Automate 24/7 Stream for a scheduled Playlist

bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
EndoSkull said:
I was under the impression that it allowed me to create a schedule of content run it and then allow obs to stream it.
My use for it was to create content revolved around different builders - patch news - and the in-between go to an audio-only mode

I'm getting tired - but I thought based on your demos - I could set up content with both video - still images and text.
Thanks
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Hi. I was shutting down my computer last night at 11 so was tired too. I'm an old guy, so please define "builders", "patch news" and whether the goto audio-only mode means you wish to shut down the automated program, break in and just talk. Once I figure out what you are doing, I'll have a better chance at seeing if there is a fit.

I would not hold my breath for a release date. I have a few IOUs and keep finding End case / corner bugs. It's a big program, so lots of testing to do. I find that as I try to add a new program type to my list, (example - The Lucy Show), I have to add new features.

An example is that many videos have sound levels that vary a lot, some down at -15db. In the filename metadata, I've added a volume metadata type called "VOL". So a filename might be "[DATE=20211001,VOL=-15,TITLE = Lucy builds a Shower].mp4. I use this to adjust the volume of the video to come out at -3db, so that all the videos I play have the same sound level. For -15, I add 12 db of volume gain to the obs source to make it louder and end up at -3 peak.

So am discovering new requirements as I go along.

Anyway, please describe your needs in a little greater detail, Bill
 
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EndoSkull

EndoSkull

New Member
Okay, let me try to explain it by making something up :)

Imagine a youtube channel with a live stream setup as a 24/hr news program with music breaks.
News and information about a game would run on the hour
In between news and music, there would be pre-recorded videos that would run (possibly at certain times of the day)
As the week progressed there would be a certain time slot where a new episode/video would be added to the programming list.

based on your lucy demo here is what I picture as content formats:

- News and Information - would feature a video and possibly screenshots that would be displayed to the right
- Music - audio would be played with various screenshots or collage videos taking up the screen - possibly with an up next banner
- Episodes - episodes would likely be full screen - but it would be nice to inset the video with PNG image to allow information for donating or channel info, etc. With the video playing within the transparent portion of the png or something along those lines.
- New episodes - Not sure how your system works - but it would be nice to add a new video(s) into time slots and click update without having to restart the currently playing content.

Anyway, this is just random thoughts - nothing solid just how I thought your system kind of worked and what I was looking to try to do.
Hope this helps
-Endo
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
EndoSkull said:
Okay, let me try to explain it by making something up :)

Imagine a youtube channel with a live stream setup as a 24/hr news program with music breaks.
News and information about a game would run on the hour
In between news and music, there would be pre-recorded videos that would run (possibly at certain times of the day)
As the week progressed there would be a certain time slot where a new episode/video would be added to the programming list.

based on your lucy demo here is what I picture as content formats:

- News and Information - would feature a video and possibly screenshots that would be displayed to the right
- Music - audio would be played with various screenshots or collage videos taking up the screen - possibly with an up next banner
- Episodes - episodes would likely be full screen - but it would be nice to inset the video with PNG image to allow information for donating or channel info, etc. With the video playing within the transparent portion of the png or something along those lines.
- New episodes - Not sure how your system works - but it would be nice to add a new video(s) into time slots and click update without having to restart the currently playing content.

Anyway, this is just random thoughts - nothing solid just how I thought your system kind of worked and what I was looking to try to do.
Hope this helps
-Endo
Click to expand...
Hi again. Question: How familiar are you with working with obs and designing screens? Also, this is a windows 7 program . Are you a Mac person?
 
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EndoSkull

EndoSkull

New Member
bcoyle said:
Hi again. Question: How familiar are you with working with obs and designing screens?
Click to expand...

Not sure I understand the question.
If you mean do I know how to use the various features to build out scenes by using what OBS calls sources with elements such as video - game capture - text - and various plugins - it's all pretty straightforward - So I guess I'd say I'm very familiar?

Before I came upon your thread here is as looking at the Advanced Scene Switcher - as I noticed it has an ability to use system time - but - when I saw this thread where you were building (I think) a scheduler - I was more excited than trying to force the Advanced Scene Switcher to accommodate my use case.
-Endo
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
EndoSkull said:
Not sure I understand the question.
If you mean do I know how to use the various features to build out scenes by using what OBS calls sources with elements such as video - game capture - text - and various plugins - it's all pretty straightforward - So I guess I'd say I'm very familiar?

Before I came upon your thread here is as looking at the Advanced Scene Switcher - as I noticed it has an ability to use system time - but - when I saw this thread where you were building (I think) a scheduler - I was more excited than trying to force the Advanced Scene Switcher to accommodate my use case.
-Endo
Click to expand...
Ok, Just wanted to be able to talk to you as a scene designer, not a newbe.

Are the episodes random or must they be of your choosing? Also is the news segment changed every hour. i.e. do you generate a news file very often. Is it a video or text?
 
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EndoSkull

EndoSkull

New Member
Likely news would change only a couple of times a week - most of the content would be setup to be more static - while adding new content here and there - hopefully to build out a week worth of content with only major changes in news and possibly a few "spotlight videos" which might highlight a specific content creator etc.
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
EndoSkull said:
Likely news would change only a couple of times a week - most of the content would be setup to be more static - while adding new content here and there - hopefully to build out a week worth of content with only major changes in news and possibly a few "spotlight videos" which might highlight a specific content creator etc.
Click to expand...
Why I asked about your news being text or video is that if you have text on a screen and then use an editor on the txt file, It will be automatically be updated in obs, where a video may have a different length if overridden.
 
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EndoSkull

EndoSkull

New Member
bcoyle said:
Why I asked about your news being text or video is that if you have text on a screen and then use an editor on the txt file, It will be automatically be updated in obs, where a video may have a different length if overridden.
Click to expand...

Right, that makes sense.
I'm thinking all my content would be video and possibly a mix of images and audio (if possible) I really don't know exactly how your system is working and the workflow - So I'm just making mine up :-P
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
EndoSkull said:
Right, that makes sense.
I'm thinking all my content would be video and possibly a mix of images and audio (if possible) I really don't know exactly how your system is working and the workflow - So I'm just making mine up :-P
Click to expand...
As I said before, the app is targeted on a public access tv model which means you have tons of pre-recorded material and you use that.

I guess, i've have to break down and do a write-up or at least the start of a manual. It's different than any playlist program, you have ever seen. Basically it's template driven and makes up the slot programs on the fly at the time they are run. I can take a directory of I love lucy shows and tell my composer to create 200 shows starting now at 9am with 2 shows in a row and make 2 more the next day and so on until you do 200 shows which is 100 day in the future , one at 9am and one at 930 for a hundred days. It will create different shows each time and if desired do it in episode order. It create 200 files with info about the program. This allows me to do next up. Each filename has metadata in it. So a file might look like: "[EP=0001, ....].mp4" or "[EP=12e09,...]" , the last meaning season 12, episode 9. It can be anything in alpha order.

So I use the filename for a lot of things. I have a metadata type called TOD or time of day. The idea being to maybe have adult level stuff after 10pm. Your need doesn't match my public access model, but there are ways around it using TOD.
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
EndoSkull said:
Right, that makes sense.
I'm thinking all my content would be video and possibly a mix of images and audio (if possible) I really don't know exactly how your system is working and the workflow - So I'm just making mine up :-P
Click to expand...
Been playing with file structures to see how I'd handle your problem. People giving me examples of their application helps me to make my app more capable. Thank you
 
EndoSkull

EndoSkull

New Member
I just spent a couple days installing different playouts - Sofie - RedCast - Folderplaylist - CMD (I think was the name) (all using Casper CG server) and I also installed the one from the front of this thread OBS Scheduler & of course Advanced Scene Switcher.

After having had a heck of a time getting Sofie installed and the others - they all turned out to be too geared toward broadcast TV and were a pain in the butt to setup (sofie especially)

Also most if not all the interfaces were created by programmers so they pretty much look like someone threw up the interface after having an all-night bender.

So after all that I stumbled across RadioBoss - which as its name implies is for creating a radio broadcast playlist -it appears to have recently added Video output and after testing it works perfectly with OBS game capture - and I'm able to schedule everything as I wanted. Ads -Jingles- Scheduling - it's all laid out with a clean inteface.

For overlays I'm using ADVANCED OBS SCENE Switcher (need more testing) - But this combo appears to be the easiest solution currently available. Just thought I'd share my findings.
-Endo
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
EndoSkull said:
I just spent a couple days installing different playouts - Sofie - RedCast - Folderplaylist - CMD (I think was the name) (all using Casper CG server) and I also installed the one from the front of this thread OBS Scheduler & of course Advanced Scene Switcher.

After having had a heck of a time getting Sofie installed and the others - they all turned out to be too geared toward broadcast TV and were a pain in the butt to setup (sofie especially)

Also most if not all the interfaces were created by programmers so they pretty much look like someone threw up the interface after having an all-night bender.

So after all that I stumbled across RadioBoss - which as its name implies is for creating a radio broadcast playlist -it appears to have recently added Video output and after testing it works perfectly with OBS game capture - and I'm able to schedule everything as I wanted. Ads -Jingles- Scheduling - it's all laid out with a clean inteface.

For overlays I'm using ADVANCED OBS SCENE Switcher (need more testing) - But this combo appears to be the easiest solution currently available. Just thought I'd share my findings.
-Endo
Click to expand...
Hi Endo. Thanks so much for this input. I've heard of radio boss before and knew that it was a radio scheduler , and I think I heard about the video but not sure. If this works as well as you say, this would be great news for everyone. I started the other day to record a demo of the current state of my program. I've found that hand waving doesn't really cut it when trying to explain it to others.. My first cut at the video turned out making me look like I was half asleep. LOL. I'm an ex programmer and know how hard it is to make a good interface. Basically since I'm trying to start a public access station, I've written the program for all the things I want, specially to make my life easier. I've always told everyone to not wait for me, specially if you have something that works, even if not optimal.

One of the problems that I had with your design was the requirement to edit the schedule without interfering/stopping the current playing program. I did work out that I could do this with links (.lnk). Using shortcut-links (my program understand links), I could get my program to find the real filename, get it going and then you could add or destroy links without problems.

I mentioned using TOD as time of day metadata tag. This is how I planed on using it. Essentially I would have a file system that had directories with TOD in the name. When I created the templates, I would refer to one of them. When actually "PLAYING" the scheduled program, I would navigate through the directory tree, using the TOD to find the valid contents for the current run time. If the time was 9am, it would use the contents of the directory marked with TOD=0900. This directory might have the title of the program for 9am in a text file. In obs a label can be read from a file. So the same templates could create 200 different shows using all the correct time based titles and programs. Of course, there would be a TOD directory for every hour or even half hour. Anyways, that's how I was going to do it. Push one button and create the schedule for the next year. Just change links as you added different videos next week/real time. The "RAW" directory would have the real videos in them. Cool!

1623644351479.png
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
EndoSkull said:
I just spent a couple days installing different playouts - Sofie - RedCast - Folderplaylist - CMD (I think was the name) (all using Casper CG server) and I also installed the one from the front of this thread OBS Scheduler & of course Advanced Scene Switcher.

After having had a heck of a time getting Sofie installed and the others - they all turned out to be too geared toward broadcast TV and were a pain in the butt to setup (sofie especially)

Also most if not all the interfaces were created by programmers so they pretty much look like someone threw up the interface after having an all-night bender.

So after all that I stumbled across RadioBoss - which as its name implies is for creating a radio broadcast playlist -it appears to have recently added Video output and after testing it works perfectly with OBS game capture - and I'm able to schedule everything as I wanted. Ads -Jingles- Scheduling - it's all laid out with a clean inteface.

For overlays I'm using ADVANCED OBS SCENE Switcher (need more testing) - But this combo appears to be the easiest solution currently available. Just thought I'd share my findings.
-Endo
Click to expand...
Hi Endo. Took a look at radio boss and it is powerful. Glad it's working out for you. I can see how you would automate videos to run at certain times on a 24/7 basis, but how do you plan to automate scene-switcher over a week or more?
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
Freedoms Corner said:
This place was booming a few weeks ago. Everyone still alive?
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Well I'm still here, but you are right, people don't seem that interested. Maybe they just come in waves! Have found that at least half leave if we have no solution for them (at this time). Some have already found a solution that works for them and are kind enough to tell us their experience, giving everyone more options. The 24/7s are actually a minority compared to gamers and video djs. This forum is great for tricks, tips and some of the clever apps, that people have contributed. One thing I thought of the other day was education. If high school/colleges had a good app that they could use so that students could take a course in creating/running a 24/7 station, that would be a worthy application. I know, I have talked to you before, but it's been a while.
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
We are all interested in 24/7. But we know that that requires a lot of material to keep from repeating yourself. What do YOU think about creating a group/network/archive of material that we can use for fill material. For example, local basketball games from around the country, travel videos, local community events (even if not your community). Sort of mutual support. I realize that two people in the same area, might not want to share hard earned material, but most of us are separated. Any thoughts?
 
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