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Going Live

How can I do a live talk show with Playit Live? Can we use the aux feature? Add a voice track in? We’d like to use them in a clock wheel if possible.
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Hello Jim,


It depends on the architecture of the system you propose. At it's simplest, take the output of PlayIt Live into a mixer channel, return the mixer to PlayIt Live and stream the output.


Job done !


More sophisticated, have a computer "somewhere" streaming a schedule of pre-recorded material and take the "live" insert as a stream (if remote) or aux (if local).


To me "clock" tends to refer to music rotation. Are you thinking of hour segments in a schedule ?

Thanks, Mark. Right now we have the audio routed to where we can actually open the mics and talk over whatever is playing on Playit and it will be heard on our app. We have clocks set because we are an affiliate of SB Nation Sports Network so we have times for local avails during the hour. Actually has been pretty good. We’ll test it in the morning but we were hoping to just insert an “aux” into the clock for however many minutes we have per segment and run it as part of the clock wheel so that our hosts can just open the mics and talk with everything being scheduled in terms of intros, commercials, etc. Hopefully we’re close on this. Any thoughts?

Hello Jim,


I think I see how this is supposed to work.


You take a "core" or "sustaining" feed (perhaps as a web stream) for a proportion of the day (or hour) and make local material to insert at certain time in the hour or day.


You want PlayIt Live to run a master schedule that ensures that the core material and any promo, junction or interstitial material gets played and the local material from your mixer fills only the allocated slots.


I think this should work although it might not sound great at the junctions as the local mixer will (I think) just be cut and it requires the local material to run to exact time.


Your presenter will need to hear the output of PlayIt Live but not have it on the mixer (or at least not fade it up on a simple mixer) as otherwise it will all howl round as the mixer is a source in the PlayIt Live mix.


Hence any clips in the live material will need to come from something else.


Ideally you would want some sort of "clean feed" or "mix minus" from PlayIt Live.


There would be other possible approaches but I can't think of any other way where the schedule "master" is the playout (PlayIt Live) system.


Also, anything else I could suggest would cost many times what the simpler approach you have will.


Would it be a good idea to use an external or stand alone encoder? Prior to our network affiliation, we used a simple Playout system for our live shows while using Rocket Broadcaster. Worked out well. Sounded good.
And as I mentioned, we can open the mics and talk over anything including our imported stream from SB Nation Sports Radio. Would that also fix the issues you were anticipating with getting cut off at hard time outs?

If you can trust the presenters to respect the schedule then personally I would use the approach of 


PlayIt Live > Mixer > Streaming software


Rocket Broadcaster (being just a streaming application) has more features than PlayIt Live's streaming plug in (particularly in the paid version).


I might also use a dedicated computer just for streaming.


The reason for the "might" is that for the part of the day that you use "full" automation I think you could use PlayIt Live as a source into Rocket Broadcaster and take the mixer out of circuit (I haven't actually ever tried this but I think it would work).


When you go "live"you fade up the local line source as "microphone" for Rocket Broadcaster and fade down "other applications" (which is where the PlayIt Live audio would appear during full automation).


PlayIt Live would also be a source on the mixer so can be used during the part of the day that you do a mix of live, sustaining and local recorded elements.


We have a dedicated computer for the automation & streaming. We have another set up for pre-recording shows. Interesting point about Rocket Broadcaster. That may be possible. Hosts/presenters are pretty good about respecting the breaks...hopefully. I guess the final question to move on is: what do we put in the clock wheel to create the talk segments? An “aux” insert or an empty voice track? Thanks for the info. Gave me some ideas too.

Without having tried it, I would look at creating clocks based on the elements of the "sustaining" feed you want to use and fixed time markers. 


I would then use probably use a break note for the live elements and add jingles and promos either as files or from folders as needed.


There will be a fair amount of "finessing" of the clock needed to get it right.


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