
Start a new topic

Bed under news

I'm using an aux input in the automation log for IRN news junctions.  5 seconds before the bulletin is due to end, I'd like a news end bed to start.

Been experimenting with time markers, but haven't had any success as it doesn't seem possible to have two carts playing at the same time - is there a way I can achieve this?

Not done this in PlayIt but when I was at a couple of stations we had a batch file that fired up Winamp at 1 minute to the hour with a specific audio file. The news in played at like 7 seconds to the hour, then a low music bed under IRN/Sky News and built up to a news out sting at 1:59 past the hour, with a station ID after that, then the automation kicked back in. 

It played out on the same input channel as the news and that channel was opened (un-mute) and closed (mute) by the same batch file, to stop the confidence tone being heard on air. 

Ah that's interesting, I hadn't thought of using a player external to playit live. As we're using it as our fallback service it's not massively important, we can live without the bed but it would be a cool feature to have two carts playing simultaneously.

We had the same sort of issue at hospital radio and community radio, different automation software though. That's how we came up with the Winamp option. The audio file was triggered at 1 minute to the hour but had 55 seconds of silence before the news intro.

We also ran a full one minute intro to news which carried some station information, that would be dropped in a couple of times a day By adjusting the times the playout system ran we can overlay the audio between the two to give a seamless in and out of news. 

Maybe Jason can add something to trigger a cart in PlayIt Cartwall ? I can think of several instances where that could be useful. Using a similar technique of having blank space then the news intro coming in as a cart seems good too.


If you know the exact time when the bed should start you can use a Scheduled Event to load the track into a QuickCart and start this playing.

Brilliant! Many thanks Jason!