#trouble getting blocks with random length videos to schedule consistently.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

warm furnace
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So, I’ve got various times scheduled throughout the week to play TV blocks with original commercials on shuffle, and after those are over, use tail filler to play until the next program starts. With random sized blocks, I expected there to often be gaps at the end around 30 minutes or so which is why I used short cartoons in the tail filler. The problem is that the gaps are often way bigger. For example, today should be Sat morning cartoon blocks from 8 AM to 2 PM, but it doesn’t appear to be playing them at all. I woke up sometime between 8 and 9 and even then, it wasn’t playing a WOC block.

I was going to wait and see if the problem got better as I got more of my content added to ETV, but it’s failing more drastically than I would expect even with a limited content pool.

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Just brainstorming here, and this might not be the ideal solution, but what if there was an option to allow content to be cut off? I’d rather see a WOC block cut short than see it not scheduled at all. With the way they’re recorded, there’s always a good chance it ends abruptly anyway.

willow nova
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For now you should use a smart collection to filter content that is longer than the block duration

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won't fix all cases (e.g. if you have an item that is 3 hours long followed by an item that is 5 hours long you will probably only get the first one in the day's block), but should help

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etv doesn't skip primary collection items like it does with filler, it will not schedule anything/schedule filler whenever the next item won't fit in the remaining duration

warm furnace
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How can I go back and see what was scheduled for earlier today? I’d like to see if it played any WOC blocks. If it did, it was a single very short video and it left about 5 hours empty.

willow nova
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what's scheduled tomorrow?

warm furnace
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Do you think random would work any better than shuffle at filling spaces with odd sized content? The behavior of random is less preferable to me than shuffle, but I’d be willing to give it a shot.

warm furnace
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As far as the next time I have WOC content scheduled, that would be SNICK tonight, and that looks okay.

willow nova
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thats the same collection?

warm furnace
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It’s just really inconsistent how much of a gap it leaves for me when I’m working with random length recordings. Sometimes the gaps is hours.

warm furnace
willow nova
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i understand the behavior, inconsistent duration items will give inconsistent results when filling a specific duration because etv doesn't cut or skip content

warm furnace
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Okay, I’ll try excluding the ones that are longer than the block. Do you think random would work better in these scenarios?

willow nova
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not necessarily, it only tries once with primary collections to fit the spot. if the current (media) item doesnt fit it will move on to the next schedule item. same behavior with shuffle and with random

warm furnace
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Oooh okay. I didn’t realize it was only trying once. Multiple tries could remedy that, right?

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This problem could still happen even if all of the available media fit into the block. If it’s a 6 hour block and the first video selected is 2 hours, and the second is 5 hours, it would fail and leave a 4 hour gap.

willow nova
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honestly you might be better with a "pre-roll" as the primary item and the WOC stuff as post-roll duration filler

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the filler logic will try multiple times/skip a few items that don't fit to find something that fits

warm furnace
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That’s a really good idea. I’ll experiment with moving my WOC blocks into filler tonight. It wouldn’t give me the shuffle option, but it would probably have less gaps. I’d have to mix it in with commercials. The downside is if filler fails, there’s dead air.

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Or eternally looped fallback.

willow nova
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filler is always shuffled

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its just fallback that's a special case

warm furnace
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I always figured it was random.

willow nova
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just fallback