RADIO AUTOMATION SOFTWARE - BROADCAST POWER BP2X

Since my last communication, I have made 3 releases of Broadcast Power with the fourth on its way with a huge improvement.

As always, I thank you for using Broadcast Power and thanks for your feedback.

In this newsletter, I will list the changes and bug fixes since 2.5.5.8. The latest released version of Broadcast Power is 2.5.6.3.

As of version 2.5.6.0, Broadcast Power requires a license key to run. Please contact me through the contact form on my website to get one. The activation process happens online.

• Added code to allow rebranding Broadcast Power. But still not accessible to the user.
• Improved the program selection from the Grid screen. When you click on the calendar icon you can now see the start and end time of each of the grids, schedules and programs, in addition to their name. This makes selection easier when you have the same program names in a schedule or the same schedule name within a grid.
• Added real-time view of automation object list. This list is view only. You can stop the currently playing audio file when in automation mode and the automation engine will play the following one. It does not allow you to sort items but it does allow you to insert new items in that list. If your objective is to manually manipulate the list, use manual mode.
• Addded shortcut to swap between players (queue=1, jingle=2, and commercial=3) or numpad 1, 2, and 3 with the control key pressed.
• Added floating of the commercial player control.
• Added auto-retrieve of commercials and notification when a spot is due to play.
• Commercial types are now used during scheduling to separate commercials based on type. For every update, we check the whole spot for consecutive commercial types and separate them by other commercials within a spot or if none exist, we randomly select a Commercial of type filler.
• Nominate commercial start and commercial end (break in) (break out), using commercial type.
• Added ability to drag-drop audio files onto queue.
• Ignore Tags option when dragging and dropping files on the media control.
• Add sequence numbering to commercials instead of using creation order.
• Added bulk schedule commercials where you can select a campaign with its multiple commercials to schedule for a particular day on the same grid. This feature is similar to Power 98's bulk scheduler, with one additional feature, an unlimited number of commercials within a campaign can be scheduled on the same grid. The previous version had a limit of 7 commercials to bulk schedule.
• Added new report for commercials.
• Added capabilities to send messages between users and to broadcast messages to all users.
• Added multiple spot selection and loading. Users can now remove specific commercials from the spot before playing back.
• Added ability to select time interval to auto-retrieve commercials.
• Added reset function for a jingle page to clear all buttons.
• Improved the multi-track graphical editor. When you move a track while the shift key is pressed, all subsequent tracks move the same distance in the same direction. This is useful when you want to move a track at the top without messing up the timing of all subsequent tracks.
• Added ability to copy jingles from one page to any other for the same logged in user.
• Added two new media search fields: Intro & Outro.
• Added simulcast for commercials as option instead of default. Other option is to play next scheduled song or program. Effect of this feature is that commercials will be filled
• Changed player display to show song name, performer, and notes. User has to scroll to read.
• Changed play on time handling in automation to apply to any program element type instead of only commercial program elements. The design has been reviewed and improved.
• Change open dialog box for jingles to match media editor. Creates a more consistent UI experience.
• Simplified scheduler implemented. One schedule, one program. Display of elements in grid format and not tree view.
• Implemented hourly clocks and allow user to insert into schedule inside simple scheduler (to implement in full fledged scheduler too).
• Added configuration setting to control the speed of visual effects refresh rate.
• Added configuration settings for Automation Player to control whether the system should check for the player playing mode (playing, paused or stopped) before deciding to load and play the next program element.
• Window color scheme now saved on exit for each user.
• Date / Time display color can be changed and saved per user.
• The UI language is now saved per user and restored after login.
• Added digital signal processors in a chain:
  1. Dynamic Gain
  2. Compressor

  Users can enable or disable and configure these DSP’s individually. I have noticed on some systems that these two effects can cause crackle. Use with caution until I sort out the cause and fix it.

• Created a recorder plugin which you can use to record the output of the default Windows audio card to an ogg, aac, or mp3 format with different configurable bit rates.
  Also, it records timestamps of the media files being played by BP2X which will be used in a special player that can seek within the recorded file easily.
  Each day is saved in a folder and the files are split by the hour. This plugin is only available by request as I haven't finished testing it properly.

• Fixed a display bug when updating a program element. If you update a program element, the element rules will not refresh. The refresh routine was fixed.
• Fixed date and time issues in SQL statements when SQL Server is installed on a machine with date and time settings different to Australia.
• Fixed display of large audio files (MP3 files > 20 MB in size). The cached images in Broadcast Power are stored in JPEG format. JPEG has a limit of 64000 pixel widths in .NET. You can't see an error message but the file will not display in the graphical editor.
• Fixed commercial player playback halting when a commercial has a missing audio file. The player will now skip playing back the missing commercial and attempts to play the following if available.
• Fixed commercial player playback counter update.
• If a program element rule returns no matching songs, a blank error message was showing. The message is fixed to explain the error in detail and allow the user to change the rule.
• Fixed key shortcuts for floating jingles window.
• Fixed mouse click on jingle remaining time and elapsed time counters. Clicking on those counters is supposed to re-attach the jingle player with the jingle server. Now jingle player will re-attach itself to server after a jingle play event occurs on the client.
• Fixed deleting program elements to delete commercial spots unless they fall before current date.
• Fixed news player and editor to display news clip icon in right text position and made button a tad narrower.
• Fixed issue with automation engine improperly retrieving program elements when there is an undefined gap between two subsequent program elements.
• Fixed issue with commercial player consuming too much CPU and on some systems audio stutters.
• Fixed browser width setting between application restarts. The width was growing with each restart. Now it will retain the previous run width.