The main idea of ProppFrexx ONAIR was to offer perfect playlist management and integration. So whenever we are talking about media libraries we are talking about playlists. Instead of using native, proprietary databases to store references to media file, ProppFrexx ONAIR uses standard playlists. However, playlists can be physical local playlist files (e.g. like .m3u, .pls or any other supported playlist format) or even links to database tables representing a playlist. Cardwalls are also seen as playlist, whose entries represent the single cards; whereas the scheduler might create dynamic playlists for live assist or fully automated playout operations etc. In other words you might say: “Almost everything in ProppFrexx ONAIR is a playlist”.

This means the first thing you should think of is: “Where are my audio files and how do I organize them”. So here are some notes about playlists…

By default, the standard playlist formats (like e.g. .m3u or .pls) just contain a reference to the location of the audio file (plus sometimes a short title of the reference), but they typically does not contain additional information about how an individual track should be played (e.g. specifying cue-points, if loop points exist, if volume envelops to perform automatic fading exist, if additional meta data is associated with a track etc.). For this reason we have developed our own playlist format called “.pfp” ProppFrexx Standard Playlist format. This format overcomes these shortens and supports all kind of additional meta data per individual playlist track. It is based on the open Sharable Playlist Format (.xspf) which stores the playlist in an XML format. However, you can still use any other existing and supported playlist format with PorppFrexx ONAIR, just be aware, that in such case some features might not be available. So let us assume you already have various playlists available and each playlist represent your database of playable tracks (audio files).

Whenever you want to play a track you can create a logical playlist within ProppFrexx ONAIR. This is where the Playlist window comes into play, in which you can arrange all your tracks (e.g. add them from one of your media libraries, drag-drop from the windows explorer etc.). This logical playlist defines the order of tracks to be played. Each logical playlist has up to four DJ Players (by default only 2 DJ Players are configured). The tracks from the playlist are loaded in sequential order from the playlist to these players and can now be played out from there. Each DJ Player can be freely assigned to any output mixer channel strip of the main mixer within ProppFrexx ONAIR. Various options are available to support you with these tasks. This goes from automatic playback and mixing to fully manual operations.

As you might not always want to operate ProppFrexx ONAIR in a manual fashion an extensive scheduler and scripting engine is available. You can define any number of scripts, in which you describe how and what tracks should be automatically added to logical playlists; and you can setup programs, which are assigned to a scheduler control and define when new logical playlists should be created and what script should be executed along with it (just like in Outlook). This allows you to completely automate ProppFrexx ONAIR operations and also lets you seamlessly switch between manual (live assist) and automatic mode.

Two independent cardwalls provide you with the ability to quickly play jingles, sweepers, whatsoever. In addition ProppFrexx ONAIR allows you to organize tracks in so called embedded playlists, which are smaller playlists which treat their entries as one big logical track. This allows you to pack multiple tracks (e.g. a row of advertising tracks) to one single track.

To support multiple users on a single broadcasting workstation ProppFrexx ONAIR comes with an integrated user management. This allows you to define any number of individual users working on the same machine without the need to change the operating system user. Each ProppFrexx ONAIR user can customize the look and feel of the user interface to his needs and each user can be granted an individual set of user rights (e.g. preventing some user to perform certain actions or changing certain settings).

Integrated streaming support is another great feature set. You might directly broadcast live streams from within ProppFrexx ONAIR. You can define any number of streaming servers and such ProppFrexx ONAIR can be a source to external streaming servers or even be the server itself (e.g. to support local area network broadcasting).

An ONAIR time control, RSS Feed Reader, a Message Center, an integrated Web Browser, a freely configurable list of Standby Players, an extensive Find and Explorer control plus Advertising, Overlay and MODStream support round up the picture.