Airtime 2.1.3 fixes improve playout, widget and stream performance

 

Airtime 2.1.3 has been released with a number of fixes improving performance of the playout engine, jQuery widgets and streams. This third hotfix for the popular 2.1 series was driven and tested by great feedback from the open source radio community.

Airtime Pro users have been upgraded automatically. Self-hosted users should follow these guides to either install or upgrade.

Here are this release's headlines:

• Fixed playout engine occasionally quitting after changes to Stream Settings page
• Fixed jQuery widgets not showing the incorrectly showing the past Sunday on Sunday
• Fixed dragging and dropping tracks into a live show, which could cause to web UI to become unsynchronized from what is actually playing
• Fixed inability to receive mono streams for Master or Show source rebroadcasts
• Fixed SoundCloud uploads not working for some users

So what's new in the Airtime 2.1 series? Read on to see more about the new features...

Real-time show editing

In the Now Playing and Calendar screens, DJs can now edit their shows in real-time even while they're on air. Doing last second changes to your schedule before (or during) any track is as simple as using the web interface to drag and drop your tracks to the desired destination. Tracks no longer require placement inside of a playlist to be scheduled - you may know simply drag the track directly into a show. You can also edit the length of the show.

• Add/Remove/Rearrange tracks within a show, even if it is currently playing
• See at a glance which tracks are inside the show, which are on the show boundary, and which are outside the show
• Cut all tracks that are outside the show's boundary
• Edit the length of a show that is currently playing

Live stream rebroadcasting

With this feature, you can connect to Airtime via remote broadcasting tools such as Mixxx, Virtual DJ etc. and Airtime will rebroadcast the stream. You can also use the calendar to impose limits on what date and time streams should be rebroadcast. Two live streams can be connected to Airtime: DJ stream and Master stream.

• DJ stream can connect to Airtime and override the scheduled playout
• Master stream can connect to Airtime and override the DJ stream and the scheduled playout.

Live Streams are activated in the main interface and the interface displays which stream is being outputted.

Improved audio library

You spoke, we listened. Managing the Airtime media library is now much simpler thanks to various improvements including being able to select multiple items before dragging and dropping, as well as being able to customize which metadata columns are visible. It is now also possible to see the date a media item was uploaded.

• Perform bulk actions including "Add to Playlist", "Add to Show", and "Delete File."
• Choose which columns to display and the order of the columns
• Sort by multiple columns (including a new a "Date Uploaded" column)Display any metadata in the list
• Editing metadata in the library will update the metadata on disk
• Library is automatically refreshed when media import is finished

Playout History Log

For those in need of a simpler way to keep track of what has been played, a Playout History log is now available in the Web UI, which will be useful for royalty reporting purposes no doubt...

Track previews

Users can now seek to a specific part of a track, and can also listen to all tracks in a playlist or show back-to-back.

Media Monitor improvements

We've added support for network and USB drives and made the following improvements.

Removing a watched directory and adding it again preserves playlists & shows with those files.An icon in the playlist shows whether a file is missing on disk, warning the user that the playlist will not go according to plan.Media monitor detects add and removal of watched temporary local storage (USB disks for example) and network drives.

Other improvements

For those who love attention to detail, we also made this list of minor improvements:

• Ability to turn off the broadcast.
• Password reset - user can request a password reset if they forgot it.
• Overbooked shows now fade out properly
• Default fade time set to 0.5 of a second
• Repeating shows default to "No End"
• Ability to "View on SoundCloud" for recorded shows in the calendar"
• Listen preview player no longer falls behind the broadcast (you can only mute the stream now, not stop it)
• Tracks that cannot be played will be rejected on upload and put in to the directory "/srv/airtime/store/problem_files" (but currently it will not tell you that it rejected them - sorry!)
• Reduced CPU utilization for OGG streams
• New command line utilities: 'airtime-test-soundcard' to verify that the soundcard is working and 'airtime-test-icecast' to verify that you can connect to an Icecast server

 

Huge thanks and credit goes to the entire Airtime community who did an amazing job of suggesting these features, helping us to blueprint them and then tested, tested and tested till they were ready to be included!

• Download Airtime 2.1.3
  
• Try the online demo
• Want Sourcefabric to install and host Airtime for you? Check out Airtime Pro.