CartReady & ControlReady Working with Traffic, Music and Confirmation Logs ControlReady allows you to automatically import a traffic/billing and music scheduling logs from 3rd party systems. Rather than manually typing in the code of every cart you want to plan, importing these logs builds a list that saves you hundreds and thousands of keystrokes. Unlike other digital systems, our system lets you configure us to read ANY format. You do not have to pay for any special interfaces to make this work. Most log programs can "print" the log that normally comes off your printer to an ASCII/text file. Even if there is no specific key in the program to do this, we can generally show you how to make your log program print to a floppy disk/file even if it thinks it sending it to your printer. As long as your logs show the cart/music code/numbers in some kind of a column, and the air times in some kind of column, we can read it. The columns can be anywhere on the page, and the log can have all sorts of other columns, and information which we will automatically skip over. These Instructions Cover: 1) The format that the traffic or music log must be in. How to make your traffic or music log create a log file. 2) Where the traffic log needs to be. 3) How to configure ControlReady automation to work with your traffic and music logs. How to import the log for live-assist playing. 4) How to set up an Automation Program to properly import the traffic and music log. The use of SCHEDULED BREAK and SCHEDULED MUSIC SWEEP commands. 5) How the automatic import works. 6) How to automatically import a traffic log. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 The Format of the Traffic Log ControlReady will work with all traffic logs which are in ASCII TEXT format. Cart/Music Code/Numbers/names: Traffic software and music software makes you create a unique name, number, or code for every cart or song you want to schedule. 99% of the systems out there force you to use numbers, from 1 to 8 digits. Some allow letters, spaces, or a combination of everything. CartReady and ControlReady will read numbers, spaces, and letters, or any combination there of, from 1 to 8 characters long. The trick is to SAVE your audio recordings in CartReady/ControlReady with the EXACT name/code/number as the name/code/number you refer in your scheduling system. Thus if you have a cart 500 in your traffic log, you must save the cart as 500 in CartReady. If you have a cart in your traffic log as 0500, it must be saved in CartReady as 0500. Remember it must be exact to match. The Format: Good news! There is no single format. We can work with anything so long as: All cart code/number/names appear in some kind of column through the log printout. AirTimes also appear on the same line as the cart code/number/names. Note: An air time doesn't have to appear with every single cart, but we recommend it. Air Times can be military time: 15:24:00 or Civilian: 03:24:00 pm Look at your PRINTED log. If your log shows your cart number/name/codes, and airtimes, in some kind of columnar printout, you are half way there. The column can be anywhere on the page as long as it's consistent throughout the report. For example: ------------------------Traffic Log -------------------------------- 10:00:00 500 Burger Queen :30 10:00:30 750 Taco Prince :60 10:01:30 PSA3 Buckle Up :60 In the above example, the air time is military, and 4 spaces from the left hand margin. (we call this the offset. The cart names appear 22 spaces from the left hand margin. These are the only two pieces of information we need to scan in the entire log. We ignore everything else and simply home in on these two columns to find carts and songs. Comments: When we import, there is a lot of flexibility. We will ignore any line that doesn't have a cart code that corresponds to something recorded on your hard-drive. Had the air time been in civilian time, we would have also noted the number of characters from the left hand margin that the AM, PM, a or p, occurred. Had only the first airtime been there, all three would have been scheduled in your 10:00 break as shown. We update the time when we see a different one, if we don't we assume they all go together. Either way works. Again, the columns can be anywhere on the page, in any order. The cart column could be first, followed by the time, and it will still work. Some logs right justify codes in their column. This is okay since we will STRIP preceding spaces. We strip trailing spaces as well. We can also ignore format characters if they are surrounded by parenthesis, brackets etc. Making your traffic system generate this kind of file: If you are not sure whether your traffic log is, or can be, in ASCII TEXT format, check the documentation which came with the traffic/music software. Changing the printer configuration of your traffic/music program: Many log programs have a printer configuration screen that can redirect the printed output to a file. With systems like this, you would do the following: Print your log as you would normally. (if you still want hard-copy) Go to the configuration screen. Change the printer destination to file. (if it asks for a file destination, we recommend printing it directly to a floppy disk, i.e A:\traffic.log or A:\music.log etc. Reprint the log, the program will now send the log to the file. Some traffic software lets you choose a printer every time you print. With these programs it's even easier since anytime you print a log, you can choose whether you are printing it to disk or the printer. Using our Print/Capture Utility: Some older traffic programs do not let you easily do this, or it may take too many keystrokes. For systems like this, we include utilities on the CartReady disk. A program called PRN2FILE is a configurable utility that tricks your traffic program into sending the printed log to a disk. The traffic program thinks it's printing, but it's not. This works for DOS based traffic logs only. Call for information if your traffic program runs from Windows. To make this as easy as possible, we've included a batch file called ON and OFF. You copy these files to the directory your start your traffic/music software from. For most stations here is how it works: If you want, print your hard-copy report as normal. Exit the Traffic software to DOS, i.e the C:> prompt. Type ON and hit ENTER. Insert a floppy disk in your disk drive. Go back into your traffic software, and reprint your log. This time you will see the disk light up as the log goes to disk. After complete, exit your traffic software and type OFF and hit ENTER. Do this anytime you need to generate the file to disk. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Using a built-in function in your traffic log: Some traffic/music programs include a built in screen that lets you send the log for a digital system. Some traffic/music programs may include our name in the list of choices. Others may have other vendors, and some traffic companies can provide you one with our name for a fee. Remember, since we read all formats, it may be possible to choose another digital system format and configure us to read it. As a rule most traffic systems work with ASCII files. Therefore, if CartReady/ControlReady/WireReady isn't a choice, try another choice. You can e-mail, fax, or download the file to us. We will look at it and show you how to configure us to read it. Customers with turnkey dial in modems can have us dial in and do this for them. If you want a one-key choice that has our name in it, feel free to call the traffic vendor. Some may offer it for free, and others may charge. However, we have discussed several methods that are FREE and only take a couple of steps to get the same job done. Where the Traffic Log Needs to Be CartReady and ControlReady needs to know where to find the traffic log. You can specify where the log is from within the ControlReady program. Therefore, the drive, directory and filename of the traffic log to import is variable. The only issue is that the traffic log can be accessed from the PC which ControlReady is run on. If the traffic log is on a PC which ControlReady does not have access to (ie. the trafficking system is on a different PC than ControlReady, and the PC's are not on a LAN), then the traffic log will need to be put on a floppy disk and copied to a drive ControlReady can access. If you have the traffic/music program saving the log with a name, this name must be known when you import it. For example if you saved the traffic log to A:\TRAFFIC.LOG on a disk, when you bring the disk over to CartReady/ControlReady, you will need to type A:\TRAFFIC.LOG when it asks you for the name and path of the log file. If you are on a LAN, and all your computers are connected, and you save it to F:\traffic.log, you would import it as F:\traffic.log. It works the same, except you don't have to carry a disk. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 How to Configure ControlReady to Work with Your Traffic Log Your traffic log contains a lot of useful information, but the only thing that ControlReady wants to know is "what are the cart codes/names/numbers?". In order for us to find the cart codes you need to specify two parameters: 1) Cart Code Offset is the number of characters from the left that the cart code begins. 2) Cart Code Length is the max number of characters long of the cart codes in the traffic log. For example, you need to tell ControlReady that within the traffic log the first character of the cart code is 15 characters from the left and the length of the cart codes is 5. Incidentally, these are the parameters for CBSI's trafficking system. How do you know what the two numbers, the offset and the length, are? The best way is to use the DOS "EDIT" command. When you bring your log up with the "EDIT" command, you can see what the Cart Code Offset is by positioning the cursor under the first character of the cart code and seeing what number is displayed on the far right of the last line on the screen. That is the Cart Code Offset. The cart code length is the maximum length the cart code can be in the trafficking log. This may be set by the trafficking software and cannot exceed eight (8) characters. To Set These Parameters in CartReady/ControlReady: 1) From the CartReady Cart Production Screen: Press ALT-C, or Press F10, highlight Configuration Changes, and press <켸. 2) Press L, or highlight Log Import Configuration and press <켸. This window will open: 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 憫컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴엿 � Configure Log Import 납 � 납 � Cart Code Offset : 납 � Cart Code Length : 납 � Optional Delimiters : 쵬 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 3) To change the Cart Code Offset: Highlight the current setting and press <켸. Type the correct offset and press <켸. 4) To change the Cart Code Length: Highlight the current setting and press <켸. Type the correct length and press <켸. You can also choose the import format: To fill by air time, meaning air-times appear in your log, choose that. You will also have to specify the offset of where the AM or PM, a or p occurs if the time is not military, if it is military leave the AM/PM offset at 0 Two other formats are available for special cases. Fill by Length Fill by length literally lets you stuff your breaks. As we scan your log we fill the breaks, and move to the next one as soon as the first is filled. This is generally used for people who don't have air times in their logs, or in the case of music selection software that doesn't keep time very well. The tolerances tell us by how much we can be over the break before moving forward. In the case of commercial imports we recommend this value not exceed 5 seconds. In the case of music on hard-drive, we recommend around 100 or so seconds since most stations float their time throughout the hour. In this fashion some breaks maybe + or - 100 seconds but you'll backtime towards the top of the hour, so it it all works out. Tolerances also determine if we call attention to a possible error when we print your log import reports. Fill by Special Code This is a special mode for traffic systems that put start and end codes to tell us where breaks begin and end. It is very rare that this is used. There are separate choices for both the traffic and music logs. In this fashion we can read and merge files from two different log generation systems. 5) Press F4 to Exit With Changes. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 How to Set Up an Automation Program to Properly Import the Traffic Log ControlReady needs to know where in the Automation Program you want the cart codes to be inserted. This is done with the Scheduled Break or Scheduled Music Sweep command. Simply put a Scheduled Break/Music Sweep command wherever you want carts listed in the traffic log to be inserted. But you must first set up the Scheduled Break commands. To set up a Scheduled Break/Music Sweep command: 1) While in the Automation Program which you want to automatically import the traffic log to, position the highlight bar over the sequence which you want the break to occur. 2) Press <켸 to open the Commands selector box, and press Z or highlight Scheduled Break. This window will open: 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 憫컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커� � Set Scheduled Break Parameters 납 � 납 � "Time of Break" Name (HH:MM): 00:00:00납 � Length of Break (MM:SS) : 00:00:00납 � Optional Description : 쵬 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 The Music Sweep command works the same way. 3) To type the Time of the break, highlight the current setting for Name/Time press <켸, then type the name you want to give this break and press <켸. If you plan to import by reading air times off your log you MUST enter the hour and minutes/seconds that the break is supposed to be played. Note this is not necessarily the exact time the break plays since this may be ultimately determined by a satellite network tone or the end of a song, BUT this must correspond to the scheduled times in your traffic system. The goal is to make us sync 1:1 with your traffic/music programs so everything lines up. The actual start times when you hear the breaks play don't necessarily have to be the start time you specify here. 4) To type the Length of Break, highlight the current setting for Length of Break, press <켸, then type the length of the break and press <켸. 5) If you want to put a Description in for the break, highlight the current setting for Description, press <켸, then type the description of the break and press <켸. The description doesn't have to match anything in the traffic/music program you use. 6) Press F4 to Save Changes. The Scheduled break command will then appear in the Automation Program with the parameters which you specified. An example of how a Scheduled Break command is displayed in an Automation Program: 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 憫컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커� � 0042 Scheduled Break 12:20:00 2:30:00 쵬 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 Throughout your automation programming, the Scheduled Breaks, and Scheduled Music Sweeps determine where and how we pull the schedules off your traffic and music programs. If you fill by airtime, we scan your logs and merge the scheduled plays into the breaks they were scheduled to play. Note airtime will schedule exactly what starts in between the start and end time of the break (determined by the length you specified in the break) For example, if the start time is 12:00:00 and the length is 00:03:00 this means anything scheduled to play between 12:00:00 and 12:03:00 gets scheduled, even if you overfill the break. In this case, we print an error report showing you any breaks which were over scheduled so you can quickly edit or override what we imported. If we are filling your music based on length, then we fill the breaks until the next song we try to put in the music sweep exceeds the break length plus the tolerance you specified. If it exceeds we place it in the next break. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 How the Automatic Import Works As discussed, when you import a log into an automation program, we scan the log and either import it by filling the breaks by length, or airtime. When we import, we first strip any old cuts scheduled before, then restuff based on the log we are now scanning. For example most stations have a program for each day, which gets re-used and re-scheduled in this manner. For this reason, the import strips any PLAY commands under any scheduled break before importing a traffic log, and strips any play commands under any scheduled music sweep prior to importing a music log. CartReady automatically recognizes any rotation code or name and schedules the actual next up cart to be played based on that rotation. Thus if you schedule a cart called 500 several times, but you've setup CartReady to rotate several different carts under a rotation called 500, we automatically convert and rotate the actual recordings that correspond to 500 following the date ranges you specified. After the system scans the log, it lets you print confirmation reports that tell you: Missing cart codes Out of date carts not scheduled. Any scheduled breaks short or long that exceed your tolerance. In this fashion you can quickly determine how well your import worked and if necessary manually edit and override any mistakes. It is important to review the Automation Program before it is run on air to make sure that the Scheduled Breaks were filled as you intended them to be filled. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 How to Automatically Import a Traffic/Music Log Go into the ControlReady automation status Screen. Go to an unused automation deck, like deck 8. Assuming that deck is not running anything... Hit CLEAR Hit LOAD Choose the name of the log that you are importing the log to. For example Monday To import the traffic log: 1) While in the Automation Program which you want to automatically import the traffic log to, press F10. This selector box will open: 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 憫컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴엿 � Automation "Other" Menu 납 � 납 � Import Traffic Log 쵬 � Import Music Log � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 2) Choose which type of log you need to import and press <켸. This window will open: 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 憫컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴엿 � Log Import Name ([DRV]:\[PATH]\[NAME]): 쵬 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 3) Type the drive, path, and name of the traffic log which you want to import, and press <켸. This status indicator will be displayed: 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 憫컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커� � Scheduled Break 납 � Importing log ... 납 � 납 � Carts Imported : 16 납 � Carts in Log : 17 납 � Processing Cart : 0294 납 � 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 납 � �||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||� 납 � � 15 Percent Complete � 납 � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 납 � Cart Code Offset : 1 납 � Cart Code Length : 8 납 � Optional Delimiters : 쵬 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 Carts Imported is the number of cart codes actually imported from the traffic log. Carts in Log is the number of cart codes that were in the traffic log. Note... The only reason that the number of Carts Imported and the number of Carts in Log would be different is if there were cart codes in the traffic log which are not in the current CartReady Cart Library. ControlReady will NOT import a cart code if the cart does not exist in the current CartReady Cart Library. Note... If there is a cart code in the traffic log which is also the name of a CartReady rotation, the result is that the "Next-Up" cart in the rotation will be loaded. 4) When the automatic import is complete this window will open: 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 憫컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴엿 � >> Confirm Scheduled Import << 납 � 납 � 납 � Are you sure you want to continue? (Y/N) 쵬 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� Press Y if you want to complete the log import, and N if you do not want to complete the log import. 5) If you press Y, the words Writing Program will flash on the screen until the writing of the traffic log to the Automation Program is complete. You can also print confirmation reports to quickly show how well the import took. PRINT THEM!!! There is no easier way to see how well the import took. 6) After the log has been imported it is a good idea to review the Automation Program and verify that the Scheduled Breaks are set up as you intended. If you are also importing a music log into the same program, repeat the above steps for importing the music log. Then MOST IMPORTANTLY, SAVE and OVERWRITE the LOG Turnkey customers can have us dial in and make sure their automation programs are correctly formatted with scheduled breaks and music sweep commands, that their traffic logs are formatted correctly, that our import settings are correct, and with general day to day steps to do what we discussed in this handout.