Working with Items

Reading time ~7 minutes

In control mode you can do nearly all operations that you can do in playlist editor mode with the following difference: the item will be copied in case you wish to move passed, on-air or cued items.

Important

Refer to the articles from the Handling Items section for detailed descriptions of working with items.

The playlist items are played back one by one from the first clocked item on the schedule in accordance to the following item start time. If there is a gap between successive items, the last frame of the previous played item will be broadcast until the new item goes on-air.

The on-air item can be edited. Once the item currently being broadcast is opened in the Clip Viewer, it is possible to define the Out point or split this item at the selected position, with a 3-second safety margin. When the item is split, the remaining part is placed as a separate item in the playlist right beneath the on-air item and automatically cued.

Item Status, Coloring and Font

All items in the playlist have a background color. The color changes according to the item status. The coloring and styles of the playlist entry can also be changed according to playlist programming.

Status

The statuses1 column displays the possible status values of an item. In playlist editor mode they are:

statuses passive fmt1

the item is ready for playout

statuses passive fmt2

the item is skipped

statuses passive fmt3

live item

statuses passive fmt4

dummy item

statuses passive fmt5

the item is empty

statuses passive fmt6

the In-Out range of the clip is greater than the In-Out range of the source file

In control mode possible status values of an item are as follows:

statuses active fmt1

the item is already broadcast

statuses active fmt2

the item is on-air

statuses active fmt3

the item is ready for playout

statuses active fmt4

the item is skipped

statuses active fmt5

live item

statuses active fmt6

the item is cued

statuses active fmt7

dummy item

statuses active fmt8

the item is empty

statuses active fmt9

the In-Out range of the item is greater than the In-Out range of the source file; the item media is unavailable

Coloring

Note	To disable the use of italic fonts in the playlist‘s editable fields, deselect the "Use italic font for the editable fields" option in the "Preferences" window. Refer to the Preferences article for details.

Analyzing Playlist Media

The media included into the playlist is automatically processed by the Air control application to verify its availability as well as indicate any modifications that have been applied to it.

If the media of a particular playlist item is unavailable or cannot be located, the corresponding item is displayed in red coloring:

As soon as the media becomes available the item coloring changes to default.

Note	The playlist item inserted from the Cinegy Archive database and having multiple levels of quality is analyzed only to detect the availability of the highest quality.

The item modification is checked within two different scenarios.

In the first scenario the media of the item added to the playlist directly from the local storage is analyzed. Once any update has been applied to the media since its adding to the playlist and its modification date is newer, the playlist item will be displayed in blue coloring:

To update the item use the "Update selected" command form the selected item menu.

Caution

Please note that in the described above case the original playlist item duration is not updated.

The second scenario is related to the items inserted from the Cinegy Archive database. These items can be updated using the "Update selected" command from the selected item menu; MCRItems duration is updated as well.

Note	Multiple items can be updated at one time.

Note	Only the modified MCRItems can be updated. Refer to the Integration with Cinegy Desktop section to get more information on MCRitems.

Note	If any proxying has been generated for the modified item it will rerun automatically.

Proxied Items

Caution

Items proxying is not supported in Cinegy Air SOLO.

With the item proxying feature configured in Cinegy Playout, every item will be proxied in the background process. The items proxy status is shown in % in the "Proxy" playlist column:

Note	The proxy value for the on-air item only shows a rate of proxying for the material yet to be played back without regard to the part that has already been played back.

In order to use the item proxying during the ingest, the duration for the item being ingested should be set precisely. If the number of frames is unknown, 0 frames should be defined (e.g. 01:40:35:00).

Note	For the items to be successfully proxied, the ingest progress for the current item should be at least 3%; for short items this value should be not less than 1.5%. Then the proxying of the item inserted into the playlist should reach 10% rate and then it will be ready to be sent on-air.

Coloring

Different proxying stages are shown with different colors:

proxy_blue

The proxy status of the item currently being proxied is shown in blue.

proxy_black

The proxy status of the item not being proxied at the moment is shown in black.

proxy_grey

The proxy status of the item currently being uploaded from the proxy server is shown in grey.

proxy_red

The red background of the proxy status indicates the item source unavailability or failure when reading the item. When this occurs with the on-air item, the progress of proxying is counted backwards and proxied media is played back directly from the proxy folder.

proxy_yellow

The yellow background indicates that the whole item or some part of the item was proxied with autodegradation (in lower quality).

Important

Quality degradation should be enabled on the "Proxy" tab of the Cinegy Playout Configurator. Refer to the Proxy article in the Cinegy Playout Manual for detailed description of proxy setup.

The proxy creation progress of each item is also shown on the timeline in the form of a light blue progress bar:

Drop Proxy

The "Drop proxy" option allows to rerun proxying of the defined item in the playlist. This command is available from the item context menu or via the "Drop proxy" command from the "Item" main menu:

This function can be used for items proxied with autodegradation while the high quality proxy files are needed; or when a problem during item proxying has occurred. All created proxy chunks are deleted and new item proxying starts.

Items Fade IN/Out

It is possible to fade in and fade out the playlist items. The fade in and fade out behavior is adjusted by defining the corresponding number of frames for the image transition to or from black. Fading is also applied for audio within the item. To configure the fade in/out effect, select the required item and choose the "Item fades…" command available from the item context menu or via the "Fades.." command from the "Item" main menu:

In the opened dialog specify the frame number you want to item transition start by selecting the "Fade in" option and entering the desired number of frames in the corresponding field:

Select the "Fade out" option and enter the frame number for the item to fade out from black.

The fade in and fade out effects are visualized as a shaded gray triangles in the "Start" and "End" columns of the playlist panel:

For Clip3 only fade in effect is applied

To disable the effect choose the corresponding item and deselect the "Fade in" and "Fade out" options and then click "Ok".

Playlist Control

Delete to Top of List

You can delete as many expired items as needed by using the "Delete to top" option from the right-click menu or "Edit" main menu. All the items, from the selected expired item through to the top of the list, will be deleted.

Using the "Preferences…" option from the context menu or "Edit" main menu you can set the number of expired items, which will be represented in the playlist before automatic deletion of any expired item.

Delete to Bottom of List

To delete all non-expired items from the selected one (inclusively) to the bottom of the playlist, use the "Delete to bottom " command from the context menu or "Edit" main menu.