Handling hour-ends: How to avoid short track fragments before the TOP?

[andrus2000]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice on how to better manage the end of our hourly playlists.

Our setup:
We generate new hourly playlists automatically. Each hour must start exactly on time with a Time Signal followed by a "Top of the Hour" hit. Because the amount of advertising varies each hour, we often face an issue with the "filler" at the end of the slot.

The problem:
Currently, ProppFrexx often schedules a final song that only gets to play for 10–20 seconds before the fixed start of the next hour kills it. This sounds unprofessional and "chopped."

What I’m looking for:
Is there a built-in function or a clever script logic to handle this? Ideally, I want something like this:

If the remaining time after the second-to-last song is less than 1 minute (or any specific threshold);

Then instead of starting a full song, ProppFrexx plays a "bridge" track (e.g., a power intro mix, a long station ID, or a transition filler) that can be faded out gracefully.

Has anyone implemented a working solution for this? Should I be looking into Script-Line filters, Execute Line commands, or perhaps a specific Soft/Hard Trigger logic to swap the last track?

I’m open to any ideas or examples of how you guys have solved the "short fragment" issue at the end of the hour.

Thanks in advance!

[radio42]

You can use the script option TryEnsureExactLength, so that the last track ends with the given program end time (enough tracks in your media lib are necessary to achieve this).
I.e. the last tracks of the program script will try to be picked out of your resp. media library matching the remaining program time.

Else (resp. in addition) you can use the program Bridge Track if only a few seconds needs to be bridged til the next program starts.