With 4.0.95 we are jumping a big step forward in our mission to make Visual Radio expandable in all kinds of custom Visual Radio (TV) Broadcast scenarios. Create automated playlist with playing the files from a local directory. Play single uploaded image. Take full manual control over an Player to lock items for a longer time. Configure the Audio Manager to further meet your speakers needs.
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A lot to discover in 4.0.95! Let’s jump right in:
🎛️ Take Output Player control with Manual mode
Output Players were the perfect example of how Visual Radio should not get in the way of making the the real broadcast, the radioshow.
With the help of conditions and live-items the players were automating all kinds of output usecases; from automatic station-id logo overlays, to tickertapes and music clip syncing. Use cases were no manual intervention is needed.
Now introducing the Output Player in Manual Mode!
Manual Mode enables you to get fine grained control over the Player. With eject queue stop, queue and play controls you determine what is locked on the Output until further action.
The complete queue of an active rundown is available to play, with safe queue-first control. Select an item from queue and press next when ready to take it onair (on the output)!
We hear you thinking.. this new manual Take Onair functionality would be perfect in a Output specific Dashboard and hand over to producers?
🤫🤐 Sneak peek time
✨ New Playables!
This version introduces two new awaited playable features; Local Directory and Image Media.
Play all content from Local Directories
Struggling to loop through all media in a local directory? Not anymore with the introduction of the Local Directory playable! Define the directory you want to scan for the files that match your file pattern (for example .mp4,.mov,.mpg,.avi) and VRA Output Player will automatically Queue all contents of the directory in your Output Rundown playout.
Play a Still Image Media
Still images already were super-easy to add to an Visual, thereafter you could add this fresh Visual to an Output to display the uploaded media.
It is now possible to support your simple just-show-a-single-still-image scenarios on a Output by the new “Image Media” Playable Content Item.
Audio Smart Commando looping
Since v4.0.85 the smart commando algorithm has been expanded to single speaker trigger scenarios as well. For example when MIC 1 is the only live Audio Trigger the new commando looping will also loop through the available Commandos in the list of the single speaker, after the now configurable x milliseconds (see New Audio Manager Settings). Super useful to create multi speaker shots and keep the watchers engaged).
New Audio Manager Settings
Since v4.0.87 it possible to control the Audio Manager behaviour even more with the introduction of two new controls: Dynamic Switching Time and Keep Active Speaker Time
By default those two controls were respectively 4000ms and 20s, but the control now gives you the ability to further personalise VRA Audio Triggeres.
Dynamic Switching Time
Time to take before looking for a better shot, for example in the following two scenarios:
Audio Trigger “MIC 1” has two commandos,
Cam 1andCam 2,Audio Trigger MIC 1 and 2 both have
Cam 2configured as the secondary commando, the dynamic switching will make sure that the secondary is triggered after the configured x ms when both MICs are Active (two- or more speaker-mode).
Keep Active Speaker Time
The Active Speaker time determines the time it takes to make a Trigger not “hot” anymore. Hot triggers are less-likely to get activated by short shouts / laughs or other short reactions, which make the typical two-speaker conversations more chilled to watch. After the Active Speaker Time (by default 20 seconds) a Trigger is more sensitive to be triggered, for example at the start of the next talk.
Apps (100+ updates)
Output Player Manual feature
Control Output with selecting items from Queue
Manual mode disables some of the automatic queue control and damage prevention
Select rundowns manually, instead of waiting on the condition
Rundown active and playable state (when conditions are applied on rundown-level) are now better communicated to the dashboard
Stop the player and clear the output
Much better handling of playing files that do not exist (anymore)
Smaller updates / Quality of Life improvements
General
Audio Manager
Video Switchers
Bugfixes
Only initialize Outputs if valid Output channels are configured (NDI / SDI), re-enable fixes
Seek in current playing file
Duplex event route fixes for all commandos (especially INTERNAL)
Audio Condition trigger fixes with onair state
Commando middleware bugfixes for studio state
Do not auto-update sub-clients if Core has timeslots specified
Audio Trigger active state condition cleanup
AutomationLink File handler bugfix (fixed bug for GML not reading successfully)
Fixed: Output player cachers would automatically re-create itself while caching, because the file was not ready yet.
Cloud
103 Cloud App Updates 36 API Updates
General
Fuzzy user search
Better server state reload on active tab
Audio Settings Save fix
Improved permissions caching / loading
Bugfixes for live scheduling information in Visuals
Improved Data Link Scheduling Program select
Resource Lock improvements on all commando-based inputs
Output Player
New Studio Output Player Manual Control interfaces
Output Player new playable content editors
Press enter on Fixed duration input to add/save item
API
Infrastructure reliability improvements
User permission fixes
New Datamodel for Dashboards
New authentication flow for single Media Display in Output Player
TLDR;
Version 4.0.95 of the Visual Radio Assist software includes several new features and updates. The most notable addition is manual mode for Output Players, which gives users greater control over the queue. This new feature allows for fine-grained control over the queue, as well as new playables including Local Directory and Image Media. Another notable update is the Audio Manager, which now has new controls for Dynamic Switching Time and Keep Active Speaker Time.
In addition to these major updates, there are many other smaller updates and bug fixes across the suite. Some of these updates include improvements to Commando retrying, better Onair studio display in Rack, new Audio Manager Conditions, better App Quotum handling, and more.
Overall, version 4.0.95 of Visual Radio Assist brings significant improvements and new features to the suite, making it easier for users to create custom Visual Radio (TV) Broadcast scenarios.