ZaraStudio...events vs. playlists

The easiest way to do what I think you want is to:

1) Create 3 folders, each of which contain the songs you want to play

2) Create a playlist in Zara by adding that folder as a random track, and then save as a playlist (.m3u)

3) Create events that fire when you want them to, and play the playlist.

The songs in each folder will play randomly, until the next playlist is started by the Zara event.

I actually fire off several events each hour, to first play an intro for the hour, and then the desired playlist.

If you don't want to play the songs randomly (i.e., you want them in a certain order), you can create a .rot file, and you will have to drag and drop all the files into Zara manually before saving it.

Hope that's what you're asking.

I've never heard of Zara stopping.  You do have to start it manually the first time, and if you've set up your events properly, it should theoretically keep going forever.  In practice, you should probably reboot every few days or so (although I try to do it every week) - I believe there's a memory leak somewhere in Zara, and eventually it slows down sufficiently that it starts to stutter playback.

If I understand correctly you have created a few playlists.  The playlists are to be brought up by the Events scheduler.  

You start a playlist but before the Event scheduler starts the next playlist, Zara stops and you must manually restart it.

On the menu bar do you have the "mode" set to "Manual"?  If so Zara will stop after each file in the playlist is played.

If you have the "mode" set to "Normal" Zara will stop  when the playlist runs out.

Make sure you set the "mode" to "Repeat".  This will restart the current playlist when it runs out.

In any case if you waited for the scheduled event, did it not start or was the problem as described above where the playlist runs out and Zara stops?

I was actually saving the playlists I created as .lst files.  Is that not right?

What I did was create the list as follows for my weekday programming...time announcement, link to NOAA weather, temperature, Nineties RNB folder, time announcement, Nineties Pop folder, time announcement, 2K Pop folder, time announcement, link to NOAA weather, temperature, you get the idea.  I would repeat that same pattern on the list until I had about a full hour's worth of music, then save it and run it as repeat.  It would pull and play a track from each folder, and to my knowledge, it never repeated a track when done this way.

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, the events play as they're scheduled, but then the system returns to the playlist?

I save the playlists (as .lst files) and then schedule them as events, but couldn't get Zara to make the switch.  Is .m3u what I need to do to make the switch?

On a weekday (say it's Monday), I schedule weekday.lst to run at 6am, then weeknight.lst to run at 6pm, and then afterdark.lst to run at 10pm, with the intent of having it pick back up from weekday.lst Tuesday morning at 6am.

I have to say I have not experienced Zara 'stuttering' playback yet.  But I am using a fairly new Windows 7 computer with a 4GB processor and a 160GB HD and probably about 1200 working song titles.  Probably more than what I need, but I felt the more capability it had to not be pushed to its limits, then the better off I'd be.  Once I get this to do what I want it to, I'll be able to run it continuously and hear how it sounds before I sign up for the 'net stream.  

I look forward to hearing back from you soon...thank you in advance.

Ken

make sure in the events you are picking the days of the week.  If they are wrong the list will never play or open.  send an email and I can forward a copy of our stations weekly event files to use as an example if needed.

I've never used .lst files with Zara, so I don't know how they act.  I keep all my playlists in .m3u files, which are pretty standard across multiple platforms & programs.

When you fire off an event in Zara, you specify what Zara will do.  If it's just to play an mp3 file, then Zara will play it and then go back to your original playlist.  I use these events for such tags as "You're listening to Artisan Radio" and the like.  I also use this type of event to play the intro for each hour, such as "<background music> And now, Artisan Radio presents...the best music you've probably never heard".

If you launch another playlist, then your original playlist is gone, and Zara will start at the beginning of the new playlist.  I do this at the top of each hour, after the intro.

In most of my .m3u playlists, I play random tracks from folders, and also have various programs (batch files actually) I launch to automatically generate a voice file to identify the song that was just played.

Events stack up if the first event has fired and is still going when the 2nd event fires off (you can't interrupt an event with another event).  So I'll program in multiple events 1 second apart if I want to do multiple things.  For example, at the top of each hour, I want to first play the introduction to the hour, followed by launching the correct playlist.  I'll create 2 events, at *:00 and *:01 to do those things.  When the intro has finished playing (the first event), the second event fires to launch the playlist.

Hope that helps.

I went and re-saved the playlists as .m3u files and updated them in their events files to see if they would behave differently and switch from one list to the other.  It didn't.

Since I have it set up to repeat the list each hour, what I'm going to try next is developing a full 12-hour list for the weekday programming and put it in the 'normal' mode, seeing if it will engage the next playlist to run.  

Do you air weather?  If so, do you schedule it as an 'event' or put it on the playlist?  I have mine on the playlist, because after the weather file (it's actually an internet link to the NOAA website where it pulls and plays the first 30 seconds of the file), I want Zara to pause for two seconds before it plays the temperature file so the one file doesn't step over the other one, and I have to add that pause to the playlist after the weather file.  Is there a way to make this pause an event, rather than an element of the playlist?

I tried scheduling everything as an event...music, weather, temp, time, everything.  But I couldn't get it to sequence automatically...I had no playlist loaded.  Does it still need one regardless?

Well, I solved my own problem as far as the playlist stopping.  I didn't have the 'enable events' button pressed in order to play the events or to fire off the next playlist.  Once I enabled them, I was OK.

The most obvious problems are sometimes the easiest to miss.

Programming ran smoothly as it always does until 2:45 PM this afternoon when I looked at my Zara playlist and got very confused.

The correct program was airing, but all the programs listed before and after it made no sense and were not what I had programmed.

After re-loading the remainder of the day I studied the problem, and believe that in some unkown way I must have hit the keys (ctrl) and (k), which causes the playlist to Shuffle, mixing up the order of everything.

There is always a new and unexpected trap in all computer software until the day we go insane and get trucked away.

Mistakes can change history. I made a Sequential Playlist containing 24 programs. But it never stoopped playing and is going on 70-years. What happening?

Somehow I embedded the Sequential Playlist into the Sequential Playlist following Program 12, which causes the first 12 programs to play forever.

If this had been a nuclear accident we would have an explosion that never ends.