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Looking for free automation software

J

JakeLongwell

Frequent Participant
Hi everyone. I am the operator of an internet station called Geneva Community Radio. Feel free to check us out at http://genevaradio.blogspot.com

I am looking for automation software for the station. Currently, we use Winamp. This works fine, for the most part. We are on the air 24/7. Unfortunately, there's one major task Winamp cannot perform that I'd like to be able to do. During overnight hours, we simulcast programming from the World Radio Network (WRN). We can connect to this stream just fine with Winamp. The hang-up is every morning when it's time to start the next day's playlist. Someone must manually switch from the WRN feed over to the playlist. This is done every morning at 6 AM Eastern.

Are there any free or very low cost automation software programs on the internet that will automatically 'cut in' to the WRN feed and switch over to the playlist, if programmed to do so? This would eliminate the need for someone to physically be here to make the switch. I found one program that would have been perfect for this, but when I tried to install it and run it, I kept getting subscript error messages, which then caused the program to abort. So it basically turned out to be a piece of junk, unfortunately.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Jake Longwell
Geneva Community Radio
 
Since your post's title mentioned the operative word, free, there's a few that come to mind:

ZaraRadio Free Edition is one I see many gravitate to. I haven't used it personally but have heard generally positive results.

Airtime is the software formerly known as CampCaster. Not sure what's new with the name change.

DirEttore Mixtime has been around for a long time but don't know what the current state of development is.

RadioDJ is other free package that has its own support forums as well.

Rivendell use to be free but since I haven't played with it in a dog's age I'm not sure what the story is with it.

Hopefully there's a start for you as far as free software goes. Personally, I've been using StationPlaylist and have been quite please with both product support and performance. Not terribly expensive and if you want a solid presentation for your audio product I think it's worth the money, hands down.

I'm sure there are other choices out there as well, it just depends if you're looking to spend some money or not.
 
Zara Radio will do what you want - I ran a small AM for over a year on Zara and never had any issues at all.
 
I have been running Zara on my little micro FM for several years. It runs flawlessly. :)
 
We use Zara Radio Free and it was so good... and I felt bad..so I bought the "for purchase" Zara Studio. It has a nice AGC that is adjustable and adds to the functionality. It is flawless, and uses surprisingly liittle CPU cycles. It does song to song seques, top hour IDs that you can tell it to run RIGHT AT THE TOP or within 3-5 minutes of the toh. Also talk overs and sweepers and jingles. Really a grat program for a fair price.
 
I just downloaded the ZARA software. Version 1.62 (Free) Only modification - I had to "right click" on the desktop ICON and change the compatibility mode to Windows XP Service Pack 2 - I found that while running on Windows 7 the program would shut down after about 10-12 songs. With the modification - runs flawlessly. Also, place your jingles and sweepers in the "events" space and not on the radio buttons at the bottom of the screen (Jingle Buttons) Loading files onto the jingle buttons (which simulate the old style "carts" ended up using tons of CPU (25-50%.) By moving all these to events my CPU usage is about 5%. I am running playlists of between 800 -2200 songs and I have multiple sweepers/jingles that I run on different days and times of day (e.g., weekday mornings, weekends, etc) Great program, easy to use and lots of fun.
Tom S
 
WDAE-FM101 said:
I just downloaded the ZARA software. Version 1.62 (Free) Only modification - I had to "right click" on the desktop ICON and change the compatibility mode to Windows XP Service Pack 2 - I found that while running on Windows 7 the program would shut down after about 10-12 songs. With the modification - runs flawlessly. Also, place your jingles and sweepers in the "events" space and not on the radio buttons at the bottom of the screen (Jingle Buttons) Loading files onto the jingle buttons (which simulate the old style "carts" ended up using tons of CPU (25-50%.) By moving all these to events my CPU usage is about 5%. I am running playlists of between 800 -2200 songs and I have multiple sweepers/jingles that I run on different days and times of day (e.g., weekday mornings, weekends, etc) Great program, easy to use and lots of fun.
Tom S
Click to expand...

Good info - Zara does not like Windows 7. I ran it on XP with very few issues.
 
Altho they recommend XP, I've had it running flawlessly 24/7 for months at a time on Win98SE! :)

My playlist is about 1700 songs, with about 60 "currents" in a separate folder. It plays them twice per hour, so they don't burn out. About every 15 minutes, at the end of a song, it announces the time. Sounds awesome! :)
 
Running 1.61 here and love it.

Jingles running up the CPU load?
Just checked what happens running jingles off the bottom bar
and with a dual core machine, I see no change in CPU usage running either separately or on top of
whatever is already playing.

Are all the files on the same storage device?
 
I initially had problems with the ZARA software shutting down - even after I changed compatibility mode. I had "dropped and dragged" my jingles to the buttons on the bottom of the application (they were mP3 format and I know that the preferred jingle files are in another format) - Anyway I ran my systems monitor and would encounter 20-50% CPU usage. Once I removed the jingle files from the buttons and placed them into the events folder, my usage dropped to 5-10% and now it will run forever. My machine is an AMD with 6G memory running windows 7.

Also, I was thinking about installing "virtual audio cable" software so that I could play the audio through winamp and take advantage of some of the audio processing features.
Anyone have any thoughts or experience in linking Zara with another audio application?

Thanks.

Tom S
 
I do!
Of course my setup is a tad unusual.

Because I'm AM/FM/Online, I needed a way for the audio to get to the stream.
Zara does not stream, So what I did was run Zara on one Computer, and Winamp on another computer. It sounded great, especially since the station could have actual audio processing.

In my case, Zara paired with Winamp can sound truely amazing.
I even got a program that pulls the song titles from Zara and sends them to the stream (separate from the actual Audio Encoder)
 
If you have invested this much time and effort in your project. Spend a little bit of money and go with stationplaylist or some full featured program you and your listeners will be happy.
 
Winamp is clunky and not professional. Get something better which can stream. Do it the right way.
 
Zara is fully capable of sounding excellent on a very limited budget. (Like if you already have the PC, then the cost is $0. Hard to compete against THAT!) :D

Some of us, $0 is all we can afford.
 
A roomful o' thumbs-up for Rivendell Radio Automation. I use it at my day job at a radio network and I use it in my wacky basement workshop.

It doesn't come up to speed in an instant like Winamp and it does take some preparation to get it ready for online use, but it is drop-dead stable (how about over 1,000 days without a reboot?), totally free, and works on a $90 Craigslist computer. Put in a second soundcard and you can have multiple outputs feeding your console (1 fader for the main log, another fader for the "cart wall"). *And* it streams.

It is Linux-based, which may scare some folks off. But the company that manages the Rivendell project has a downloadable "appliance DVD" that installs both the Centos operating system *and* the Rivendell suite onto a blank hard drive (http://paravelsystems.com/appliance.html). Only a minimum amount of configuration is needed, which can be obtained from a Wiki and from a community of users. But note that this disc will erase whatever is on that drive, so do not install it on a machine you want or need.

There are a bunch of YouTube videos produced by Rivendell users that are pretty informative. Search them out and see what it does.

-AP
 
Beg to differ. I'm running Zara on Windows 7 and never had a problem. But then again, I use a PC with 3GB of RAM, a 250GB HD and a 4GB processor.
 
LibertyNT said:
I do!
Of course my setup is a tad unusual.

Because I'm AM/FM/Online, I needed a way for the audio to get to the stream.
Zara does not stream, So what I did was run Zara on one Computer, and Winamp on another computer. It sounded great, especially since the station could have actual audio processing.

In my case, Zara paired with Winamp can sound truely amazing.
I even got a program that pulls the song titles from Zara and sends them to the stream (separate from the actual Audio Encoder)
Click to expand...

I use Zara and stream it with Edcast Reborn. It's along the same principle as OddcastV3. Very similar. I got great support from Streamlicensing.com to get it up and running. Hasn't let me down yet.
 
JakeLongwell said:
Hi everyone. I am the operator of an internet station called Geneva Community Radio. Feel free to check us out at http://genevaradio.blogspot.com

I am looking for automation software for the station. Currently, we use Winamp. This works fine, for the most part. We are on the air 24/7. Unfortunately, there's one major task Winamp cannot perform that I'd like to be able to do. During overnight hours, we simulcast programming from the World Radio Network (WRN). We can connect to this stream just fine with Winamp. The hang-up is every morning when it's time to start the next day's playlist. Someone must manually switch from the WRN feed over to the playlist. This is done every morning at 6 AM Eastern.

Are there any free or very low cost automation software programs on the internet that will automatically 'cut in' to the WRN feed and switch over to the playlist, if programmed to do so? This would eliminate the need for someone to physically be here to make the switch. I found one program that would have been perfect for this, but when I tried to install it and run it, I kept getting subscript error messages, which then caused the program to abort. So it basically turned out to be a piece of junk, unfortunately.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Jake Longwell
Geneva Community Radio
Click to expand...

Yep. Radio DJ is pretty simple if you read the howtos and watch Youtube. Does everything the expensive programs do.
 
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