individual sound cards so they can be used with different channels on a professional mixer.

 

Each player has three timers and three buttons.

 

The blue timer indicates the intro remaining of the loaded track.

The green timer indicates the elapsed time of the loaded track.

The red timer indicates the remaining time of the loaded track.

 

The green play button starts playing the track.

The orange pause button pauses the track. Pressing this button again resumes playout.

The silver eject button fades out and stops the player.

 

 

The playout log shows the upcoming items that are scheduled to take place. Typically these are tracks to be played, but can be break notes or fixed time markers. Each playout log item features (from left to right) the play time, icon, title, (tempo if adjusted), duration (or remaining time), segue toggle switch, edit and eject/delete button. A 'three-dots' ellipsis icon is used to show additional menu options.

 

The icon on the log item displays the type of the item:

 

- Track

- Voice Track

- Break Note

- Fixed Time Marker

- Currently playing item

- Past item that was played

- Past item that was not played

- Future item that will not be played due to fixed time marker

 

Icons and colours can also be customised based on the track group a track belongs in. It is possible to colour the entire row by changing this setting.

 

The current item is indicated by the right arrow in a circle icon:

The current item is the currently playing or the next item to be played when playout resumes.

 

To add a track to the playout log, drag and drop a track from the Track List to a position between existing tracks or between an empty 'drag tracks here' marker. If you dragged a track into a position soon to be played it will be loaded into one of the players in sequence.

 

To play the track, click the Play button in the player at the top. When an item is playing it will be shown in green and the duration will display the remaining time for that item.

 

While a track is playing the progress bar will be displayed showing the current position in the track. To change the position, click the Seek checkbox to the left of the progress bar and then click the position in the progress bar to change the position. The Seek checkbox is there to prevent the position of the track from being accidentally changed whilst on air.

 

It is possible to scroll up to past items to see what was played, or scroll down to see what is going to be played in the future. You can do this by scrolling with the mouse wheel or using the up and down arrows to the right of the playout log.

 

 

You can click the Home button to return to the current item. The Home button has two states, underlined and not-underlined. When the Home button is underlined the playout log will automatically scroll with the current item. If you manually scroll away from the current item, the Home button will no longer be underlined and the playout log will stop automatically scrolling. After 5 minutes of inactivity the playout log will return 'Home'.

 

The Go To Time button can be used to navigate to a specific date and time in the log. This is useful if you wish to edit the log or record voice tracks for a future programme. This button will launch a window where you can choose the date and time.

 

A segue is the transitioning of one item into another item. The segue toggle switch is used to say whether an item transitions into the next.

 

The segue toggle switch changes between a green arrow and a red stop sign.

A green arrow indicates that the succeeding track will automatically play after this track. A red stop sign indicates that playout will stop after this track has finished. To resume playback, click the play button on the player or the master controls.

 

The Edit button allows you to fine tune the segue between the current, preceding and succeeding tracks. This will launch the segue editor.

 

For voice track items the edit button will be replaced by the Record button. This will launch the segue editor allowing you to record your voice track. Until a voice track is recorded, a voice track item will display a placeholder entry. This will not be loaded into a player and will be skipped if a voice track has not been recorded. You can change the length of the placeholder duration by clicking on the duration, by default this looks like [00:30].

 

Click the Bin/Trash button to soft delete a playout item from the log. Soft deleting will cause the playout engine to ignore the item but it will still remain in the log, should you wish to restore it.

 

Click the Restore button to restore a previously soft deleted playout item.

 

Hold the CTRL key to display the Delete button to hard delete the playout item from the log.

 

If the item is currently playing, the Eject button is shown. Clicking it will fade out the item and the next item will play if the segue option is .

 

If the item is marked as Protected, the Shield icon is shown. This prevents the item from being accidentally deleted. You may intentionally soft/hard delete a protected item by clicking the Ellipsis button (...). Protected items will not be dropped by Fixed Time Markers or soft deleted by the Auto Adjust feature.

 

Click the Ellipsis button to expand the context menu for the playout log item. Here it is possible to perform additional actions on the item such as Edit Segue, Delete or visit Web Links. Right-clicking a playout log item will also bring up the same menu.

 

The log contains headings for the hour for which the item is scheduled. Use this as a guide to schedule tracks in the future. Each hour shows how much the hour is currently over or under runnings. Each hour also features an Ellipsis button with additional options.

 

This can be used to import an hour from a playout log format, export an hour to PlayIt Playout Log format or a plain text format; or clear the hour completely. The import/export features are useful if you want to save a playlist and import this into another hour.

 

If the tempo of a track has been adjusted, it will be displayed next to the duration or remaining time.

 

In this example, +3% means the track has been sped up by 3%.

 

 

 

You can display more information about a particular track by clicking on the log item. The Out Cue, Intro, Album, Genre and Year are displayed on the left with the Comment field displayed on the right. If any field is too long to be displayed in the box you can hover over the text to display the full text.

 

Note: If the track was recently played the Last Played time is also displayed.

 

You can quickly navigate the playout log by selecting an item and then using the keyboard keys. The following keys can be used:

Up: Move the selection one item up.

Down: Move the selection one item down.

Page Up: Move the selection one page up.

Page Down: Move the selection one page down.

Home: Move the selection to the current item.

 

 

See QuickCarts.

The status of your internet broadcast. This plugin can be installled from the Plugin Gallery window.

This shows the user who is currently logged in. To log out, click the button and then click Log Out.

 

To filter the track list by track group, select the track group from the dropdown. The track list will show only tracks that exist in the selected track group. Track groups can be managed from Manage > Track Groups.

Use the search box to filter the track list. When text is entered into the search box the track list will show only track titles (Artist - Title) that contain the entered text. To clear the search click the . It is not possible to filter by duration.

 

The track list shows a list of tracks added to the system. Tracks in this list can be managed from Manage > Tracks. The list shows each track in the form Artist - Title with the duration in the second column. Click either column to sort by that column, click the column again to reverse the sort order. The list can be filtered using the search box or the Track Group selector above. It is possible to select the columns in this list by right-clicking a column and selecting Select Columns. This will allow you to select and reorder the columns using the Up and Down buttons.

 

On the track list, it is also possible to right-click a track item to view additional options such as Edit Track, Pre-Fade Listen and visit Web Links.

 

The track list can be resized by dragging the space to the left of the track list.

 

 

While Tracks are a fundamental playout log item type, you can also insert special items into the log. Simply drag and drop the box for the item type you want to insert into the playout log. You can click the down arrow icon to collapse this section to save space:

The onscreen clock shows the current date and time. The onscreen clock can also be configured to include two additional clocks, for example, countdown clocks. Right-click the clock and select Configure.

 

A window will be shown allowing you to select the type of clock to be shown in addition to changing the text colour.

 

Clock types that can be selected are:

Current Time: shows the current clock time

Until End of Hour: shows a countdown until the end of the current hour

Until Time in Hour: shows a countdown to a specific time within a hour. This can be useful if you show ends a few minutes before the top of the hour to account for commercials/advertisements.

Until Next Fixed Time Marker: shows a countdown to the start of the next fixed time marker. This can be useful to count down to the next break.

Until Next Stop: shows a countdown to the next time audio will stop playing. This is useful if you are playing multiple tracks in succession. Note that the playout engine only looks forward up to 5 hours so will display --:-- if audio will stop in the long-term future.

 

 

 

 

Switch the log scheduler ON to automatically schedule the playout log so that there are always items scheduled to play out.

 

Switch automation ON to automatically schedule the playout log and lock it so it cannot be changed to prevent accidental changes. Switching Automation ON will also switch on the Log Scheduler.

 

When Automation is switched on this message will be shown at the top of the playout log:

/

 

The master controls control the overall player status. Click the Play button to start the next item in the playout log. When the audio is playing the Play button will become a Play Next button which, when clicked, will advance to the next track. Click the Pause button to pause all playing players. Click the Stop button to fade out and stop all playing players.