Uh oh

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wtcsrocks
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Uh oh

Post by wtcsrocks »

Got another problem.

Yes, it's ME again. I like to put my PC through its paces and it can mostly take it. But it doesn't like PF.
I have yet to see if there's an event in the system logs, but here's the scoop.

PF played through my playlist, apparently not all the way through, but stopped, locked up. I rebooted and now when I open my playlist of over 5200 songs, they are all showing as having been played. How do I change this to an un-played state?

I don't want PF to save the playstate to the .pfp either. My station is down at the moment until I figure this out.

No big deal. I'm getting close to selling this monster if it doesn't behave itself! :lol:
Rick Winslow, Owner/GM
WTCS FM 96.1
http://wtcs.rocks
"The Station That Rocks"
Thomaston, Maine
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radio42
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Re: Uh oh

Post by radio42 »

Whenever a track is played in a playlist, it will be marked as played. You can toggle the played state at the bottom left status bar of the playlist or via the playlist ribbon tab.

However, tracks in a media library are never marked and/or in any playlist the play state is NEVER saved!
And this wouldn’t even effect any ability of ProppFrexx to play tracks etc.
So I believe, there most be some other issue.
To me it more sounds, like tracks are unable to be be played?!
Eg. when ProppFrexx cannot reference the location of the track (for example it’s location has been changed outside of ProppFrexx) it might look like this. ProppFrexx by default saves the location of the tracks in a playlist relative to the location of the playlist. Ie. you can not simply move the location of the playlist file, but not move the files - or you change the setting to save absolute path locations. Both options have its advantages and disadvantage.
But if this is the case in your scenario is just a guess, as I don’t know, what you have changed, what you describe, doesn’t make sense and is just a guess without more details.

You can check, if a track is able to play, when you invoke the TAG Editor, by pressing ALT+3 - this will show you, if a track can be not be found.
wtcsrocks
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Re: Uh oh

Post by wtcsrocks »

Yep. Found the problem. An external hard drive had stopped responding. Restarted and PF started paying immediately. Wish I could have seen, behind the scenes, what PF was doing. Like in a terminal window. There were no events in the Windows logs.

Question: Is there a quick way to tell the playlist that all of the tracks have moved to another location? The file structure exactly the same like just from D: to E:? If I clone my drive to another?

Again, THANK YOU.
Rick Winslow, Owner/GM
WTCS FM 96.1
http://wtcs.rocks
"The Station That Rocks"
Thomaston, Maine
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radio42
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Re: Uh oh

Post by radio42 »

When using relative file path and locations and saving the playlist (.pfp) on the same drive as the audio files, you can change the drive and root path without the need to changing anything.
There is no way to change the location with a simple click within ProppFrexx.
But you might edit the .pfp file manually which might be a quick way. Plus in the general settings there is an alternative location mapping option (whichever is basically a backup/fallback location option), but that also doesn’t change to original location.

Still, don’t call PF a monster, when your external hard disk dies. PF is not responsible for your equipment;-)
wtcsrocks
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Re: Uh oh

Post by wtcsrocks »

I know. My bad. Sorry. PF is not a monster. It's a BEAST! But a lovable one. There are just so many ways to do things wrong. I'm a testament to that!
I did find some cool things. The best was the ability to drag and drop entire folders onto the playlist. What a timesaver! Trying to wrap my head around playlists and libraries. Without breaking stuff.

Next up will be voice tracking for individual playlists/shows.

I'm really loving this software now. 9821 songs in my main playlist so far. 27 days and 11 hours. Gives me time to do other things!

I wonder how many tracks/songs others have in their playlists? Anyone?
Rick Winslow, Owner/GM
WTCS FM 96.1
http://wtcs.rocks
"The Station That Rocks"
Thomaston, Maine
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radio42
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Re: Uh oh

Post by radio42 »

I myself have a little over 100k.
wtcsrocks
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Re: Uh oh

Post by wtcsrocks »

Double uh oh.
Why does my overlay, TOTH, now show up in my playlist and I can't get rid of it? I also removed it from the Scheduler and turned off the scheduler but it persists. This started happening when I updated to the latest PF version. In fact, it wouldn't play the top of the hour at all after I updated, and once I repopulated the scheduler, it started doing this.
Not sure why. All my settings were right, according to what you posted for me.

Any ideas? The station is currently off-air due to this.

Thanks.
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Thomaston, Maine
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radio42
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Re: Uh oh

Post by radio42 »

Have you defined your TOTH as an FTE as well as an Overlay Scheduler Entry? In your screenshots it looks you have both defined and used?
But nothing was changed in the handling of FTEs or Overlays in the latest version.

And are your playlists manually created/generated or created via the Program Scheduler?
wtcsrocks
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Re: Uh oh

Post by wtcsrocks »

Yes the TOTH is a fixed time event and the scheduler runs it exactly at the TOTH. I removed all of those settings in General Settings and started over. Now it plays correctly but I don't know about all this scripting works since when the TOTH happens, the current playlist (which is currently only one and continuous) will stop. Autoplay turns off. I need the playlist to finish its song, play the TOTH, and continue with the next song. It will stop the song in progress, even if it's only started playing for 15 seconds, then do TOTH, and stop. I have to push Autoplay again. I've got my BOOK out with all the scripting options but I need to read through it and watch whatever tutorials I need.
I'll work through it. I must. Since I don't feel comfortable adding more than one item to the scheduler until I can fix it.

Here's a question. Should the TOTH be a Program or Overlay? The TOTH be a pfp or a mp3 file? Or embed the mp3 into a pfp like it is now? I did that so I could add more to the TOTH pfp if needed. Maybe there's a better way.

Also, some songs finish playing then the Autoplay stops. In the player waveform window it says "EOF - Please Eject!". What causes this and how do I fix it?

Thanks.
Rick Winslow, Owner/GM
WTCS FM 96.1
http://wtcs.rocks
"The Station That Rocks"
Thomaston, Maine
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radio42
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Re: Uh oh

Post by radio42 »

Yes the TOTH is a fixed time event and the scheduler runs it exactly at the TOTH.
A TOTH can either be defined as a FTE or as part of a script, eg. the first line of a script. Regardless, the script is executed as a program scheduler entry.
How you define things depends on your requirements.

Let us start as simple as possible. Ie. we don’t use any FTE or Overlay, but let us try to do everything just as a simple script.
A script starts with the start of a program scheduler entry and runs as long as the next program is started. Each program is started as a new playlist and is executed it (note, that this is effectively the same). Once it is started, the previous playlist/program is closed.
Ie. the next program interrupts/stops the current program/playlist.
And while a program/playlist runs, it executes the assigned script and this script is responsible to deliver new tracks (playlist entries) as needed.
If a script comes to its end of script-lines, but more tracks/entries are needed, it simply starts all over again from the beginning. Actually not at the beginning, but at the script-line which is defined as the ‚Loop-Line‘.
And this Loop-Line is exactly important here! As you can define some lines at the beginning, which are only executed once, for the very first time when the script starts (eg. when the program starts), but in case the script needs to loop, it will not be executed again.
And this is exactly what we will now use with the TOTH!

Define a script, use the first script-line as your TOTH entry and set the Loop-Line parameter of the script to 2. Add more script-line as needed.
Now define a program scheduler entry. Use that script and define the length of the script resp. define the recurrence of the script to repeat every 1 hour.
In the program scheduler (remove any old entries and also do not use any Overlay scheduler entries and also do not use any FTEs in your script!) you should now see each hour the same entry in the program scheduler. Ie. the script is started each hour and each hour a new playlist is started which starts with the TOTH entry.

What you experience, that a track of a previous entry just plays 15sec. and then stops and the new program/playlist starts can also happen here. Eg. if you define the program scheduler entry as Fixed, it will start exactly at that time. And this might cut a track early, even way too early, as previous tracks are typically picked randomly, you don’t know, when a track starts or do finishes.

However, there are a few ways tingandlw this.
a) you can set the ‚TryEnsureExactLength‘ program option. This is pick good fitting tracks at the end (if available).
b) you might start a program Soft (note the various parameters how soft and even consider the Allow Statt early option)

This should give you a good start configuration. If you need more complex stuff, start from here as well and keep it as simple as possible.

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