Issue 10

Submitted by emile on Thu, 28/02/2008 - 23:01.

Broadcast Power Newsletter

Issue 10

Broadcast Power Newsletter Stay up to date with the latest releases Volume # 10 \| 28 FEB 2008
Version 2.5.5.3 released to registered users! Although I have been quite busy at home, I just finished coding a couple of new features and fixing a couple bugs. This newsletter edition will describe the new features in detail and explain the logic behind them and shed some light on the bugs fixed.
	Announcement! Verison 2.5.5.3 released. Get it today from the users download section of my website.
Automated Line-In As you might already know, BP2X is capable of muting players and playing back audio from the line-in or recorder channel of your sound card. This is useful if you have an external source of audio, not controllable by your computer, but still want a means of enabling and disabling it, during your broadcast. It can be used to feed audio from a microphone, a satellite receiver, or Internet audio stream. In previous versions of BP2X, you were able to switch audio from the Line-In, on or off, by clicking on a button. Now, in version 2.5.5.3, you can add a Line-In program element to your schedule and let Broadcast Power automate it for you. To enable this feature, the first thing you need to do is create a program element of type "Line-In". In the background, Broadcast Power will interpret this type of program elements and increase the volume for the Line-In (recorder channel of your sound card), then stop playback of all other players. Here's a simple scenario where automating a Line-In is useful. Imagine your station broadcasts a satellite feed from 2 AM to 3 AM every week day. You could create a program with a single program element of type "Line-In" between the hours of 2 and 3 AM. If you have other audio files shceduled before and after these times, they will play normally, until the clock hits 2 AM. This is when Broadcast Power will stop all other players and start playing back audio from the satellite feed. Audio drag and drop templating In previous versions of BP2X, when dropping files on the Media Editor screen, you were prompted to confirm the type of media file you were dropping by selecting a value from a drop down box. Now, instead of the simplistic media type selection dialog box, you will see a version of the Media Editor displayed. Some fields are disabled and the toolbar which allows you to create/save/delete media records is hidden. The logic behind displaying this dialog box is to allow you to set some default values for the file(s) you are dragging and dropping on the Media Editor. If the files you are dragging and dropping have tag values (e.g. ID3 tags or Ogg tags), the values of those tags will replace the defaults you set. Otherwise, BP2X will use the defaults to populate the newly created media record. Logically, you wouldn't want to set a default value for the name. Each file, dropped, should have a different name in our database. As such, the Name field is disabled. Bugs fixed in this version Two bugs were fixed in this version. Media Search When searching for media files, the system was constructing an SQL statement with a missing WHERE condition. This was causing the system to return the full list of media files instead those matching a criteria of your selection. To test it, add a criteria on the Media Search dialog box (e.g. Name) and click the Search button. MP3 ID3 tags When dragging and dropping MP3 files onto the Media Editor screen, BP2X was failing to add some files, depending on the content of their tags. There were situations when the tags in the MP3 header were set to null when BP2X is expecting a value. In version 2.5.5.3, BP2X ignore those null entries if found and continues to create the database record with whatever data is available in the header. Would you like to share your experience with us? If you are using Broadcast Power, I am really interested in hearing back from you. We will publish your name and logo with a link back to your website on our testimonials page. You deserve to be heard. Please get in touch with me.
©2008 Emile Bassil.