Automate 24/7 Stream for a scheduled Playlist

bcoyle

Member
Not sure if you checked it out when I previously mentioned it, but look in to Nebula Broadcast - https://nebulabroadcast.com/ , they even have a demo channel that is up as a 24x7 scheduled tv station demo complete with 24 hrs of content, a demo ticker running on top, etc, at https://nxtv.cz/
Many of the apps that people work on can be done in stream labs or vmix. Some are one-off app's that don't have the expense or overhead or complexity of these large programs. My project is different. I asked if you looked at my demo and you didn't answer so I don't know if you understand what I'm trying to do.
 

bcoyle

Member
View attachment 69139
View attachment 69140

Goes like this...

View attachment 69141

All files are unique.

Some of my scheduled audio files are 20 minutes, some of them 50 minutes. I also have filler folders. Large amount of data. If a scheduled file ends, untill the next scheduled hour, I want to use fillers. "One by One".

I dont want to share my archieve data pictures for long time :) When you read, please inform. I am gonna delete.

OK, i SAW THEM. You can delete if you want. Are your main mp3 files really 20 to 50 minutes in a single file? Also you were talking about video mp4. Are these standard short 2-5 minutes video? Also for these mp3s, what do you plan to show video wise while playing?
 

bcoyle

Member
Hi!

I write a python code. I have 6 different scheduled folder.

Hours a/pm vlc dir source
-------------------------------------
00.00 --------> stage1
02.00 --------> stage2
04.00 --------> stage3
06.00 --------> stage4
08.00 --------> stage5
12.00 --------> stage6

It can handle some basic features like
1) Printing General Information for scheduled programs
2) Matching each stage with selected radio show
3) Handling filler radio show integration (musics etc)
4) Copying one episode of radio show to matched stage folder and erasing it.


It has some problems now. Not ready yet. But,
started to code at least :)

Scheduling things handled by an obs plugin,
Hi - Sounds good. I don't know python code, but am writing my app in visual basic. I don't know if there is overlap but I've handled a lot of problems in my app. If you have a problem, feel free to ask for suggestions.
 

Freedoms Corner

New Member
Hey, so I have a question a little off task but here we go. I have a 24/7 stream on twitch and I also want to stream on roku. How do I go from twitch to roku?
 

bcoyle

Member
Hey, so I have a question a little off task but here we go. I have a 24/7 stream on twitch and I also want to stream on roku. How do I go from twitch to roku?
Hi don't know much about either, but there was this in a discord thread that I am on;

--------------------------------------------------------------------

just get a roku device, setup online account at www.roku.com.. then head over to developer.roku.com setup a developers account. then goto https://developer.roku.com/docs/direct-publisher/getting-started.md Shouldn't take more then an hour to a channel setup (about 15 minutes of configuration and 45 minutes making the graphics..) Stick to the direct publisher until you get a grasp on how the system works then if you get adventurous and feel like coding in brightscript you could try building a channel with the api.. The hardest part of the API is setting up your roku in developers mode.. pain in the ass and never ever lose the password or you lose the key to all your work.. But with the direct publisher Roku takes care of all the coding and updates and keeps you compliant with the ever changing standards. An frankly it meets most peoples needs.. All you have to do is write the json file indexing all your content. there is plenty of help on that in the forums..

------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, can't help you more than that.
 

bcoyle

Member
merci pour les informations ,Je voudrais que la liste de lecture intègre la lecture de vidéos au fil du temps en utilisant l’une ou l’autre scène.
Not Sure which of us you are talking too. If you make it a "reply" it would be helpful and the person you are talking to, would get a notification.
 

VictorM

New Member
Hi everyone! I've been watching this thread for quite a while, and I can't believe that no one has found any program/app solution for this! I'm desperate and would buy anything that could help me simply play thousands of video clips according to the time of day, see them in a calendar-type fashion and generate the playlist automatically, while also manually being able to change things.
 

bcoyle

Member
Hi everyone! I've been watching this thread for quite a while, and I can't believe that no one has found any program/app solution for this! I'm desperate and would buy anything that could help me simply play thousands of video clips according to the time of day, see them in a calendar-type fashion and generate the playlist automatically, while also manually being able to change things.
I like your "quite a while" since you joined only 5 hours ago. LOL. So tell us about yourself and why so desperate. A few of us now use easy-on-air. There are commercial solutions available. I guess it depends on how desperate and how much you can afford. So please tell us about your situation. Have you read all of this thread?
 
Last edited:

VictorM

New Member
Hey there :). Well I didn't register until today, but I've been lurking for the past 6 months.
I intend to stream music videos (all licensed by owners) to a Youtube channel, non-stop, but the playlists need to be played according to the time of day, not interrupt abruptly when a certain hour starts, and work on Mac. I also need access to the generated playlist, in order to be able to add ad-breaks. Easy-on-air looks alright but I can't switch to Windows..
I can stretch the budget to 1000$ if the solution is rock solid and meets all criteria.
Any tips are welcome!
 

bcoyle

Member
Hey there :). Well I didn't register until today, but I've been lurking for the past 6 months.
I intend to stream music videos (all licensed by owners) to a Youtube channel, non-stop, but the playlists need to be played according to the time of day, not interrupt abruptly when a certain hour starts, and work on Mac. I also need access to the generated playlist, in order to be able to add ad-breaks. Easy-on-air looks alright but I can't switch to Windows..
I can stretch the budget to 1000$ if the solution is rock solid and meets all criteria.
Any tips are welcome!
Hi Victor/Lurker (lol): There have been a few users on this thread that have had web based solutions which would work on mac/windows and of course obs works on all but not for what you want. What you want is actually a super playlist/24/7 broadcast TV front end. I think streamlabs has a 24/7 solution that probably works on mac/windows. Don't know for sure. Of course not free, but supported. The solution that i'm working on would probably work for you but is windows only. Bootcamp maybe???? Anyway, my app is not ready yet. It's getting there. My program is more a broadcast tv/public access solution. It can work as a playlist but is designed to work in 30/60/90 etc minutes program blocks with auto fill, ads, psa etc. My goal is similar to yours in that I have or will collect tons of old tv shows, whatnots and be able to generate custom programs, to take advantage of obs compositing

I guess you haven't found what you want or it is too expensive?

So it sounds like you are doing a serious 24/7 channel. May I ask details about your channel and the videos you are playing, your goals?
 

bcoyle

Member
here is two examples of the type of videos that my app can produce by compositing:
that is a 1 hour bunch of movies trailers.
This is an example of a standard def video customized lucy show:
 

VictorM

New Member
It is intended as a 24/7 channel, we're testing a feed with Streamlabs OBS now and everything is working fine, except we can't have the in-depth playlist triggering and access required. Bootcamp is not available as we're running the whole thing on dedicated Mac Mini M1 (which in its defense, is doing an awesome job!).
 

bcoyle

Member
It is intended as a 24/7 channel, we're testing a feed with Streamlabs OBS now and everything is working fine, except we can't have the in-depth playlist triggering and access required. Bootcamp is not available as we're running the whole thing on dedicated Mac Mini M1 (which in its defense, is doing an awesome job!).
Well, sounds like my solution is not going to fit (hardware wise) . That's life I guess. Most people in this thread have gone on to their own solutions even if not perfect or optimal. I guess you are stuck with web based solutions or streamlabs (which is supported), which isn't that bad, normally because they work across hardware and on many workstations at one time. Think Windows, lol. Once a mac guy always a mac guy. Guess the same thing applies to windows people. oh, my app can work across the lan to obs running on a different computer, but requires either a common NAS drive or all content to be mirrored on each computer. I haven't looked at share drives which would allow one copy of the video content. The program can also handle multiple broadcast tv stations and multiple copies of obs. It can generate a 1000 video custom play list with station bugs, insets,fills and ads in about a minute (if the videos in the same directory). It can keep track of episodes and whats been played before.
 
Last edited:

Tim_F

New Member
I am currently porting my project for a 24/7 Weather Channel from CasparCG to OBS. Everything seems to be working but a few hiccups in playing video. What is the correct way to start/stop a video file? I am using Visual Basic .NET with obs-websocket-dotnet, video seems to start fine when update the source. But, every now and then it will not play even thought the source has been updated in OBS when I look at it. I don't see anything out of line in the log files.
 

bcoyle

Member
I am currently porting my project for a 24/7 Weather Channel from CasparCG to OBS. Everything seems to be working but a few hiccups in playing video. What is the correct way to start/stop a video file? I am using Visual Basic .NET with obs-websocket-dotnet, video seems to start fine when update the source. But, every now and then it will not play even thought the source has been updated in OBS when I look at it. I don't see anything out of line in the log files.
WELL,WELL,WELL! You are the first visual basic .net guy other than me that I have found on obs. Welcome Tim. It would be nice to talk vb with another vb person. It's gets a little lonely (LOL).

Anyway, the simple thing to check is whether the scene is set to restart-on-visible, stop on not visible. This just restarts the video when the scene becomes visible.

There is a "RestartMedia" command in the new interface that you might want to try. I've had trouble with rerunning a video that is already there and was played before or is still playing. I send the restartmedia command followed by the behavior command to restart-stop, then make the scene visible. That seems to make the video play from the start.

So, why the change from casperCG? I assume that you had a working weather 24/7 channel on that?
 

Tim_F

New Member
WELL,WELL,WELL! You are the first visual basic .net guy other than me that I have found on obs. Welcome Tim. It would be nice to talk vb with another vb person. It's gets a little lonely (LOL).

Anyway, the simple thing to check is whether the scene is set to restart-on-visible, stop on not visible. This just restarts the video when the scene becomes visible.

There is a "RestartMedia" command in the new interface that you might want to try. I've had trouble with rerunning a video that is already there and was played before or is still playing. I send the restartmedia command followed by the behavior command to restart-stop, then make the scene visible. That seems to make the video play from the start.

So, why the change from casperCG? I assume that you had a working weather 24/7 channel on that?

Yes, I still have a working channel on the air. CasparCG consumes a lot of resources, and I would like to live stream the channel on our website, so that is why I am looking at OBS.

It look like it may be a timing issue at this point. After the media starts playing I query the duration of the clip from OBS and set my duration counter using that so I can get an accurate duration before calling the next clip.

I am updating the current scene so the other elements keep playing on the ticker I have built into the scene. I am using the RestartMedia method now in the program. I have it coded to RestartMedia after I update the media source then have a slight delay before I query the duration thinking OBS could not keep up with the commands being sent.

I am going to comment out some of the other code blocks tomorrow to see if I can get a consistent playout.
 

bcoyle

Member
Yes, I still have a working channel on the air. CasparCG consumes a lot of resources, and I would like to live stream the channel on our website, so that is why I am looking at OBS.

It look like it may be a timing issue at this point. After the media starts playing I query the duration of the clip from OBS and set my duration counter using that so I can get an accurate duration before calling the next clip.

I am updating the current scene so the other elements keep playing on the ticker I have built into the scene. I am using the RestartMedia method now in the program. I have it coded to RestartMedia after I update the media source then have a slight delay before I query the duration thinking OBS could not keep up with the commands being sent.

I am going to comment out some of the other code blocks tomorrow to see if I can get a consistent playout.
I deal a lot with the same type of things. Sometimes takes a second or two for vlc to load in a new video. If I'm playing a video in a scene, then loading in the next video in the same scene starts the video as soon as vlc gets ready. If you have two different scenes, you can run scene 1, video 1, and after it starts, preload scene 2, video 2. if behavior is set to start on visible then scene 2 , video will start correctly and you can use the fades transitions to fade between scenes nicely. If you try to have scene 1 be a black(1 second duration) and you preload during that, if the black scene is too short, like 1 second, you might catch the end of the previous video(1), before vlc has a chance to run the preloaded video.

I started my project before the media controls were available, so I go to the file system directly and get the media lengths from the file headers. That way I can plan out my playlists without dealing with obs at all.

I also ping obs to make sure it is ready for a new command. In the message ID , i set a number and a command that obs doesn't like. it sends me back an error message. I just wait for that (number in message-id) to come back before proceeding.

How about some screen shots and examples of what you are trying to do with your playlists.
 
Last edited:
Top