Automate 24/7 Stream for a scheduled Playlist

bcoyle

Member
I am looking forward to this solution also.
I'm the only one that I know of, that is working on anything close to this. I would love to hear from anyone else doing this with obs. I always ask, what are you using now and what do you like it about it or not. Sometimes, I use the these answers to make my app better and more flexible.
 
Wondering if someone could help me.

I have a 24/7 stream, and simply want to divide it into 1 minute slots synced to UTC time. So the first .mp4 plays at 00:00 UTC, second at 00:01 UTC, etc. But a mix of video and static JPGs.

Thought the image slideshow feature would work perfectly until I realized it doesn't support video. If it did I could just sync it to 00:00 UTC manually and let it run.

The VLC playlist would only work if every video was exactly 1 minute, and I would also have to convert all the static images to 1 minute videos as well which is annoying.

Seems like my needs are super simple but can't be done without using expensive automation software, which would be overkill anyways. Anyone know of there's a decent solution?
 

bcoyle

Member
Wondering if someone could help me.

I have a 24/7 stream, and simply want to divide it into 1 minute slots synced to UTC time. So the first .mp4 plays at 00:00 UTC, second at 00:01 UTC, etc. But a mix of video and static JPGs.

Thought the image slideshow feature would work perfectly until I realized it doesn't support video. If it did I could just sync it to 00:00 UTC manually and let it run.

The VLC playlist would only work if every video was exactly 1 minute, and I would also have to convert all the static images to 1 minute videos as well which is annoying.

Seems like my needs are super simple but can't be done without using expensive automation software, which would be overkill anyways. Anyone know of there's a decent solution?
Can I ask "Why 1 minute intervals" ?
 

bcoyle

Member
The stream is essentially a clock. So photos and videos need to be equal time and synced to UTC.
Hard to get videos and slideshow to come out at exactly one minute. jpegs are a little easlier than movies. If its a clock, do you have to start it "EXACTLY" on the minute tick, or on the minute mark +- some amount of seconds????
 
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TVEngineer

New Member
Having been in the broadcast and TV production world for many years I know that there already exists free software to do this task and it is quite complicated. If you are considering taking on the task of creating code you may want to take a look at one of the most popular existing freeware tools used for radio and TV. https://openbroadcaster.com Programming for TV is done to the nearest second with blackout points for commercials. When content is submitted to the network it is accompanied with a timecode list for commercial insertion points. Each network may specify different requirements for content length. Typically, 30 min show is about 22 mins and 1hr show is about 44 mins.
 

bcoyle

Member
Having been in the broadcast and TV production world for many years I know that there already exists free software to do this task and it is quite complicated. If you are considering taking on the task of creating code you may want to take a look at one of the most popular existing freeware tools used for radio and TV. https://openbroadcaster.com Programming for TV is done to the nearest second with blackout points for commercials. When content is submitted to the network it is accompanied with a time code list for commercial insertion points. Each network may specify different requirements for content length. Typically, 30 min show is about 22 mins and 1 hr show is about 44 mins.
Thank you for your reply. I started my project during covid because I needed to fill in my time. I'm a ex- test engineer/programmer with a lot of experience. I did underestimate the time required, the curse of the programmer. What I'm trying to do is a little different than a typical playlist and am not trying to duplicate big professional software, no single person has the time to do that. Also as you said, there is plenty of free stuff out there. Without repeating myself, you might want to go back thru the thread to see what I am doing. You might find it interesting.

Think "automated" public access station. ( I was a volunteer at our local station before it got de-funded).

My app already does commercial insertion, but currently it breaks in without knowing insertion points, just a start offset programmed in the template. I have thought about how to use a time code type of list, but down on my priority list. It can do time of day commercial programming whee you put your commercials in folders labeled with TOD info in the folder name from which it selects it's random commercials, or by a folder with a sponsors files

Another item on my list is electronic program guide. My app can insert next program coming up type of segments already, it is self-editing (self compositing). Think of small organizations like libraries,churches, public access over iptv, small scale, 1 man operations.

By the way, when I speak of templates, I mean "GENERIC" templates where a single template can describe many types of programs and when used on 100 different files will generate a hundred different scheduled programs or recordings.
 
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petjo10

New Member
I found the Advanced scene switcher plugin, but It doesn't do it on the time but the number of seconds you specify.
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bcoyle

Member
You know , the little things get you. One of the annoying things about scheduling videos is that unless the videos have a good fade in and out, you get very sharp - unpleasant transitions when you just turn them on. I've added a smooth dynamic fade-in and out of each video. It's harder than you think. There is a new MOVE filter that is pretty cool. It lets you ramp a value in another filter. So it's possible to ramp from visible to black. I did it a little differently and am sending commands directly from my app to a color correction filter to control opacity. I have to work on the same thing with audio fade-in-out.
 
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dmemphis

Member
Can someone describe what featureset they are looking for in such an addition? What are the different things you want to be able to do?

Minimal play list automation lets you create the playlist of files, showing the start times and
duration for each entry in the list. There would be the ability to set a specific play time for a
entry and the idea is you can have your files play at specific times. The time of day might
also include day of week too, so that a week of day specific material can be prepared.
You have to be able to modify the play list on the fly without impacting the currently running
material. One thing I have not seen done well anywhere is if you have to restart the player,
it actually jumps into the middle of the scheduled program at a reasonably close point it
should be at- at the time. Systems I've looked at fall apart here and just start the scheduled
program at its beginning and it gets cut off at the end with the next scheduled event.
If you pm me, I can send you links of some playout programs to look at.
 

bcoyle

Member
Minimal play list automation lets you create the playlist of files, showing the start times and
duration for each entry in the list. There would be the ability to set a specific play time for a
entry and the idea is you can have your files play at specific times. The time of day might
also include day of week too, so that a week of day specific material can be prepared.
You have to be able to modify the play list on the fly without impacting the currently running
material. One thing I have not seen done well anywhere is if you have to restart the player,
it actually jumps into the middle of the scheduled program at a reasonably close point it
should be at- at the time. Systems I've looked at fall apart here and just start the scheduled
program at its beginning and it gets cut off at the end with the next scheduled event.
If you pm me, I can send you links of some playout programs to look at.
Hello - Thank you for your comments. I've been working on a automated broadcast program for more than a year. I've had a some negative comments, the gist being : "why bother, there are plenty of cheap supported commercial playlist programs out there, why dup the effort to just get a free one?". I actually agree. The difficulty is that it takes a lot of time to develop so complex a program, I know. So the effort, if desired, is to develop something different, that actually does things, other programs can't and that can add value to the obs community. This is what, I'm trying to do. I was a volunteer at a public access station that got defunded. I inherited all the historical programs and want ed to not lose the local history. Being an ex programmer, decided that I would write a public access type of program. This program uses the compositing capabilities of OBS to create (and of course schedule) flexible programs using templates of how a program should be designed, sort of a automated video editor. It is designed to handle a tv like scheduled programs, ie 1/2 hour, 1 hour etc, but can handle random time videos as a playlist. Without repeating myself, you might want to read my messages in this stream. The following is 2 examples of template driven videos, one is a music video, the labels used in the song come from meta data captured from the actual file name and matched up with text labels in the obs scene (automatically). The other is a SD program with bio info and a slide show in addition. The scheduler not only plays video blocks but also programs overlays in each block as well. Also does autofill to flesh out to a standard length. It can schedule as far ahead as you want, ie years.
[ Please tell me about what you are doing.
 

bcoyle

Member
One thing that hit me in developing a timed automation app or even a playlist version is that it is hard to make it scheduled and come out to the correct times. ie. if a video is played at 9:00am and is 3 minutes long, there is overhead in getting everything started. It's really apparent when scrubbing to a inpoint. You expect the video to be outpoint - inpoint, but if it takes the cpu 3 seconds to scrub, you are already 3 seconds late in your schedule. AND the delay might be longer for slower cpus and also slower for longer scrubs. It's no problem in a playlist where you run one after another, because you don't care about slip, unless you want a tv guide to tell people when to expect the video. If the next video is scheduled for 9:03:00, it might actually start at 9:03:03 and slip for every additional scheduled video. If you have 15 - 3 minutes videos in a hour with inpoint, you might slip 3*15 seconds every hour, i.e 45 seconds per hour and 24*45 seconds in a day. Any ideas?
 

bcoyle

Member
QUESTIONS:
How many of you out there, want to have a 24/7 broadcast?
How many already do it?
If you are already live, what are you using?
What kind of 24/7 streams would people bother with watching and what you might consider important?
What purpose would it serve for you? What would you broadcast?
Why not just upload a bunch of videos to youtube and let the users pick what they want, instead of doing
the TV thing (24/7 stream)?
Would a hybrid approach work, half live and half pre-recorded (maybe fill) between live casts?
Is it important to have "scheduled" time slots?

I can see "local sports channels", "Church Broadcasts", "Cable regional today shows/advertising" - like "tahoe today","local school student broadcast and training", "social issues", "country centric injustice", "Local talent open mic/ demos/showcasing new talent', compositing videos for later replay. What would you do to make it worth while for you to do the task of scheduling, picking out what to play and when to play it?

Would you do this for free or is this a business model, i.e. advertising?

Would you want a tv guide for your schedule? How would you get this info into a users hands. Promos during the broadcast, web sites, email?

Are you already using OBS?

If you are already broadcasting, how much work do you put in every week for each channel? More than 1?

How much work is it to get material? (Takes a lot for 24/7 without repeating too much). Where do you get it?

I'm asking these questions for a number of reasons. Mostly because there is a small group of people using OBS/ streaming and I want to know who is interested and what they want. I was thinking of starting a new discussion for people that want to share their problems in this arena, maybe tips/tricks, maybe discord? This takes bandwidth, so wanted to know if any of this is worthwhile?

I know a lot of this discussion thread is about what sort of features people want in a app, but it's just as important to know what they will use it for. OBS and any automation is just a tool: a carpenter can use a hammer(tool) but a architect builds/designs a house.

Thanks for listening.
 

Laczkó

New Member
QUESTIONS:
How many of you out there, want to have a 24/7 broadcast?
How many already do it?
If you are already live, what are you using?
What kind of 24/7 streams would people bother with watching and what you might consider important?
What purpose would it serve for you? What would you broadcast?
Why not just upload a bunch of videos to youtube and let the users pick what they want, instead of doing
the TV thing (24/7 stream)?
Would a hybrid approach work, half live and half pre-recorded (maybe fill) between live casts?
Is it important to have "scheduled" time slots?

I can see "local sports channels", "Church Broadcasts", "Cable regional today shows/advertising" - like "tahoe today","local school student broadcast and training", "social issues", "country centric injustice", "Local talent open mic/ demos/showcasing new talent', compositing videos for later replay. What would you do to make it worth while for you to do the task of scheduling, picking out what to play and when to play it?

Would you do this for free or is this a business model, i.e. advertising?

Would you want a tv guide for your schedule? How would you get this info into a users hands. Promos during the broadcast, web sites, email?

Are you already using OBS?

If you are already broadcasting, how much work do you put in every week for each channel? More than 1?

How much work is it to get material? (Takes a lot for 24/7 without repeating too much). Where do you get it?

I'm asking these questions for a number of reasons. Mostly because there is a small group of people using OBS/ streaming and I want to know who is interested and what they want. I was thinking of starting a new discussion for people that want to share their problems in this arena, maybe tips/tricks, maybe discord? This takes bandwidth, so wanted to know if any of this is worthwhile?

I know a lot of this discussion thread is about what sort of features people want in a app, but it's just as important to know what they will use it for. OBS and any automation is just a tool: a carpenter can use a hammer(tool) but a architect builds/designs a house.

Thanks for listening.
Some answers to your questions:

I'm working at a very small local TV channel. We're using a very old software (from 2002) called InfoCaster for playout, but now testing a new computer with OBS. (If you're not familiar with InfoCaster, don't try to search for it! We tried to find them, because we thought it's a good idea to get an up to date version of their software that meets today's expectations of broadcasting, but now there is not even any sign of somewhen that company made playout software.) Nowadays most of industrial standard playout softwares are costs thousands of dollars (per year) what is way more than what fits into the budget of a little eastern-european television, and ironically OBS (with Advanced Scene Switcher) is better in automation, than the commercial softwares (however OBS not a software without compromises too — more about that later).

I think the only advantage of 24/7 (or not continous, but scheduled, regular, frequent) broadcast over constantly available, searchable content is the capability of break through information bubbles. I mean you can find everything on the internet, but you will find only what you search for. So maybe there are many things that would interests you, but you don't even know that those are exists, so you never search for it. But if you follow a channel, that channel can provide such informations for you, so I think the target audience of a streaming/broadcasting channel should be the people who are open for completely new things and the content of these channels should be present various, little-known things in an easily understandable, no prior knowledge required way. This type of content obviously doesn't really work with a one person staff, as it only can reveal topics that is in that one person's information bubble, this require a team. As a local television, we try to find small, exciting local communities, peoples, upcoming events and present them in our programs. It takes three full time job and a few people who help us occasionally to produce all the material for our broadcast, also we get a small part of our programs in broadcast ready state from other creator teams. All these together covering all the tasks at our channel from discover topics to shooting, edit videos, to put everything into the playout software, maintance of equipment, manage YouTube channel. Higlighting from this the need for time to feed the daily programs into the playout software is take about 20-30 minutes. Now it seems OBS can reduce it to max. 15 minutes when we will start using it in live.

We're upload a part of our programs to YouTube after them were broadcasted, but some of our programs quickly losing actuality so those can get most of the views in them scheduled playing time. Some other programs are not own produced and we don't have rights to share them constantly, we get them just for broadcast.

Currently we don't have live programs, but there were many years ago. We have the technical capabilities for it and we want to keep it in order to a live program would only depend on decision, not on technical capabilities. Also a live like recording (when everything is done as would be a live broadcast except broadcasting it) require live capable equipment and it could speed up the workflow of the production.

We don't have real 24/7 playout, we have only 3 to 4 hours of programs a day, in the rest of the time we broadcasting photonews (I'm not sure if it's the right english word for it, basically it's a slideshow with advertisements and information of public interest on the pictures). Because of this program structure we don't have to worry of the small delays caused by processing times when changing files on playout, however I think it's much smaller problem than you presented. The three second is unrealistically long time. I've tried OBS on a lot different computer with very different computing power, but I never experienced more than one second delay on a media change. It is possible that very weak machines needs more time, but very weak machines are incapable for any kind of broadcast managemant at all. Moreover take into account that OBS doesn't know in advance when it will have to change between souces as it try to react immediatly to the users interaction, or the scene switcher pay attention if a condition is true and if it is, than change immediately (not looking in advance, when it will be true), so OBS doesn't have time to get ready for the change, while a time scheduled/playlist software has the opportunity to do that, as it knows the changes in advance, because new medias have exact starting time given by the user, or calculated from the current time and the remaining time of the currently playing media. And if it knows in advance when it will have to change between medias and which file will come than it can prepare for it before the change (e.g. decode and load the firs few frame into RAM). (OBS also has the opportunity to it with programmed changes, but as I know it doesn't take it.)

Our only major problem with OBS as a 24/7 playout software that it cannot provide a list of what and when will played with the current setup. It provide much more effective automation tools than industrial standard softwares for a rigid program structure as ours (when same type of programs come in the same order on every single day or week, however it much less usable for constantly changing structures), that's why it can speed up the work so much for us, but the missing of a list of what it will do let make mistakes easier. And it is enough to set up only one thing incorrectly and it won't start a media when we want to start it or start other than we want and it'll result that nothing after that in the chain will start. A little mistake could make a complete disaster, because we can't check on a simple list: is everything correct that we setup?
 

bcoyle

Member
Some answers to your questions:

I'm working at a very small local TV channel. We're using a very old software (from 2002) called InfoCaster for playout, but now testing a new computer with OBS. (If you're not familiar with InfoCaster, don't try to search for it! We tried to find them, because we thought it's a good idea to get an up to date version of their software that meets today's expectations of broadcasting, but now there is not even any sign of somewhen that company made playout software.) Nowadays most of industrial standard playout softwares are costs thousands of dollars (per year) what is way more than what fits into the budget of a little eastern-european television, and ironically OBS (with Advanced Scene Switcher) is better in automation, than the commercial softwares (however OBS not a software without compromises too — more about that later).

I think the only advantage of 24/7 (or not continous, but scheduled, regular, frequent) broadcast over constantly available, searchable content is the capability of break through information bubbles. I mean you can find everything on the internet, but you will find only what you search for. So maybe there are many things that would interests you, but you don't even know that those are exists, so you never search for it. But if you follow a channel, that channel can provide such informations for you, so I think the target audience of a streaming/broadcasting channel should be the people who are open for completely new things and the content of these channels should be present various, little-known things in an easily understandable, no prior knowledge required way. This type of content obviously doesn't really work with a one person staff, as it only can reveal topics that is in that one person's information bubble, this require a team. As a local television, we try to find small, exciting local communities, peoples, upcoming events and present them in our programs. It takes three full time job and a few people who help us occasionally to produce all the material for our broadcast, also we get a small part of our programs in broadcast ready state from other creator teams. All these together covering all the tasks at our channel from discover topics to shooting, edit videos, to put everything into the playout software, maintance of equipment, manage YouTube channel. Higlighting from this the need for time to feed the daily programs into the playout software is take about 20-30 minutes. Now it seems OBS can reduce it to max. 15 minutes when we will start using it in live.

We're upload a part of our programs to YouTube after them were broadcasted, but some of our programs quickly losing actuality so those can get most of the views in them scheduled playing time. Some other programs are not own produced and we don't have rights to share them constantly, we get them just for broadcast.

Currently we don't have live programs, but there were many years ago. We have the technical capabilities for it and we want to keep it in order to a live program would only depend on decision, not on technical capabilities. Also a live like recording (when everything is done as would be a live broadcast except broadcasting it) require live capable equipment and it could speed up the workflow of the production.

We don't have real 24/7 playout, we have only 3 to 4 hours of programs a day, in the rest of the time we broadcasting photonews (I'm not sure if it's the right english word for it, basically it's a slideshow with advertisements and information of public interest on the pictures). Because of this program structure we don't have to worry of the small delays caused by processing times when changing files on playout, however I think it's much smaller problem than you presented. The three second is unrealistically long time. I've tried OBS on a lot different computer with very different computing power, but I never experienced more than one second delay on a media change. It is possible that very weak machines needs more time, but very weak machines are incapable for any kind of broadcast managemant at all. Moreover take into account that OBS doesn't know in advance when it will have to change between souces as it try to react immediatly to the users interaction, or the scene switcher pay attention if a condition is true and if it is, than change immediately (not looking in advance, when it will be true), so OBS doesn't have time to get ready for the change, while a time scheduled/playlist software has the opportunity to do that, as it knows the changes in advance, because new medias have exact starting time given by the user, or calculated from the current time and the remaining time of the currently playing media. And if it knows in advance when it will have to change between medias and which file will come than it can prepare for it before the change (e.g. decode and load the firs few frame into RAM). (OBS also has the opportunity to it with programmed changes, but as I know it doesn't take it.)

Our only major problem with OBS as a 24/7 playout software that it cannot provide a list of what and when will played with the current setup. It provide much more effective automation tools than industrial standard softwares for a rigid program structure as ours (when same type of programs come in the same order on every single day or week, however it much less usable for constantly changing structures), that's why it can speed up the work so much for us, but the missing of a list of what it will do let make mistakes easier. And it is enough to set up only one thing incorrectly and it won't start a media when we want to start it or start other than we want and it'll result that nothing after that in the chain will start. A little mistake could make a complete disaster, because we can't check on a simple list: is everything correct that we setup?
Hi: I really appreciate you answering my questions. I do get a little depressed by the lack of people that are interested in this subject, but there are a few of us around. I've been writing an app for this past year during covid to create a regular 24/7 broadcast worthy application., more later

Anyway to clarify a few points: Obs has a few quirks. Of course, when just changing a video in a scene/source, it happens pretty fast and the viewer doesn't know or care about how long it takes. But if you are broadcasting 30 minutes programs where there are many scene switches and say you use scene "MAIN_SCENE" (at 9pm) to show your main video, you play it and then when the next program comes (9:30pm) up and you have switched away from main scene and then when you come back to it, you start a different video in that scene, the darn thing show 4-5 frames from the last video shown. You have to black that out while running. Also you need to have the video loaded and ready for play at the correct time (less than a second off). Another problem is in-points. If you want the video to start at 48 seconds into the video to skip over something, you need to enable the scene,enable the source (it starts running at the start) and THEN scrub to the inpoint, keeping it black until you get to the in point and knowing when it's there and then un-blacken it. Also you need some fade for videos that don't have a black intro. A lot of this is how professional and smooth the videos look.

Back to the app. Not a plugin, but a 3rd party app talking to obs over a websocket. Written in microsoft visual studio. I haven't advertised the program much, because it's still alpha and answering a lot of questions takes time and bandwidth, which is why I appreciate you answering with more than a few sentences. You can backtrack thru this thread for examples of the program. I did make a video earlier to answer a few questions that I shared with a few of my friends on discord., i.e. a video is worth more than a thousand words. If you are interested, please PM me and I'll send a youtube link. If you watch the whole video, you will see that I do more that answer your problem, way more. Unlike scene switcher, it's very automatic and you can give it a directory full of videos and it will create scheduled programs in time slots as far ahead as you want, based on things like episode number, dates, titling etc, it keeps track of loop,shuttle and least used videos. It can do time of day selections, it can do fill to make program come out to the correct length. I put everything that I wanted in it to run my own station. It handles shortcuts and best of all it does compositing.
Could you give a link to your broadcasts and tell me where you are located. I'm here in Gradnervile, nevada, usa.
 

bcoyle

Member
Some answers to your questions:

I'm working at a very small local TV channel. We're using a very old software (from 2002) called InfoCaster for playout, but now testing a new computer with OBS. (If you're not familiar with InfoCaster, don't try to search for it! We tried to find them, because we thought it's a good idea to get an up to date version of their software that meets today's expectations of broadcasting, but now there is not even any sign of somewhen that company made playout software.) Nowadays most of industrial standard playout softwares are costs thousands of dollars (per year) what is way more than what fits into the budget of a little eastern-european television, and ironically OBS (with Advanced Scene Switcher) is better in automation, than the commercial softwares (however OBS not a software without compromises too — more about that later).

I think the only advantage of 24/7 (or not continous, but scheduled, regular, frequent) broadcast over constantly available, searchable content is the capability of break through information bubbles. I mean you can find everything on the internet, but you will find only what you search for. So maybe there are many things that would interests you, but you don't even know that those are exists, so you never search for it. But if you follow a channel, that channel can provide such informations for you, so I think the target audience of a streaming/broadcasting channel should be the people who are open for completely new things and the content of these channels should be present various, little-known things in an easily understandable, no prior knowledge required way. This type of content obviously doesn't really work with a one person staff, as it only can reveal topics that is in that one person's information bubble, this require a team. As a local television, we try to find small, exciting local communities, peoples, upcoming events and present them in our programs. It takes three full time job and a few people who help us occasionally to produce all the material for our broadcast, also we get a small part of our programs in broadcast ready state from other creator teams. All these together covering all the tasks at our channel from discover topics to shooting, edit videos, to put everything into the playout software, maintance of equipment, manage YouTube channel. Higlighting from this the need for time to feed the daily programs into the playout software is take about 20-30 minutes. Now it seems OBS can reduce it to max. 15 minutes when we will start using it in live.

We're upload a part of our programs to YouTube after them were broadcasted, but some of our programs quickly losing actuality so those can get most of the views in them scheduled playing time. Some other programs are not own produced and we don't have rights to share them constantly, we get them just for broadcast.

Currently we don't have live programs, but there were many years ago. We have the technical capabilities for it and we want to keep it in order to a live program would only depend on decision, not on technical capabilities. Also a live like recording (when everything is done as would be a live broadcast except broadcasting it) require live capable equipment and it could speed up the workflow of the production.

We don't have real 24/7 playout, we have only 3 to 4 hours of programs a day, in the rest of the time we broadcasting photonews (I'm not sure if it's the right english word for it, basically it's a slideshow with advertisements and information of public interest on the pictures). Because of this program structure we don't have to worry of the small delays caused by processing times when changing files on playout, however I think it's much smaller problem than you presented. The three second is unrealistically long time. I've tried OBS on a lot different computer with very different computing power, but I never experienced more than one second delay on a media change. It is possible that very weak machines needs more time, but very weak machines are incapable for any kind of broadcast managemant at all. Moreover take into account that OBS doesn't know in advance when it will have to change between souces as it try to react immediatly to the users interaction, or the scene switcher pay attention if a condition is true and if it is, than change immediately (not looking in advance, when it will be true), so OBS doesn't have time to get ready for the change, while a time scheduled/playlist software has the opportunity to do that, as it knows the changes in advance, because new medias have exact starting time given by the user, or calculated from the current time and the remaining time of the currently playing media. And if it knows in advance when it will have to change between medias and which file will come than it can prepare for it before the change (e.g. decode and load the firs few frame into RAM). (OBS also has the opportunity to it with programmed changes, but as I know it doesn't take it.)

Our only major problem with OBS as a 24/7 playout software that it cannot provide a list of what and when will played with the current setup. It provide much more effective automation tools than industrial standard softwares for a rigid program structure as ours (when same type of programs come in the same order on every single day or week, however it much less usable for constantly changing structures), that's why it can speed up the work so much for us, but the missing of a list of what it will do let make mistakes easier. And it is enough to set up only one thing incorrectly and it won't start a media when we want to start it or start other than we want and it'll result that nothing after that in the chain will start. A little mistake could make a complete disaster, because we can't check on a simple list: is everything correct that we setup?
I do agree with you about local programming. The station, I'm setting up is local and some retro stuff. Our community has a lot of retirees. When I watch youtube, I get a lot of recommendations inside my interest sphere. Even "new to you" is advertising. It's sort of like listening to a DJ on the radio, you could listen to you own cd's but let a dj expose you to his tastes, you might discover something new. Oh, the app does a tv guide, where the next scheduled programs ends up in a file that you can use as text:read from file.

Sort of like this :
5:19 PM - The Jack Benny Program - How Jack Met George Burns
5:49 PM - The Jack Benny Program - Nat King Cole Show
6:19 PM - The Jack Benny Program - Jack Goes To An Allergy Doctor
6:49 PM - The Jack Benny Program - Bobby Darin Show
 

bcoyle

Member
Added a new feature to my program. In the program schedule , I added (keyboard) control up and down arrow to move a scheduled program up in down in the schedule. In the following jpegs, I move "Love is all around" from 17:00 to 17:30 using control down arrow. What Fun!

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Deaglos

New Member
Very interested in this as I am currently setting up a new stream for our SHRL-tv peg channel for roku-fire-appletv.
We have gone to a telvue stream model and looking to setup a full schedule to stream from computer in library.

BTW I am from VC Nevada originally so glad to see someone from area.
 
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