That's day 3 (or is it 4?) of DigiPlay's deployment in STAR and there's still work to be done. There is sound being generated from the system, the touchscreen works (to an extent) and we can import CDs and single WAV files.
Still to come - touchscreen fully operational (a backport of a newer version of Xorg for multi-pointer support may help here), a full importer and making our soundcard work. Hang on, I said we were generating audio, what am I on about a sound card for? Well, we've got a card that we'll use for 3 different outputs to the mixer. 2 sound cards for digiplay doesn't quite cut it!
We should be properly operational in the near future. Then it's on to training our teams...
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Monday, 19 January 2009
Exams Over & Work Begins
Well that's it for another semester - exams are over and university work quientens off for a few weeks. However, I'm still busy as ever.
For example, I'm helping with two different radio stations and changes to their studios. One station is moving premises so a lot of work to be done (thankfully there's a team). The other wants to replace the playout system and change the studio layout. There's also a new mixer (their first actual broadcast mixer) to be installed as well.
It all kicks off with a meeting about a website tomorrow. No rest for the wicked eh?
For example, I'm helping with two different radio stations and changes to their studios. One station is moving premises so a lot of work to be done (thankfully there's a team). The other wants to replace the playout system and change the studio layout. There's also a new mixer (their first actual broadcast mixer) to be installed as well.
It all kicks off with a meeting about a website tomorrow. No rest for the wicked eh?
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
That Elusive Little Bug
Every project over a couple of lines long will have bugs. Some even have that little bug that just causes you no end of misery trying to fix. AllDay DJ 2 had one of these. The odd bit is it's a bug in a part of the system very few people use so didn't get reported until recently.
So the bug itself causing a lot of misery. Well, AllDay DJ ducks audio when sweepers or voice tracks are played over intros and outros to tracks. However, if the sweeper finished before the end of the outro it never faded back up again!
This made it sound awful when a customer was using the feature for an automated weather forecast. How? The intro is played then ducks down for the forecast to return to full volume for the sponsor line. If it doesn't fade back up - you've got issues!
After a while going round in circles trying to hunt down the bug, the fix ended up being a two-liner! Go figure, eh!
So the bug itself causing a lot of misery. Well, AllDay DJ ducks audio when sweepers or voice tracks are played over intros and outros to tracks. However, if the sweeper finished before the end of the outro it never faded back up again!
This made it sound awful when a customer was using the feature for an automated weather forecast. How? The intro is played then ducks down for the forecast to return to full volume for the sponsor line. If it doesn't fade back up - you've got issues!
After a while going round in circles trying to hunt down the bug, the fix ended up being a two-liner! Go figure, eh!
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
A Working Holiday
As per student tradition, my holiday was not actually a holiday. Working more hours over the holiday period has been the norm for the last 3 years.
However, the difference this year is I actually like my job. So, I'd better explain what I've been doing. Breakfast radio. It's a simple as that.
I've spent the last week or so covering for the usual presenter and basically having a lot of fun. It turns out weekdays are far more fast paced - 2 news bullitens per hour, traffic & travel as well as the usual "What's On" guide. Plus the golden hour eats up an hour of programming.
The period also saw myself bringing in the bells on air and being the only live show on Boxing Day. So to say I've done a lot of work is a little bit of an understatement. However, it has been far better than handling customer complaints and queues all day!
However, the difference this year is I actually like my job. So, I'd better explain what I've been doing. Breakfast radio. It's a simple as that.
I've spent the last week or so covering for the usual presenter and basically having a lot of fun. It turns out weekdays are far more fast paced - 2 news bullitens per hour, traffic & travel as well as the usual "What's On" guide. Plus the golden hour eats up an hour of programming.
The period also saw myself bringing in the bells on air and being the only live show on Boxing Day. So to say I've done a lot of work is a little bit of an understatement. However, it has been far better than handling customer complaints and queues all day!
Wednesday, 24 December 2008
AllDay DJ - Some Progress
[caption id="attachment_112" align="aligncenter" width="564" caption="A screenshot of the in-development playout system."]
[/caption]
As some of you may have cottoned on to, there are two main strands to
AllDay DJ. The first being version 2, the current release. This has a
few bugs and version 2.3 is almost ready for release (it should be
available in the next few day). It brings a bug fix for weather VTs,
"drag and drop" player, a fully revamped database manager (it now works
in much the same way as the search system), move to prepared statements
(hopefully more secure, etc.), Winamp DSP support.
Quite a lot for a minor release! But all should be available soon (I just need to package it up correctly).
There is also progess on AllDay DJ 3 (the planned successor to AllDay DJ 2). This version will see a nicer database backend (it's based on NHibernate and thus can sit on top of a number of DBMS systems), proper multi-threading (slightly more overhead but properly makes use of multi-core systems), cleaner GUI, users (and associated audio walls), and hopefully much more.
Just to temp you, I've attached a screenshot of the development version of AllDay DJ 3 (click on it to see the full version). Though I would stress that this software is well away from release at the moment.
[/caption]As some of you may have cottoned on to, there are two main strands to
AllDay DJ. The first being version 2, the current release. This has a
few bugs and version 2.3 is almost ready for release (it should be
available in the next few day). It brings a bug fix for weather VTs,
"drag and drop" player, a fully revamped database manager (it now works
in much the same way as the search system), move to prepared statements
(hopefully more secure, etc.), Winamp DSP support.
Quite a lot for a minor release! But all should be available soon (I just need to package it up correctly).
There is also progess on AllDay DJ 3 (the planned successor to AllDay DJ 2). This version will see a nicer database backend (it's based on NHibernate and thus can sit on top of a number of DBMS systems), proper multi-threading (slightly more overhead but properly makes use of multi-core systems), cleaner GUI, users (and associated audio walls), and hopefully much more.
Just to temp you, I've attached a screenshot of the development version of AllDay DJ 3 (click on it to see the full version). Though I would stress that this software is well away from release at the moment.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Playout Systems on Linux
Look in most radio studios, you'll find some sort of playout system. It makes sense in this day in age - low cost overnight, voice tracking, less errors (usually). However, you will find most systems running on the Windows operating system.
There is a good reason for this: why force change. Windows isn't exactly unstable when doing this sort of job. Also, take it from me, developing audio apps to work cross-os is a pain the the ass. This is especially when you want to layer tracks or use more than one sound card.
STAR is in a bit of an unusual position for a radio station. We operate Linux boxes (namely Debian) with no copy of Windows in sight. So, with most playout systems on Windows, what do we make use of?
Well, until recently, it's been an in-house botch job. This has taught us one lesson, don't trust Javasound to do the job.
With Java written off, we have a number of options: Campcaster, Rivendell, Digiplay and a Windows system running on Wine.
Starting with Campcaster. This was the first option we tried with STAR but it proved to have a few too many issues for us. For one, it doesn't log tracks played in live assist mode. Oops, bit of a show stopper there for an online radio station. Secondly, the configuration options are a little too exposed. You don't want people tinkering with settings on a radio station!
Rivendell is the other big Linux option. It's certainly aimed at the pro end of the market supporting a full scheduler and powerful playout system. Possibly even a little too much for us. It was actually decided against for STAR for two reasons: the MySQL requirement (we use PostgreSQL and according to the ITS liason will never see MySQL on the server) and the work required to make the scheduler tick. We're a volunteer organisation with a high tunover (students only stay for 4 years) so any system requiring a lot of work is not an option.
Wine is the Windows compatability system for Linux. It brings the ability to run Windows programs to the Linux desktop. Great, you may think, for letting us use the playout systems on our computers. Not quite. I could only find two playout systems that worked on Wine: StationPlaylist and mAirList. Both seemed to work OK but the cost factor (for StationPlaylist) and stability (we're relying on a compatability layer here) wrote off this option.
Now for the last on the list: Digiplay. This is Warwick University's in house job (not written in Java though). It has the benefits of being simple to use and sporting a web interface (I'm not sure of the merits of this but oh well). However, there are a few issues. Sue (the automation part) seems to simply be random select at the moment and there is no mass importer (apparently RAW just rip off of CDs). The last issue could be fixed by adapting our in-house import script.
Well, the working Linux playout system seems not to exist, well not for a small vountary station. Every option seems to have some sort of serious issue, whether legal (Campcaster), complexity (Rivendell), missing features (Digiplay) or technical (Wine).
I don't really see the commercial software developers really taking Linux seriously. Let's be honest, it's not really a big issue for most in this market. However, we need to choose a system. So what did we choose:
Digiplay.
Ah well, we'd better get cracking on the scripts and fixes to make it do what we need.
EDIT: Clarified the Digiplay and Wine issues. We didn't run Digiplay on Wine.
There is a good reason for this: why force change. Windows isn't exactly unstable when doing this sort of job. Also, take it from me, developing audio apps to work cross-os is a pain the the ass. This is especially when you want to layer tracks or use more than one sound card.
STAR is in a bit of an unusual position for a radio station. We operate Linux boxes (namely Debian) with no copy of Windows in sight. So, with most playout systems on Windows, what do we make use of?
Well, until recently, it's been an in-house botch job. This has taught us one lesson, don't trust Javasound to do the job.
With Java written off, we have a number of options: Campcaster, Rivendell, Digiplay and a Windows system running on Wine.
Starting with Campcaster. This was the first option we tried with STAR but it proved to have a few too many issues for us. For one, it doesn't log tracks played in live assist mode. Oops, bit of a show stopper there for an online radio station. Secondly, the configuration options are a little too exposed. You don't want people tinkering with settings on a radio station!
Rivendell is the other big Linux option. It's certainly aimed at the pro end of the market supporting a full scheduler and powerful playout system. Possibly even a little too much for us. It was actually decided against for STAR for two reasons: the MySQL requirement (we use PostgreSQL and according to the ITS liason will never see MySQL on the server) and the work required to make the scheduler tick. We're a volunteer organisation with a high tunover (students only stay for 4 years) so any system requiring a lot of work is not an option.
Wine is the Windows compatability system for Linux. It brings the ability to run Windows programs to the Linux desktop. Great, you may think, for letting us use the playout systems on our computers. Not quite. I could only find two playout systems that worked on Wine: StationPlaylist and mAirList. Both seemed to work OK but the cost factor (for StationPlaylist) and stability (we're relying on a compatability layer here) wrote off this option.
Now for the last on the list: Digiplay. This is Warwick University's in house job (not written in Java though). It has the benefits of being simple to use and sporting a web interface (I'm not sure of the merits of this but oh well). However, there are a few issues. Sue (the automation part) seems to simply be random select at the moment and there is no mass importer (apparently RAW just rip off of CDs). The last issue could be fixed by adapting our in-house import script.
Well, the working Linux playout system seems not to exist, well not for a small vountary station. Every option seems to have some sort of serious issue, whether legal (Campcaster), complexity (Rivendell), missing features (Digiplay) or technical (Wine).
I don't really see the commercial software developers really taking Linux seriously. Let's be honest, it's not really a big issue for most in this market. However, we need to choose a system. So what did we choose:
Digiplay.
Ah well, we'd better get cracking on the scripts and fixes to make it do what we need.
EDIT: Clarified the Digiplay and Wine issues. We didn't run Digiplay on Wine.
Saturday, 6 December 2008
AllDay DJ to get Winamp DSP Support
The audio library AllDay DJ is built on top of has support for the Winamp DSP plug-ins. In fact a number of other systems built on the same library take advantage of this.
Basic support has been added to the system and I will be testing it on-air soon. The benefit to the end user is a wider choice of audio processing options.
I'm currently testing it with "Tomass Limiter" and it sounds cracking. Though there is a slight issue on the segues that I hope to clear up quickly.
If it works with the oddcast DSP, that could provide streaming support with minimal effort!
With a number of bug fixes, minor changes (drag and drop, cue in player), customers will be offered the option to upgrade to version 2.3 for free upon release.
Basic support has been added to the system and I will be testing it on-air soon. The benefit to the end user is a wider choice of audio processing options.
I'm currently testing it with "Tomass Limiter" and it sounds cracking. Though there is a slight issue on the segues that I hope to clear up quickly.
If it works with the oddcast DSP, that could provide streaming support with minimal effort!
With a number of bug fixes, minor changes (drag and drop, cue in player), customers will be offered the option to upgrade to version 2.3 for free upon release.
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