Overlapping of audio being played through two audio cards. Beginning with version 7.018 of Cartready, it is possible to overlap the audio playing from two audio cards. Overlapping must be set up in two places. First, the playlist itself must be set up to use two audio cards. See the section Configuring Automation Decks for Overlapping. Secondly, the carts that are playing must be set up with intro and outro times, indicating how much of each cart should overlap. See the section Setting up carts to overlap. NOTE: If you set up the intro and outro times, but do not configure the automation decks for overlapping, no overlapping will occur: everything will play from one audio card. However, commands following the cart WILL be executed at the beginning of the Outro time. If you configure the automation decks for overlapping, but do not set up intro and outro times, again no overlapping will occur. However, in this case, audio will alternate playing from the two audio cards set up for the automation deck. At this time, automatic overlapping can occur only from playlists. If you wish to overlap while using Live Assist, you can also use the Quick Player, mapped to a different audio board, to manually overlap audio. Future versions of Cartready will enable automatic overlapping from the Live Assist screen. Configuring Automation Decks for Overlapping When you first upgrade, Cartready will keep the previous audio board mapping. (If this is a new installation of the software, everything will be set to use audio board 1.) Controlready will be mapped to the same audio board for the main mapping and for the overlap mapping for all automation decks. If an automation deck is mapped to the same audio board in both columns, that automation deck will only play using that audio board. This is the same as previous versions of Cartready. If an automation deck is mapped to different audio boards, the automation deck will alternate playing between those two audio boards. Suggestions for audio board mapping. If you have one audio board, the only choice is to map everything to audio board 1. If you have two audio boards, you have two choices. 1. If you are going to do production or auto-recording on this computer, you would not want to play on-air with both audio boards. So you would not enable overlapping. Therefore, you would map the automation decks so that the main mapping and the overlap mapping are the same. If you are doing auto-recording in a playlist, you would run that playlist on an automation deck mapped to one audio card, and run your on-air playlist in an automation deck mapped to a different audio card. If you are doing production, make sure that Reelready, the cart deck you are recording in, and the cart editor, are mapped to a different audio board than the automation deck that is playing on-air. 2. If you will not be doing any auto-recording or production on this computer, you can enable overlapping. Do this by mapping the automation deck you will be playing from to two different audio boards. That is, in the left column, assign one audio board, and in the right column, assign the other audio board. It does not matter if you place audio board 1 in the left column and audio board 2 in the right column, or vice versa. The playlist will alternate using the two cards in both cases. This method would only be used if only one automation deck is being used to play carts on-air. If two or more automation decks are used to play on-air, you would want to map each automation deck to only one audio card; although you might want to map one automation deck to a different audio card than the other automation deck. If you have 3 audio boards, you can overlap on-air, unless you need to play, auto-record, and do production at the same time. 1. Overlapping on-air: Map the automation deck you will be playing from to two different audio boards. That is, in the left column, assign one audio board, and in the right column, assign the other audio board. The playlist will alternate using the two cards. This method would only be used if only one automation deck is being used to play carts on-air. If two or more automation decks are used to play on-air, you would want to map each automation deck to only one audio card; although you might want to map one automation deck to a different audio card than the other automation deck. Map the other audio board so it can be used for production/auto-recording. If you are auto-recording, map the automation deck that will run the auto-record playlist, so that the same audio board is set up in both columns. If you use Reelready for production, map Reelready to the audio board that is not used to play on-air. If you use the cart deck production screen for recording, make sure that at least one of the cart decks is mapped to the audio board that is not used for playing on-air. Also map the cart editor to this audio card. 2. If you need to auto-record from a playlist at the same time that you are doing production, you cannot overlap on-air. You would need to map one audio board to the automation deck that uses the on-air playlist; one audio board to the automation deck that uses the auto-record playlist; and one audio board to at least one cart deck, to the editor, and to Reelready. Setting up carts to overlap 1. The playlist will use the MINIMUM times for the two carts that are to overlap, based on the Outro time of the cart that is playing, and the Intro time of the next cart. For example, if a cart with an outro time of 3 seconds is playing, and the next cart has an intro time of 2 seconds, then the overlap will be 2 seconds. However, if the next cart had an intro time of 4 seconds, then the overlap would be 3 seconds. 2. Each cart that you want to overlap must be set up with an intro and an outro time. (If you do not set up the times, they are set to 0, and no overlap will occur.) You set up these values when saving the cart. If you have carts from an earlier version, you must go to Library Maintenance, Modify Cart Information, and change the values from 0.00 seconds to the time you want them to overlap. This must be done, individually, for every cart that you wish to overlap. The intro and outro times of a cart can be different values. 3. The playlist will look past Label, Scheduled Break, and Scheduled Music Sweep commands, and overlap with the next cart that is to play. So a liner that the playlist plays immediately before a Scheduled Music Sweep would overlap with the beginning of the first song in the music sweep, assuming that the intro and outro times have been set up. 4. At the time where the outro of a playing cart begins, the playlist will begin executing commands such as Delay For, Wait Until, Wait for Channel, Pulse Channel, and Latch Channel. 5. A playlist will not overlap past a Skip or a Goto command. So, to keep two carts from overlapping, without changing the intro and outro times of the carts, simply insert a Skip line between the carts in the playlist.