ProppFrexx ONAIR User-Forum

Dear All,

During normal programming, ProppFrexx is used in the broadcast studio either manually operated by staff or playing automated playlists.
When an outside broadcast is planned, content is live produced on a distant location and streamed to a server at the main studio facility. However, an OB is hardly limited by absolute times. Per example, while it being scheduled for 2 hours between 20:00:00 and 22:00:00, a live discussion may begin when all speakers are ready at the distant location at 20:01:30 and they may conclude prior to the scheduled stop at 21:55:55.
Our objective is to script ProppFrexx to switch to an from the OB stream at any given moment in the timespan with a smooth transition completely unattended at the studio facility. Ideally, this should be done in a pre-prepared reusable script so Progarmme Editors can simply insert the script into the Scheduler without any technical know-how.
If a steam is late, local music should play. When ready, the distant location will start playing a loop of 'bumper music' and connect to the dedicated streaming server. Upon PF detecting the stream, local music should be immediately mixed with a locally played jingle followed by the same bumper music loop as the distant location to enable a smooth seque. Some seconds into the bumper music, the local and distant sources should be mixed.
When the OB finishes and disconnects from the dedicated server, PF should immediately play a local jingle followed by any other scheduled programming.

I would appreciate insights on different possibilities of doing that.

radio42 wrote:Alternatively you might use any of the general MODStream system events (on your SB; e.g. the OnMODStreamConnected, OnMODStreamStopped, etc.) to start and stop playing a 'bumper/jingle-track' accordingly...

Leaving switching logic to the studio is elegant in case OB does not use PF.
I am aware of global events. Can events be defined per script/scheduler entry? Different programs need different jingles.

Overhauling the event system to two levels (system and program wide) is quite a lot of work, i know, but it could have great use cases in one of the following releases.

Yes, each scheduler program entry has its own events (when editing a program scheduler entry, click on the 'Control-Command...' button), e.g. OnProgramStarted, OnProgramStopped etc.
But the mentioned global MODStream events are (as the name suggests) global - so here you can not easily differentiate between different running programs.
However, you might also use conditional command execution e.g. via EXEC_COMMAND2 and then differentiate the individual programs.
OR
Just use one of the available program macros to dynamically translate that to a jingle filename, e.g. ${progcurrentname} or ${progcurrentscript}.
OR
Make use of the EXEC_VAR_SET command when a new program starts to set your own variable value; which you might then reference via the ${VAR:name} macro - to denote a related, individual jingle.

As you see, many possibilities - so I guess there is no real need for overhauling the event system

But...
Note, that you said above, that an OB is hardly limited by absolute times - that's why I suggested to trigger to MODStream start/stop from the OB location.
If the OB location is not using PF, you can still use the 'pfremcmd.exe' command-line tool to send commands to the SB !

All this is almost possible with the MOD Stream Watcher feature (as you are already aware of).
What is not (out of the box) possible is the playing of the intro loop.

However, with a few tricks it might be possible (I guess)...
So instead of triggering the start/stop of the MODStream-Watcher command via a scheduler event, you might start it directly from the remote studio. Meaning, you can use the existing external TCP/IP remote control feature to issue a control-command from outside of your studio. This is explained in this post:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12
(see "Trigger an internal 'action' when something 'happens' outside of ProppFrexx ONAIR")

In this case 'outside' means from your outside-braodcasting PF instance (OB) - and 'inside' means your studio PF instance (SB).
As such you can trigger the start and stop of the MODStream-Watcher via a remote action (as explained in the thread above), e.g. you can define two user command buttons on your OB to trigger a sequence of commands to be executed on your SB.

This sequence of commands might include other actions (beside starting resp. stopping of the MODStream-Watcher) as well, e.g. to stop the current playlist and play a track looped in the studio (i.e. via the EXEC_DIRECTPLAYER_CREATE and EXEC_DIRECTPLAYER_PLAY, EXEC_DIRECTPLAYER_FREE commands).

Alternatively you might use any of the general MODStream system events (on your SB; e.g. the OnMODStreamConnected, OnMODStreamStopped, etc.) to start and stop playing a 'bumper/jingle-track' accordingly...