Showing already played artist,album within the set seperation rules

[phonic]

I've been trying out the demo before purchase of Proppfrexx ONAIR, and I'm impressed with the features, but I've noticed one issue I'm struggling to resolve.

I've noticed I can add the same artist(or even track) many times, and play them back to back without any notification or highlighting of played artist,album, etc, so our presenters could end up breaking the rules with regards to seperation. How do I turn this feature on?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[radio42]

Well, it depends how you use ProppFrexx.
Note, that ProppFrexx has various histories. These are best explained here: https://youtu.be/fJknoxnXOAQ

As I assume you are talking about the manual preparation of playlists, you can adjust this in the general settings, section Logging/History any by clicking on the 'More...' button next to the global song history settings:

Especially the marked 'Check Global History' option sounds like is what you are looking for.

[phonic]

I had a look at the video and have scripting for automation, and seems to work for selecting tracks from media libraries when run from the scheduler.
However, in manual mode if I open a playlist, played tracks/artists are for some reason not marked/highlighted as played.

[radio42]

Okay, but this has nothing to do with any history or separation rules/settings

You control the option to mark played tracks for manually opened playlists in the general settings, section Playlist Settings - see the option "Mark Nothing in manual Playlists"!

You can also toggle this option any time at runtime by cicking on the 'Nothing' button in the bottom part (status line) of the playlist.

[phonic]

Thank you. That’s kind off what I’ve been looking for, but it only works for played songs, with no option to mark all tracks from that played artist.

I know the presenter should ensure his/her playlist meets all requirements before broadcast, but mistakes happen, sometimes they have more than one song from the same artist for the second hour, and these added aids remind them that they’ve played that artist already.

[radio42]

I don't get you?!
Please explain in exact details what you want to achieve. With these small fractions of info we are running in cycles
How do they plan their playlist? When do you expect what to happen?
I am again guessing: Is it that you want an option to check all tracks contained in a manually opened/created playlist against the global song history - because the playlist is prepared e.g. at home and then manually opened by the DJ?
Or is it, that you want an automatic option to mark tracks in a playlist only if duplicates do exist within this playlist, e.g. mark all duplicate Artists?

Thanks

[phonic]

My opopergies for any confusion. This system works differently than our current system that we plan to replace in all our studios over the next 3 months.

The presenter will make playlists for shows from networked folders, and import them into a playlist and then save.

For example in our current system: if I have 3 tracks by artist “A” in my playlist , and I play one track, all tracks by artist “A” will be highlighted to warn the presenter, it’s different from played mark and clears after the set time. I would assume this is not possible as it’s not using a database?

“Or is it, that you want an automatic option to mark tracks in a playlist only if duplicates do exist within this playlist, e.g. mark all duplicate Artists?”

Yes, as they are played. So if I have 4 tracks by artist “A”, once it’s played, all 4 tracks are highlighted. This would be linked to rules in some way, as separation involved. Apologies again for any misunderstanding.

[radio42]

So this sounds like an option to 'only' highlight tracks with the same Artist within the same playlist 'only' once a pre-prepared playlist is effectively being played/scheduled by the Program Scheduler, e.g. it should not automatically do so while the presenter prepares the playlist?!

This option can easily be added (it wouldn't even need a database, as of course the checking is local to that single playlist only), but I am wondering, if that is really helpful.
E.g. another playlist might just been finished and played before that hour of the new playlist.
Thus, if the check is only local to each playlist, it might happen, that the playlist which has just finished also just played a track from Artist "A"...

[phonic]

I would assume It would only help the current live presenter if he/she keeps to one playlist. And the next presenter would have no idea that all his artists have been played maybe 20 minutes ago. As we have 3 studios in different locations, it would also need to be synced. Does the media server offer this functionality?

[radio42]

In ProppFrexx you can define a central shared location for the global history, which (under certain conditions) is fully synced if used by multiple studios.
However, one of the limits is, that it doesn’t make sense to play and write to the history in parallel from all studios at the same time. But this limit also exist for any database based solution.

But back to your scenario (which I try to understand):
I guess what you really want is, that a playlist generated manually by a presenter is checked against the global history and all related tracks conflicting the history is makes... and this continues while the playlist tracks are played then.

But I am wondering, what a presenter is doing, if all of a sudden 50% of his tracks are becoming marked/highlighted. How should he react, can he quickly plan new tracks? I doubt this.

A solution of course is to only check his playlist alone, without using any history.
Is that a good solution?
No, as as said he might play the same tracks or Artist which have just been played in the previous hour.