Is there any plan to allow more than 32 categories for both song and links ?

The reason I ask:

We have already used up 31 of our song categories and would like more

We have also used up all 32 of our link categories:

We are a community station that is allowed advertising and sponsorship and have 26 presenters with 30 shows, some do more than 1 show,
each show is gradually being sponsored and most sponsors have more than 1 sponsor tag that needs scheduling.

Each sponsor is using a link category to allow their sponsor tags to be scheduled.

with 30 shows and the rest of the normal links such as:
weather, news, travel, sweepers, jingles, community notices, etc, etc, etc, I have ran out of categories, this means that I have to schedule in each show clock the sponsor tags, which itself isn't a problem, the problem is making them into sweepers as they are not recognised in the clock as DRY, meaning every presenter has to right click and change to a sweeper.

Does anyone know of a way to help ?
will V4 of Myriad/Autotrak allow more than 32 categories ??

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

If you have used 31 song categories then you *do* have more - one more, to be exact.

Seriously though, Myriad AutoTrack 4.0 allows for:

Up to 64 Categories

Up to 64 Types

Up to 64 Eras

Up to 64 Genders

Up to 64 Styles

PLUS:

Up to 999 items per clock.

Song re-use (e.g. overnight) regardless of usual separation rules.

Kicks.

Shuffles (Per hour per fortnight).

Future moves (move an item to a new category after X plays or by date).

AND MORE!!!

John
Development Team
Broadcast Radio

Thanks for the quick reply and we are upgrading to V4 in the next few weeks ;-)

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

Hi Paul,

Are your sweeper marked as Dry Voice sweepers on the Link cards? If so, when scheduled they should be go in as swept

------------
Peter Jarrett, Technical Director
Broadcast Radio Ltd.

Bill Bailey: No win, no fee, no basis in reality. Just a room above a minicab office in Acton and a steady stream of greedy simpletons whose delusion is only matched by their clumsiness

Hi Peter, Yes they all are marked as dry voice sweepers, its the ones that are not in a link category that are the pain as we don't have any spare categories.

not a massive issue as V4 has 64 categories! I think I might you most of those too, so need to work out if I could perhaps utilise a genre, era or style for my sponsor tags !

Does there have to be a limit on the number of categories ? unlimited would suit us all better !!

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

In v3 there were big engineering reasons why it was capped at 32, but in v4 a lot of those were deliberately designed out, however we still have a couple due to limitations of certain field types in the database structure (in Clock Rules and so on where you select multiple categories!) but the biggest one is that the AudioWall structure is still largely backward compatible with v3 and even v2 to an extent, and therefore the way that category info is stored on carts limits us.

But as always, it's something we're keen to change in future....

------------
Peter Jarrett, Technical Director
Broadcast Radio Ltd.

Bill Bailey: No win, no fee, no basis in reality. Just a room above a minicab office in Acton and a steady stream of greedy simpletons whose delusion is only matched by their clumsiness

Thanks Peter & john for your advice ;-)

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

V4 advert manager: have any changes been made to avoid the block scheduling of adverts ?
OR will you be looking into updating V4 ad manager at some point ?

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

Hi Paul,

The algorithm used to placed adverts was adjusted slightly, but we had to tread a fine line as most of the "problematic" databases we received via support weren't a fault of the logic used, just of the number of ads being scheduled in certain hours. We found that if we tweaked it too far then it then made the vast majority of breaks then go wildly out of control just to get the few that went wrong correct

However, v4 does introduce the concept of Advert Categories, and then in AutoTrack you can say which Category should be used to fill a specific break - the most common use is to have a "PostNews" category to make sure that the "out of news" advert is only ever scheduled in the first break in the hour, but a lot of users are also using it to force certain ads into certain positions - e.g. categories called "quarter past" "half past" "quarter to" and "End of Hour" and then you can use these to force certain ads to always go into the best achieving spots during shows like the breakfast show etc.

------------
Peter Jarrett, Technical Director
Broadcast Radio Ltd.

Bill Bailey: No win, no fee, no basis in reality. Just a room above a minicab office in Acton and a steady stream of greedy simpletons whose delusion is only matched by their clumsiness

Sounds interesting, Although I never sell adverts for specific times, I seel on random times at X amount of plays per day per show.

But I may have a little play and find those extra advert categories useful;-)

Thanks for the reply too

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075