The RadioMan main playout screen for the Romanian
transmission at 1900 on 29-11-2005: this playlist can be re-ordered or
added to while the transmission is in progress without difficulty. The
item highlighted in green is currently playing and the display at the
top shows that it has 1 minute and 29 seconds left to go. Recordings
would be made in a studio on a local PC , then saved to the server. The
producer could tinker with his programme to his heart's content in his
office: then for transmission assemble a playlist,
as seen here.
It's important to understand that the items in the playlist are not the
actual recordings, just pointers to them. If you delete an item from
the playlist you don't delete the original recording; items can be
added, deleted, or moved around in the running order very easily
(either in the studio or from back in the office), so there is complete
flexibility in organizing the transmission. It's possible to 'chain'
items if desired, and a countdown to the end is shown. Items turn up on
alternating faders, coded red or blue, (so you do need to be clear
which fader is next) which means that one item can be faded under the
next; you can even check the end of an item which is currently playing.
All this was a huge advantage once the wrinkles had been ironed out
(for one thing the playlists were difficult to read for those of us
with varifocals until an update thickened the font).
The SM would then log in in the studio and download the playlist and
all the recorded items (so that if there was a network failure the
transmission could still continue.) Control of the playlist is either
on the screen with a mouse, or using the dedicated keypad (below).
© Roger Wilmut. This
site is not associated with the BBC