Announcements with Music Programming

Announcements as a Special Case

An announcement Sound Item is created like any other Sound Item. However, it is treated as a special case by the Automator. Announcements will Preempt any playing music track by suspending a playing track and resuming after the announcement completes. You can also force all announcements to have a Pre-Delay and/or Post-Delay in the Options dialog Automation tab. There are several ways you might want to mix announcements with music programming.

1.  Insert an announcement after each music track finishes playing by cycling through a list of announcements. See the 'Insert Announcements' section below.
2.  Play announcements at regular intervals (ex. every 5 minutes) by cycling through a list of announcements. See the 'Interval Announcements' section below.
3.  Play an announcement at a specific time of day. See the 'Scheduled Announcements' section below.
4.  Play an announcement after a specified time interval has expired. See the 'Offset Timed Announcements' section below.

Insert Announcements

Announcements can be automatically inserted between sequential playing sounds (ex. music tracks). After the last Announcements plays, the program will cycle back to the first announcement. Thus, the number of announcements does not need to match the number of music selections. (See the sample )

Designate a Script as Insert Announcements in the Script Editor (Figure 1.), by checking the Insert Announcements checkbox.

When the script is run, all Play steps in this Script to be placed on a special announcement stack. One announcement is played at the end of each music selection.

Interval Announcements

Announcements can be automatically played at a regular interval (ex. every 5 minutes) by suspending any currently playing sounds (ex. music tracks). After the last Announcements plays, the program will cycle back to the first announcement. Thus, the number of announcements does not need to match the number of music selections. (See the sample ). Interval announcements will continue to play forever until you stop the master script manually or if a Stop Script step is encountered.

Designate a Script as Insert Announcements in the Script Editor (Figure 1.), by checking the Interval Announcements checkbox. The interval time amount is specified by the Announcements Interval Time in the Options dialog Automation tab.

When the script is run, all Play steps in this Script to be placed on a special announcement stack. One announcement is played each time the interval expires.

Offset Timed Announcements

Announcements can be timed to play at an time Offset from the run start of a script. For example, if the containing script starts at 1:00PM, and the step Offset is 5 minutes, the announcement will play at 1:05PM. These announcements will play once, everytime the containing script is run. Generally, use Offset times when the offsets are irregular times. If you want to play announcements at regular intervals (ex every 5 minutes), it is much easier to use Interval Announcements. (See the sample )

Designate a Script as Announcements in the Script Editor (Figure 1.), by checking the Standard Announcements checkbox. Then set the Offset time for each Play step to the desired time.

When the script is run, Play steps with Offset time enabled will fire after their offset expires.

Note: Take care not to create announcement collisions. For example, if your announcements are about 1 minute long, and you set Offsets at 30 seconds, one announcement will interrupt another.

Scheduled Announcements

Announcements can be scheduled for a time of day and played with the Scheduler. (See the sample )

Designate a Script as Announcements in the Script Editor (Figure 1.), by checking the Standard Announcements checkbox. Then set the Schedule time for each Play step to the desired time.

For a scheduled step to play, script that contains the step must be run before step's scheduled Start time. Obviously, the Scheduler must have been started as well. When the script that contains the scheduled steps runs, all scheduled Play steps are added to the schedule plan. When a step's Start time arrives, the announcement is played.

Notes: Take care not to create announcement collisions. For example, if your announcements are about 1 minute long, and you set scheduled steps to play every 30 seconds, one announcement will interrupt another. Also, do not run a script with scheduled steps more than once. You will be effectively scheduling the same step to play multiple times at the same exact instant.

General Tips for Announcements

Tip - Create modular, reusable Sound Lists - Don't reinvent the wheel everytime. Create modular announcements Sound Lists that can be imported to rapidly build new automation scenarios. See the Announcements with Music Programming samples for our recommended approach.

Tip - Announcements volume - If you want the announcements to be louder than the music, set the Sound Item volume for announcements at 100 percent (100%). Then set the music Sound Items to a reduced value, for example, 75 percent (75%). This is fairly quick to do with the power editing function of the Sound List Tools -- Update Play Controls Attributes . Volume setting will likely vary from venue to venue, so you will want to pretest the volume setting on the actual system prior to show night.

Tip - Silence Before And After Announcements - Since announcement will suspend a playing music track, it is a good practice to set Pre and Post Delay on the announcement to provide a buffer of silence between the announcement and the music. The easy way to do this is to set the Override Pre-Delay (and Post-Delay ) in the Options dialog Automation tab. Alternatively, you could set the 'Pre and Post Delay on every announcement Sound Item if you want different delay amounts for each announcement.

Tip - Shuffle music from multiple Sound Lists together - Before importing any announcements, import all the music sound lists you want to shuffle. Then open the Automator window and create a new Script to play all tracks by clicking Announcements -- New Script Music Selections. Check the "Shuffle steps when run" checkbox in this new Script.

Tip - Using multiple announcements Sound Lists together - Import as many as you like. If you followed the modular approach above there will be a Script in each Sound List to play the set of announcements. In your master programming Script, remember to put a Run Script step for each of the announcement Scripts.