StationPlaylist.com - Frequently Asked Questions

General Answers

Creator Related Answers

What does Creator do?

Creator is a music/spot scheduler. It basically selects audio files based on your specifications and writes the filenames to playlist files. Playlists are usually generated daily or weekly.

The structure of the playlist files may be altered to suit the audio player application that will be reading them. Playlist files may be loaded into audio players such as Winamp, Windows Media Player etc, or loaded by proper radio broadcasting playout software, including our own Studio software.
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Why should I use Creator?

With Creator, you are able to design the structure of every hour of the day. Hourly rotations are defined by selecting a mixture of music categories and spot groups. Each category may be a different genre of music, tempo, age, etc, so you can, for example, inhibit two fast rock 90's songs from playing consecutively.

Different days of the week, or hours of the day, often require a different format. Once the structure has been defined, Creator can generate playlists week after week with no maintenance required, unless spots such as advertisements need to be added or removed.

Creator can also schedule spot groups (advertisements, jingles, stations ID's etc) to play at specific times when used with compatible playback/automation software, such as StationPlaylist Studio.

Creator has many other features such as • song and artist repeat protection so the same songs, or songs by the same artist are not played too close together • creates an interactive web based playlist for the entire week for your DJ's or listeners to see what's coming up • generates a summary of all selected songs for royalty payment purposes • and a summary of spots for billing purposes • and many more features (see the Products page).
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What is Voice Tracking?

Voice Tracking (only available in Creator Pro) provides a way to easily and quickly record and insert voice announcements into the playlist at manual or pre-determined positions in the playlist. This makes your station sound live when unattended.

Voice tracking provides a way for a DJ to pre-record an entire show within a few minutes, allowing more time to do other things, or simply leave the studio.

StationPlaylist Studio Pro supports playing voice tracks simultaneously with the beginning of the next song, so this combination provides a seamless "live" show for the listener.
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How do Voice Intro's and Outro's work?

Voice Intro's and Outro's may be recorded for individual songs or artists. When a song is selected, an optional intro or outro matching the song or artist may be accompanied in the selection. This feature initially requires some investment in time to record the announcements, but the station can sound live in an automated situation with no voice tracking required.

As with Voice Tracking (above), Voice Intro's may also be overlapped with the beginning the of song when using Studio Pro for the playback automation software.
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What is a Category?

A Category is a list of music audio files which are related to a particular genre, tempo, age, or whatever criteria you like. The more categories that are defined, the more control you have over the structure of each hour (rotation).

Category items (tracks) are generally selected randomly, whereas spot group items are generally selected sequentially (alphabetically).

Audio files may be specified individually in each category, however, we suggest that all music files in each category are moved into their own folders on the hard drive. ie. Each category relates to a folder. This is recommended for two reasons.
1. Creator works faster and more efficiently.
2. New music files do not need to be manually entered into a category. Music files need only to be copied to the correct folder and Creator will use them in the next playlist creation. This means little or no maintenance required.

Categories are used in rotations.
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What is a Spot Group?

A Spot Group is usually a group of jingles, an advertisement, or a group of station ID's etc. They are also often used for lengthy programmes such as a weekly programme of interviews, etc.

Spot Group items (tracks) are normally selected sequentially in alphabetical order, whereas category items are normally selected randomly.

Like Categories, Spot Groups may be added to rotations, but may also be set up as Timed Spots where they are scheduled for a specific time.
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What is a Rotation?

A rotation is made up of a list of categories and spot groups which add up to roughly 60 minutes of play time. Here is a shortened example of a possible rotation:

Station ID	(spot group)
New Music	(category)
Pop Slow	(category)
Ad - CD Warehouse	(spot group)
Station ID	(spot group)
Pop Fast	(category)
Male Rock	(category)
$20 ads	(spot group)
$20 ads	(spot group)
Station ID	(spot group)
Pop Slow	(category)
Female Rock	(category)
etc

When a playlist is created, an item is selected randomly from each category, and sequentially from each spot group. Many different rotations may be defined for different hours of the day. The hours and days where a rotation will be used is defined in a schedule. Other types of entries are also possible in a rotation such as voice track markers and break notes.
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What is a Schedule?

A schedule defines which rotations will be used in each of the 24 hours of a day. Multiple schedules may be created for different days of the week, or one schedule may be used for all 7 days. Multiple schedules provide for different station formats on different days of the week.
Note: Creator Lite supports only two Schedules.
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How do I schedule advertisements?

Creator is primarily a music and jingle scheduler. It is not specifically designed to schedule commercials, although many successfully use Creator to schedule commercials.

Traffic/billing schedulers are dedicated to scheduling commercials and also provide a client billing facility. These can save a lot of time, particularly when many advertisers are involved, and when each client wants their ads scheduled at specific times of the day.

Creator Pro integrates with 3rd party traffic schedulers, using the Traffic Importer in the Playlist Editor.

Each user seems to adopt their own system of scheduling commercials with Creator. Here are some of them.

Random Method

This method can be the easiest to setup and manage, providing you have a limited range of advertising packages, and advertisers do not dictate when their ads will be scheduled.

Place all the commercials in one large folder on the hard drive and create one spot group for this folder. Set the Sort Type to Randomly.

If you have say 2 or 3 different advertising packages with a different amount of placements per day, create 2 or 3 spot groups instead of 1.

Now schedule the spot group in your rotation(s). For example, if you have 4 advertisements that need to be played 6 times over a 12 hour period, 2 ads per hour must be scheduled in the rotation...

6 Per Day Ads
6 Per Day Ads
Station ID

This method is very easy to set up and manage provided the number of ads in each spot group are kept at a constant number. When an advertisement finishes, either add a new advertisement to replace it, or add a fill in jingle or ad for your own programmes. This does not then require changes to the rotations.

But If additional ads need to be added to this group, the rotation will need to be modified to include an extra ad per hour (to handle 6 advertisers), or a new commercial break at a different time of the hour.

Only a small number of rotations may be required using this method, perhaps only 1 rotation, and the spot group, rotations, and schedules should not need regular adjustments from day to day.

Block Method

This method requires one spot group for each commercial break. This provides full control over what is played when, and allows the number of commercials in the commercial break to vary from one day to the next, without the need to adjust the rotations or schedules on a regular basis.

In this method, a set of files are usually individually added to each spot group associated with a commercial break. Set the Spot Group Type to Block.

To schedule the ads in the precise order specified, set the Sort option to Per Folder/Unsorted. Otherwise Randomly is a good option if you intend to use the same set of commercials in other commercial breaks during the day.

Add the Spot Group once to a rotation to schedule all the ads at once.

This method will often require a rotation for each hour that you advertise. If this is 24 hours a day, then you may need 24 rotations, unless some commercial breaks are to be repeated.

Adjustments to each commercial break spot group or folder may be required every day to ensure the same commercials are not always played together in the same break.

Some operators use a spreadsheet to design what ads should be played and when, and the files moved into the required spot groups every day, for the following days playlist.

Individual Method

In this method, a spot group is created for each advertiser. The spot group is then placed in the specific desired locations in many rotations.

This method also requires up to 24 rotations for unique placements every hour.

Adjustments to each rotation is likely to be required every day to ensure the same commercials are not played in the same order every time.

Some operators use a spreadsheet to design what ads should be played and when, and the rotations modified every day, for the following days playlist.
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Why have some tracks not been selected after several weeks?

The list of tracks in a Category are initially shuffled into a random order. As Creator selects tracks from a category, it goes down the list one by one until it reaches the end of the list. At this point, the track list is shuffled into another random order.

It is only the repeat intervals which interfere with track selection, in particular, the artist repeat interval. If the artist repeat interval (and title repeat interval) is set to 0, every single song in a category will be selected before any songs are repeated. This is the ideal situation, but of course you don't want songs by the same artist too close together.

We suggest selecting an artist repeat interval that your listeners will not notice too much. Around 2 or 2.5 hours is usually plenty. The lower the interval, the less tracks that will be skipped over in the selection process.

A high song repeat interval can cause a similar problem of tracks being skipped over after the category has been re-shuffled in a different order, but this doesn't cause as much problem as a high artist interval. Again I suggest selecting a song repeat interval that your listeners will not notice too much. We suggest 12 to 36 hours. This doesn't mean every song will repeat after 12 hours. In fact most will repeat after several days if the category contains several days of tracks.

Another issue that can cause this is incorrect artist and title information recorded for the songs. Check the File List for each category to check the artist is correct. For example, If many have "Various Artists" or the artist is blank, these tracks will be considered as performed by the same artist and will not be selected within the interval setting.

Each individual category can also have it's own repeat intervals so check these have not been set incorrectly.

What does the Playlist Scheduler do?

StationPlaylist Scheduler (included in the Creator package) is a small system tray application which loads hourly playlists into a simple audio player (preferably Winamp) every hour. This provides a very basic and budget automation solution where the power of Studio and other automation / live DJ assistance applications are not required.

The Scheduler is also able to load Creator every day or week to automatically generate a new set of playlists, for unattended automation.
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Studio Related Answers

What does Studio do?

Studio is basically a sophisticated audio player with special features that radio stations need.

Studio is most often used to automatically load playlist files every hour, and play the audio files in an automatic or live assist (manual) mode, as scheduled by Creator or other music scheduling software.

Studio is most useful with a music scheduler, however, Studio can also be used without a scheduler, where tracks are inserted manually for doing live shows.
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Why should I use Studio and not a free media player?

Winamp and other simple media players are only suitable for very basic automation requirements. Studio provides many advantages for automation, such as
• Includes an intelligent automatic crossfading system which works very well with 99% of all tracks, but for those that need tweaking, it supports manual cue and segue positions on individual tracks.
• Take news or external feeds at specific times for a specific duration.
• Voice tracks can be overlapped with song ramps to simulate a live DJ talk-overs while automated.
• Timed Spots may be played at precise times.
• A personalized Now Playing web page can be incorporated into your website.
• Automated time announcement files can be played.
• play can begin at the scheduled position in the playlist after a power failure.
• Studio can be scheduled to stop playing for certain hours of the day.
• and many more features.

However, Studio is also valuable in assisting DJ's/presenters/announcers with their live shows.
• Instant jingles (carts) can be easily played at any time.
• the carts can be displayed on a permanent form on a second monitor for instant access (mouse/touch screen, or keyboard shortcuts).
• announcement breaks can be planned ahead of time.
• a number of tracks can be selected to play sequentially and then stop for a live announcement.
• easily preview upcoming tracks with a second soundcard.
• automatically lower the music volume while over-talking with the mic.
• the mic can be toggled automatically when play starts and stops.
• the line-in mixer can be controlled directly from Studio with optional fade.
• easily insert requested songs by searching the song library with a portion of an artist and/or title.
• and many more features. See the Products page for more details.
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Does Studio keep a track of played advertisements for billing?

Studio Pro can generate a detailed CSV log file of every spot played. This file can be loaded directly into a spreadsheet and filtered to produce spot summaries for advertisement billing purposes. Studio can also record each song played for royalty recording purposes.
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Why are spots not showing with the red dot icon?
Why are Break Notes not working?

If you are using Creator to generate the playlists, the Playlist Format option in Creator needs to be changed to the StationPlaylist Studio selection. Creator defaults to the Standard M3U format which can not provide the additional information required for spots, Timed Spots and Break Notes to function.
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Why are Timed Spots not playing at the specified time?

If the above answer doesn't apply, then check the Timed Spots option on the Advanced Options tab. If it is set to Schedule Next, the spot will play after the current track has finished. Switch to Instant Play if you need Timed Spots to play at the precise specified times. The current playing track will be truncated and faded out when the spot plays.
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Why are some songs and spots fading out too early?

Studio provides an intelligent automatic crossfading system. This starts the next track playing when the last peak volume of the current track drops below -15 decibels. This system works very well for most tracks, but in some cases, manual adjustments may be required. There are several solutions.

Manually specify a segue position for a track. This can be done in the Track Tool available from Creator and Studio. Or use Track Properties and set the Segue position to 0. This will play the entire track with no crossfading.
Adjust the automatic crossfade parameters on the Input options tab. Change the Segue DB setting to say -18db. All tracks will fade out to a lower volume before the next track starts.
Apply some waveform compression to spots so that the volume is reasonably consistent throughout the track. This can be done using an audio editor.
Turn off crossfading for all spots. This is an option on the Input options tab.

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Can I use a 3rd party Scheduler with Studio?

Yes. Studio can read standard M3U playlists which many schedulers can generate, however, to use some of the advanced features of Studio, a special playlist format is required which only Creator natively supports. The advanced features include support for Timed Spots, Break Notes, and Voice Track Overlapping.

Studio requires the music and spots to be combined in the same playlist. Some schedulers can only provide separate playlist logs for the music and the spots.
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How do I add Winamp plugins to Studio?

Studio can utilize Winamp DSP plugins for such things as audio compression/limiting and internet streaming. Studio looks in the Winamp Folder specified on the Files & Folders options tab for DSP plugins and copies them to the StationPlaylist folders so they can be used by Studio.

Simply install the DSP plugin to the default Winamp folder.
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How do I stream on the Internet with Studio?

The Studio installer includes the Oddcast stream encoder. This supports MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and AAC+ stream encoding for Shoutcast and Icecast2 servers. The Shoutcast DSP Winamp Plugin may also be installed and utilized by Studio. For WMA streaming, the free Windows Media Encoder may be installed. For Real Audio encoding, the free Real Producer Basic encoder from Real Networks may be used.

See the Studio help documentation for more details.
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Why is there a delay in the Mic audio when using the Mic button?

By default, Studio records the Mic audio from the soundcards recording device digitally, optionally processes the audio using compressor/limiter DSP plugins, and then outputs the audio to the soundcards output device. The recording and output stages require buffering to prevent stuttering in the audio playback. At the default settings, the output Buffer Size is 500ms and the input Buffer Size is 100ms, so the delay is at least 600ms. On super fast PC's which have no other applications running, it can be possible to use an output Buffer Size of 150ms and an input Buffer Size of 75ms. This reduces the delay to under a quarter of a second.

It is possible to remove the delay completely by changing an option on the Mic Input tab. Change Record from Device to Control Output Mixer. Studio will not touch the audio at all. It will pass straight through the soundcard only, so there is no delay. However, this means means the VU meter will not reflect the Mic audio; DSP plugins cannot process the Mic audio; and encoding a stream using the DSP audio will not include the Mic audio. The stream encoder (eg. Oddcast) will need to be switched to record from the soundcard.

A solution for those wanting no delay but need the Mic audio compressed for internet broadcasting, see StationPlaylist Streamer. This utility costs only $27 / €19 for Studio licence holders.
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