Playlist generation and options

A playlist, or playlist segment, is a list of items and/or directives ordered in a specific sequence. Items may be either Ots Album items, Wave files, MP3 files, or CD audio tracks. When started, each item in a playlist is loaded into a deck and played in sequence. Directives which are encountered within a playlist control or influence the flow of the playlist or provide access to additional functionality.

A playlist can contain any number of items and may have a duration (total time taken to play all items) of any amount. A playlist segment is generally a short playlist that goes for a specific amount of time, often one hour, which is used as a basic building block for constructing longer playlists.

Playlist segments are mainly of use for radio stations, and other users who have advanced scheduling requirements. As such, they will not be discussed in this section any further. Please see the Scheduling & Logging section for further information.

Playlists can be:

Playlists may be generated manually (by hand), or automatically by the Playlist Generator based upon a playlist template.

A Playlist Template is a scripting "language" which instructs the Playlist Generator in how it should go about generating the playlist. You can use the Template Builder to build Playlist Templates, click here for details, or you can hand-code advanced Playlist Templates. For a step-by-step tutorial on building an advanced Playlist Template click here.

If you would like to unleash the full power of the Playlist Generator, you will want to read the Playlist Template Reference.

 

This section covers:

Generate Playlist dialog box

Generating a generic playlist

How to manually build a playlist

Playlist Template Builder

How to build a Playlist Template using the Template Builder

Station ID Insertion

How to build a Playlist Template containing Station IDs

How to build an advanced Playlist Template

Playlist directives

Saving and loading a playlist

Playlist Configuration options

How to randomize a current playlist

How to remove an Item from a playlist