The DRS 2006 Autoplay Manager (12/19/2003)
The Autoplay Manager is the most powerful addition to the Professional version of the DRS 2006 System. This module allows you to fully automate your radio program. "Walk away" radio automation at its very best!

The Autoplay Manager is used to define a set of playlists, shuffle modes and special time based events or mini playlists which will be automatically loaded and started in the On Air Studio Professional.


Planning your radio program
You can plan your complete radio program in advance. Each day consists of 24 slots in which playlists or shuffle play modes can be loaded. The slots contain the information for every hour of the day and several features can be set. You can mix them just the way you want to. You can even leave out some hours or options of the hour. The Autoplay Manager will remain in the last mode it was set to. That means that if you have set a shuffle play mode at 15:00 o'clock, skipped 16:00 o'clock and then set for example a playlist at 17:00 o'clock, the Autoplay Manager will use your predefined shuffle mode from 15:00 to 17:00 o'clock. Then it will use your playlist from 17:00 o'clock on.

Setting a playlist mode
First you select a day on the left side of the Autoplay Manager. To load a playlist to a specific hour of the selected day, you simply press on the folder symbol on the right of the desired hour. Now a dialog opens and you can select any available playlist. If you would now activate the Autoplay Manager in the On Air Studio Professional, the On Air Studio Professional would load this playlist at the specific hour and day and begin to play it at the exact time you planned it.

If you press the 'Remove' button in the playlist time table, the playlist or shuffle play mode of this hour will be removed.


Setting a shuffle play mode
If you press on the 'Shuffle' button in the row of a certain hour, the Shuffle Play Manager dialog will open up. You handle this dialog exactly like the Autofill function of the Playlist Editor or the Shuffle Play Manager (Shuffle Setup) of the On Air Studio Professional. An artist separation will always be activated by default.

If you would now activate the Autoplay Manager in the On Air Studio Peofessional, the On Air Studio Professional would load these settings in its Shuffle Play Manager and at the hour specified it would start the shuffle play mode. Of course you can also load and save your rotations. You can use these rotations in the Autoplay Manager, On Air Studio Professional and Playlist Editor.

The Event Manager
If you press the button marked 'Events' in any row, the Event Manager screen will open up. The Event Manager is the same as in the On Air Studio Professional.

You can see the Event Manager as another additional player which is fully time based and which has a higher priority than all other players in the complete system. The Event Manager is used to play jingles, sweepers, liners, commercials and so on. You can even set up a row of events with the help of the mini playlist feature. You can also set up or change these Events in the On Air Studio Professional module while you are on air.
You can also use the Event Manager even if you are not using the autoplay mode of the Autoplay Manager.

In the Event Manager you can define twelve special events which will be played at the defined time (minutes:seconds) of the hour. You can define the desired time with the sliders and arrows of every row.

You are also able to use the back timing function of the Event Manager to set the event time. It is done by pressing the 'B' button. Back timing means that the DRS 2006 sets your events exactly before the selected time. So lets say you want your event to be finished at the full hour. To do so you set the slider to '00:00' and then you press the 'B' button. If your event has a length of 15 seconds, the back timing function will set the event to '59:45'. It will now be finished exactly at the full hour.

On the right side you can insert or remove any item of the database or mini playlists. For this procedure the already known Database Search Engine is used. Simply press the 'I' button to insert a single item of the database.
If you want to insert a mini playlist, which can be created with the Playlist Editor, you press the 'M' button. A dialog box will appear asking you to select the playlist you want to insert. A mini playlist is similar to a normal playlist. For example you can use this feature to set up a 3 minutes commercial block.
When the On Air Studio Professional plays a single event, nothing will show on the current playlist screen. When it reaches a mini playlist event though, the mini playlist will show on the playlist screen. You can find out more about the mini playlists in the On Air Studio Professional section of this manual.

Altough there are twelve events that can be defined, you might not want to use all of them. If you for example just want to use one event per hour, simply click on the 'R' buttons beside all the other events - if the fields in the middle of the dialog are not already empty.

You can set the events either to the exact time or to the cue point of the current song.  If you have checked 'Exact', the On Air Studio Professional will interrupt the current song when the specified time is reached and then play the event you have selected. The current title of the playlist will be faded out immediately. After playing the event, the playlist continues with the next item. For example this can be used to play a jingle every 15 minutes.
If you don't want the current title to be interrupted you have to check 'Cue' instead. Now the event will be played at the cue point out of the song which is currently playing at the selected time.

If two programmed events overlap in the On Air Studio Professional, the second event will be ignored. If you want to overlap events, you can use the mini playlist feature.


On the bottom of the Event Manager window there are two check boxes. Here you can turn the events on or off during any mode.

You can also load or save already defined Event Stacks with the buttons in the lower left corner.

Note:
If you set up events in the Event Manager, don't forget to activate them!

You can remove all playlists of a day at once by clicking the 'Remove day' button.
You can also check the Autoplay Integrity by pressing 'Check Integrity'. This will cause the Autoplay Manager to search for all playlists you have inserted. If any playlist is missing the Autoplay Manager will indicate this. This feature works in the same way as the 'Check Audio Integrity' feature of the Database Connector.

NOTE:
The Autoplay Manager module is only available in the Professional Package of the DRS 2006 digital audio system.