Is it possible for Myriad to take a stream at a scheduled time ?

Look forward to your replies or suggestions;-)

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

You can use a command to launch another .exe  or perhaps a path to an .m3u file with the stream address in it which would open with the default prog?

Then just put the command n the log.  Closing it again may be problematic though, not sure how you could automate that, unless you opened another invalid file closing the first.


Craig Arthur

Engineering & IT Manager
Radio Royal, Royal 2 & Royal Gold.

Cheers Craig, I think the easiest is to get the presenter that's live before to just open the programme!

Appreciate your help!

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

Taking a stream via Myriad is so fraught with dangers, that is why we currently don't have that functionality.

Unless you are using a low latency codec, Myriad might get to the top of the hour, but the stream is still sending silence (so a clock start might not be the best way from either originating studio and Myriad). The programme stream originator.might have to have a pad of music before the show and not be able to backtime to the news accurately.

Over the length of the time of the broadcast, the stream encoder can take longer to encode the audio (not perfectly at 44.100, or processor delays etc,) The decoder (either Myriad or a separate app under Myriad's control), can introduce delays in decoding the audio - and this is before you get into the thorny world of the buffering we all know and love(?!!). A silence to your listener is a silence, no matter how it happens.

We are investigating for the future how might bring the more professionally designed AOIP (audio over IP) steams, such as ipDTL, Revenna, Livewire etc. in via Myriad, but also, what to do in certain circumstances:

Cannot connect to the stream? Do we have an alternative hour(s) generated in the log from Instant Track,or already scheduled by Autotrack - but dumped until needed?
Silence during the stream? How long should the silence period be before Myriad intervenes?
            What should Myriad do?
                     Play a filler cart until audio is restored?
                     How is the audio restored? Immediately or after a predetermined duration of stream audio (to account for choppy buffering for a period).
                             Should it fade out the filler audio, or just dump and go back to the stream?  
            On first silence, should it:
                     Dump the stream completely and switch to an alternative hour generated in the log from Instant Track,or Autotrack?
            Should it have a number of chances to provide a solid stream before giving up completely?

Basically all of the thought processes a human tech-op would go through when dealing with an Outside Broadcast, is how Myriad should be able to be configured and operate.

As you can imagine, that all takes a bit of time to investigate and decide if we want Myriad to do it. 
Because if your show or station doesn't sound good because of a combination of those factors (or user configurations), poor old Myriad might get the blame :-(

Regards

David Boulton
Brand Manager
Broadcast Radio Ltd

Excellent Reply David;-)

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

I used to do a breakfast show live but remotely in a different part of the country.

The station used myriad to get in and out of the news on a clock start. I had a 5 second delay so would always start and end 5 seconds early.

The difference here was the station has an audio router which could be programmed on a timer ie 10:02:05 switch to input 2. And 11:00:00 switch to input 1.

It worked a treat where I could even talk over the news ramp and stop in time for the voice over kicking in :-)

So another option for you guys who want to do steams remotely.

Hi,

in the next few weeks we will have an announcement that should help with this requirement.
I can't go into details at the moment but keep looking at our social feeds: @BroadcastRad on Twitter https://www.facebook.com/BroadcastRadioUK/ on the Facebook :-)

Regards

David Boulton
Brand Manager
Broadcast Radio Ltd

Notwithstanding David’s excellent comments above, there are some useful tricks you can use to play a stream from Myriad. I do it regularly when (e.g.) kicking off an Outside Broadcast when there’s nobody in the studio.


I use Winamp, but you could also do it with something like VLC. The nice thing about Winamp is that there are a few undocumented (or poorly documented) command line switches that can help.

To start the stream, you set up an external command which looks something like

c:\Program Files\Winamp\Winamp.exe http://address.of.stream:port/stream.mp3   or whatever.

To stop it:
c:\Program Files\Winamp\Winamp.exe \kill

So the log sequence becomes:

start stream
wait for absolute time
stop stream




Bruce

In charge of wires & stuff

Celtic Music Radio http://www.celticmusicradio.net

Hi Bruce

Does this look right to you? I couldn't get it to work. :-(