Automate 24/7 Stream for a scheduled Playlist

ComedyHub

New Member
Hey everyone, lots of good information in this thread. Thanks for all the work you guys are doing. Long time lurker looking for similar solution.
 

bcoyle

Member
Hey everyone, lots of good information in this thread. Thanks for all the work you guys are doing. Long time lurker looking for similar solution.
Welcome - Sounds like by your name that you want to stream comedy. So anyway, introduce yourself and tell us what your dream is.
 

bcoyle

Member
Thank you for the link. I was blown away by it's flexibility. I do think if you need something like this, you probable have a big studio and will need lots of money. OBS has lots of little plugins and ways of doing things, not nothing that integrated. And if they did, you would have to probably pay for it. Can you imagine the number of hours to make something like this. OBS seems to be dominated by people doing videos with them in it. There are lots of stuff available to help you become a video blogger, dj ,youtube channel creator, but nothing on the level of Mozart. So tell us what you are trying to do? Anyway, mosart is very cool.
 
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from1975

New Member
There are plenty of TV scheduling software.


And in most cases, the "live" part (ie. sending live video from OBS or VMix via NDI) is just a part of playlist. The main purpose of the sotware is to play interrupted playlist scheduled for days,weeks, even months.

The cheapest one is Uniplay One, $55.
 
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from1975

New Member
And a few others:


Check also this "Free Broadcast Automation Software" page: https://free-broadcast-automation-software.peatix.com/
 

bcoyle

Member
There are plenty of TV scheduling software.


And in most cases, the "live" part (ie. sending live video from OBS or VMix via NDI) is just a part of playlist. The main purpose of the sotware is to play interrupted playlist scheduled for days,weeks, even months.

The cheapest one is Uniplay One, $55.
Thank you for all the links. I've seen some before, but will take a look at all.
 

bcoyle

Member
Thank you for all the links. I've seen some before, but will take a look at all.
If you go back thru the messages, you'll see that I'm not trying to do a playlist, but a composited - template driven standard 30/60/90 minute public access tv stream. Otherwise, I'd just buy one of the available playlist programs.
 

dipsondolphin

New Member
Complete automation playlists would be the BEST professional add-on to OBS. I run a TV channel, and I need to play commercials from time to time, like a playlist of commercials, chose randomly inside a major playlist of the program videos. A scheduled playlist that would fit time exactly would also be a dream. How to do that in VLC? We could automate VLC and send it to OBS.

I am looking forward to this solution also.
 

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

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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