TIME ANNOUNCE IN PRISTINE MMCS
Another exciting feature of Pristine is its ability to announce the time. First, the Time Announcements must be recorded.
The naming system for Time Announcements is simply TIMEhhmm.SPC, where hh is the hour and mm is the minutes after the hour. Pristine’s Time Announce feature works on a twelve hour clock, so TIME0253.SPC will work for 2:53 AM as well as 2:53 PM. You do not have to record Time Announcements for all 720 possible times. Determine in your format where you want your Time Announcements and in what hours. Then record Time Announcements for the minutes plus and minus three minutes of the anticipated Time Announce position in your format.
Pristine gives you a safety net by playing TIME9999.SPC whenever it cannot find the correct Time Announcement on the Playback Computer. TIME9999.SPC should be a generic promo line, rather than a Time Announcement. Be creative when recording your Time Announcements. Rather than saying “It’s fifty three past the hour”, say “It’s two fifty three at B-105”. Pristine Transfer Plus provides an easy way to transfer Time Announce files to your Playback Computer.
To schedule a Time Announcement, schedule Hard Disk item 990 with a length of five seconds, fade time of one, and fade code A or H. Pristine will also play a Time Announcement using Hard Disk items 991 through 999, so you can schedule any of these numbers with different fade times, depending of the type of transition you want.
Several Pristine MMCS users have scheduled Time Announcements in the Liner Formats on satellite network stations, to give the station a more local sound. Just record the necessary audio files and schedule the Time Announcements in the Liner Formats. Remember to create the Member Data in Files before scheduling.
If you are concerned about your Playback Computer’s clock drifting and making the Time Announce function inaccurate, we suggest that you download Rightime, a shareware program that loads via your AUTOEXEC.BAT and keeps your computer clock accurate. It comes with a very detailed manual. To download Rightime visit their website at http://www.rightime.com.
With just a few hours work, you can setup your Time Announce system in Pristine. One last tip, make sure your Playback Computer’s clock is set correctly, or you will be announcing the wrong time on the air.
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This page last updated 11/9/97