Myriad Schedule v6 - Version History
v6.3.5 2nd April 2024
New Features/Changes:
AI Voice Links:
- Live Read Script Commands: The Ai.CreateAiVoiceLinkMediaItem and Ai.CreateOrUpdateAiVoiceLinkMediaItem commands now have 3 optional extra parameters that allow you to specify which voice name, voice style and voice rate to use for the specific audio being generated. If these are not specified then the Station Settings defaults will be used instead. Note that some voice providers such as ElevenLabs does not supported altering the rate.
The following issues have been fixed:
- Media Editor: You could not use the Insert Encoded String option when using modern format scripts.
- AI Voice Links: You could not create an AI Voice Link using either Azure or Google if your 'rate' was set to "0" or "1".
- AI Voice Links: Setting a specific ElevenLabs voice to use for a single link would be missed and the voice would be generated using the station default.
- Importing Clocks from AutoTrack: Song/Link Clock Line Characteristic assignments were not being imported.
v6.3.4 7th March 2024
New Features/Changes:
Media Items:
- Audio Streams: The ability to set the Retry connections has been temporarily removed due to compatibility issues, this feature will be returned as soon as these are resolved.
Replication:
- Database Settings: The Audio Format options are no longer replicated with the remote station. This is to allow individual replication partners to control their own audio format and storage needs.
- Station Settings: Scheduling and Split Playout settings are no longer replicated with the remote station. This is to allow individual replication partners to control their own scheduling and split settings.
- Manual Replication window: 2 information icons have been added to the display to show the list of settings that are not replicated when you replicate Database and Station settings.
AI Voice Links:
- Live Read Script files: These can now contain Tags (i.e. {stationName}) and will be processed and replaced as part of generating the AI Voice Link.
- Azure OpenAI: Updated to the latest Azure OpenAI release - required to support the latest updated to Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services.
The following issues have been fixed:
- Segue Editor: Fixed a problem where songs prior to sweepers would not always honour the "Fade all songs" setting and would be left ducked but still running under the following song.
- Segue Editor on mp3 based MediaWalls: The Segue Editor had several key performance and reliability issues when used with mp3 based MediaWalls.
v6.3.3 28th February 2024
New Features/Changes:
Managing Artists/Item Titles:
- There is a new "Title Case" button available for both Artists and Item Titles that allows you to easily update multiple items to change the case. For example, if you have a large number of songs that have had the Title and/or Artist all entered IN ALL UPPER CASE then you can select these and click the button to have them Corrected To Title Case. You should obviously avoid doing this for Artists like ELO!
AI Voice Links:
- Futuri AudioAI support: You can now seamlessly integrate Futuri AudioAI Breaknote links into your scheduled log. For more information see https://broadrad.com/futuri
- 3rd Party schedulers: You can now add basic Voice Links scripts to 3rd party music schedulers. You will need to add a breaknote to your Clock that starts with the prefix $V followed by the script or external reference (for example, with Futuri Breaknotes). For more information on the format to use, please see the Log File Format MS Word document that is installed with this product. You cannot use Myriad's automatic script generation, but you can use fixed scripts with the normal placeholder tags.
- GPT script generation: The way that timing information is passed to OpenAI has been improved to help countries that use a 12 hour clock as standard.
- GPT script generation: The information that is passed to OpenAI has been tweaked to allow the the GPT system to be more aware of morning/afternoon/evening/overnights etc. so that links can be more contextual.
- AutoTrack SE v4.6 Clock Import: Importing Clocks from an AutoTrack SE database now imports any Voice Link Clock lines.
The following issues have been fixed:
- Media Playback: Cueing very long media items in mp3 format could take some time, particularly if being read over a network connection.
- Media Report: Items with no Start/End/Delete dates would be wrongly shown as having a date of the 1st January 0001
- Segue Editor: Some voice links would be wrongly displayed as playing dry before the intro of a song. Only the display was affected and the link would actually play in the correct location.
- Mass Changer: Fixed a problem with Mass Changing the scheduling details for an Advert in a different station would wrongly apply the new scheduling settings and could affect the currently open Station as well.
- Myriad Schedule Clock Editor: Using the "delete" button at the right hand side of the Clock Items list would wrongly remove any Characteristic/tag etc. assignments from other lines. Using the windows Cut and Paste could also do the same.
- Command Line Utility AI Voice Link Generation: AI Voice links generated by the Command Line Utility would not always be automatically placed correctly into segues.
v6.3.2 24th January 2024
New Features/Changes:
Media Wall:
- Import Wizard: Added support for more CSV formats when importing media from a list.
AI Voice Links:
- Weather: There are 3 new tags that can be used to insert specific weather information. These are currently only available when you are using the OpenWeatherMap service:
- weatherTemperature - the current temperature
- weatherTemperatureFeelsLike - the current 'feels like' temperature
- weatherTemperatureUnits - the temperature units e.g. Celsius or Fahrenheit.
- OpenAI: OpenAI.com users can now specify which GPT model to use. Previously Myriad would always use gpt 3.5 turbo, but the new default is gpt 4. You can change which model you are using in the Station Settings window.
- GPT script generation: The prompts that are passed to OpenAi ChatGPT and Azure OpenAi have been improved to reduce how often it suggests "Enjoy" and "Well, that was..." as parts of the script.
- GPT script generation: There are new settings in Station Settings that allow you to limit the maximum length of voice links. GPT uses a "token" count which is approximately one shorter word or 4 letters. By default, Myriad will try to limit automatic scripts to 300 tokens or less for normal links, or 2000 tokens for links that include weather or Songfacts.
- Clock Editor/Log Item: There is a new setting on each AI Voice Link that allows you to override the approximate max duration for just that link position.
- Voice Link audio: The default for how much time to leave after an AI Voice Link before the intro end of the incoming song has been slightly increased to 0.5 seconds.
- Voice Link audio: The Google and Azure Voice link generation systems now have been adjusted to improve the natural pauses that are inserted into speech for commas and in between sentences.
Command Language:
- There is one a new hardware command Hardware.PulseLine that allows you to specify the number of seconds to pulse a hardware line on for. For example
Hardware.PulseLine(0,5,10) will turn on the fifth line on the first hardware device for 10 seconds.
Command Line Utility:
-
GenerateAiVoiceLinks There is a new option in the Command Line Utility to automatically create any AI Voice links for a specified date range. .
- This example generates all AI Voice Links for the next hour:
- MyriadUtilityCL6.exe /Action=GenerateAiVoiceLinks /StationId=0 /StartDate=NowDateTNowHour+1 /EndDate=NowDateTNowHour+1
The following issues have been fixed:
- Find next empty Media Item: Myriad would sometimes be unable to find the next available media item in a range if there were no further items anywhere on the MediaWall. For example, recording or generating a new Voice Link in a range that ended at the end of the MediaWall.
- Edit AI Voice Links: The "Insert tags" and "Insert script" menu buttons would sometimes be shown without the explanation text captions.
- Clock Assignment Sets: Stations that downgraded from Myriad Schedule Plus to Myriad Schedule Standard were still seeing clocks being used from that were assigned to additional "Weeks" in the Clock Assignment Set that no longer exist.
- Upgrading from Myriad Playout v5: A tiny number of stations that upgraded from Myriad Playout v5 would find that the Clocks, Clock Assignments or Station Rules would not replicate to a destination location correctly. This release updates this information in the database so that subsequent replications will then work correctly. If you find that your information has not replicated correctly, please re-send the information using the Manual Replication window.
v6.3.1 12th December 2023
New Features/Changes:
AI Voice Links:
Myriad now has options to automatically build scripts for Voice Links and 'read' them on-air using Text To Speech systems and uses a combination of "expert system" language models built into Myriad to create the scripts, but it can also feed the same information to online OpenAI systems (i.e. similar to "Chat GPT") to create incredibly realistic scripts for AI Voice links.
This is totally configurable and would range from simple time checks to more complex voice links including automated weather and promo script reads.
You can also manually create voice link scripts that contain place holders and Myriad will then fill in the placeholders at broadcast time with the latest information - you can even build up voice links out of multiple different voices to create back-and-forth style voice links. For example, you might create a voice link where the virtual "presenter" back announces the previous song, then a secondary voice reads the weather before the "presenter" then teases a song coming up later, then rolls into the next song.
Voice links can create information about songs that have just played or are coming next, or even tease songs that are several items away. It can also include Songfacts.com information about the previous and next songs, as well as the station name and/or tagline as well including weather information and even current time information. It can even include script information from existing Live Read script files, or read pre-entered scripts directly from Media Items so you can schedule live read "S&P" style messaging that can then use all the powerful rotation systems built into Myriad Schedule to use different scripts at different times/rotations.
You can add AI Voice Links into the Clocks where you can enter the script or set the parameters for auto-script creation. You can also manually insert AI Voice Links directly into the scheduled log. Once the audio for an AI Voice Link has been created, Myriad automatically places it in between the adjacent items and can even "pre-roll" the link over the end of the previous song to give a more seamless segue between items. You can also manually edit the link position via the Segue Editor.
Myriad includes a per-station "replacement words" dictionary that can then be used to adjust the pronunciation of any words/artists to guide the speech generators - for example, there may be a local place name that needs to be said with a certain pronunciation.
Myriad will automatically generate the AI Voice Links a few minutes before the link is due to be played out so that it will contain the latest available information.
AI Scripts and audio generation is also logged in the User History, and you can configure Myriad to send you a Notification if there were any problems with either script or audio generation.
Script Generation: Myriad supports the following script generation systems:
- Manually written scripts
- Automatically generated scripts using a built in "phrase" based sytem. Myriad comes with a a large built in phrase collection but you can also edit this collection to allow you total control of the style and wording of voice links. Myriad then chooses multiple phrases from the collection and builds a suitable voice link based on the weightings you give it.
- Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services OpenAI generation. This uses the Microsoft implementation of the ChatGPT system and produces very realistic results very quickly. It requires a Microsoft Azure Account and there may be additional costs to use the service depending on which Microsoft options you use. We recommend using the "GPT 32K" model as this produces the best results using the very latest ultra large language models.
- OpenAI generation - this uses the powerful engine behind ChatGPT to create natural language speech. You will require an OpenAI account and may require additional payments to use their API service. Currently, you may only be able to use their "GPT3.5" model which is good, but lacks some of the finesse of the more modern GPT4 systems available from Microsoft Azure.
Speech Generation: Once Myriad has a script for an AI Voice Link, it then uses a "Text To Speech" system to convert that script into speech. Each Station can be configured to use a different voice provider, and Myriad currently supports the following TTS systems:
- Built in Windows "SAPI4/SAPI5" compatible voices - these are installed into Windows and run locally with no need for an internet connection
- Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services AI Voices - these require an internet connection as the speech is rendered in the cloud, but the results are incredibly realistic and provide a free tier, and once that free allowance is used up you are then charged a small amount for the conversions you do subsequently. You will need to create a Microsoft Azure account to use this feature.
- Google Cloud compute voices - very similar to the Azure voice system above, but hosted by Google. This is also a subscription service, and you will need to create a Google Cloud compute account.
- ElevenLabs - These voices are also created in the cloud and produce incredibly realistic sounding human speech, but are slightly more limited as you cannot mix and match voices in a single AI Voice Link. The added quality does come at a slightly higher cost than the Microsoft and Google offerings.
There is also an entirely new set of AI Commands that allow you to pre-create AI Voice Link media items or create scripts. These include Ai.CreateAiVoiceLinkMediaItem, Ai.CreateAiVoiceLinkScript, Ai.CreateOrUpdateAiVoiceLinkMediaItem and Ai.RewriteScriptWithGpt
For more information about this feature and important information on how to configure it and any provider specific limitations, please see this help article.
Station Information:
- Strapline/Tagline: You can now enter the station's Strapline/Tagline into the Edit Station Details window.
- Call sign: You can now enter the station's call sign/letters into the Edit Station Details window and these can now be used in Copyright reports, for example the CRTC and SOCAN copyright reports.
- Broadcast.Radio API Key: Entering the Broadcast.Radio API key is now done via the Edit Station Details window. When you enter a BR API Key, if you haven't entered a Strapline the Myriad will automatically use the one from your Broadcast.Radio Station details. You can also optionally select to import the Station logo from your broadcast.radio account as your station logo.
All new v6 native Command Language:
- Myriad v6.3 introduces a totally new script engine that uses a command language broadly based on the Javascript language structure that is significantly more powerful than the older script engine.
- This new engine adds powerful new language features such as:
- Variables
- Do-While Loops
- For-Next Loops
- Switch
- Dramatically improved IF statements that allow true branching.
- It also adds in many new language elements such as "Math", "String", "Random", as well as string, double and int32 methods that are drawn from the Microsoft .Net language.
- You can define "Functions" within your command scripts to allow proper structuring of your code, allowing for easy but powerful branching and code re-use.
- The Command editor in the Media Editor also now has a very powerful "Intellisense" and autocomplete system making it incredibly easy to find the correct command as you are type. The command browser has also been updated with the commands, language and examples all available on different tabs.
- All of the Command examples and language documentation has been updated to use the new command language, and all new Commands will be created using the new language by default.
- You can still use the older language, and all existing commands will work as before, although any new commands added in future releases might only be available in the new language.
- In the Media Editor window, there is a slide option at the bottom of the Command Editor area to allow you to switch between the older command language and the newer v6 language.
- The Edit Hardware Line Assignment window has also been updated to offer the choice between legacy and the v6 language, but the editor in this window does not have the full Intellisense editor that the Media Editor window has.
Media Wall:
- Importing Media Items: Myriad now supports importing CUE information created by www.cuegenerator.net
- Editing Media Items: The View tab has been combined with the default "Home" tab, so that the options to toggle on and off the various extra fields such as Start/End, Loops, Now Playing etc. are now much more obvious.
- Editing Media Items: The Item Title and Artist name fields now have auto-complete that will show you suggestions once you type in 3 or more characters.
- Editing Media Items: You can now import Now Playing information from a CUE file into an existing Media Item. To import these, remove any existing Now Playing items and you will see a new button to load them in from a selected file.
- Stream Media Items: There are new options on the Media Editor to allow you to control the number of times Myriad should attempt to re-connect to a stream if it disconnects - for example if the internet connection at either end is unstable. You can also control how long Myriad should wait before re-connecting each time. This time is approximate as there are several layers of caching built in to Myriad, so you will find that Myriad actually continue playing even after several seconds of disconnection before it runs out of buffer. When a Media Item is playing, if it needs to reconnect, then a "Connecting..." overlay will appear in the large Media Players.
- Stream Media Items: You can now set an Extro on stream items.
- New Note Type: There is a new Note Type of "AI Voice Link script" which you can use to enter scripts that can be called from AI Voice Links. The Media Items for AI Voice Links also has this automatically populated with the script of link.
- Media Item Social Notes: Social Media (short) and Social Media (long) notes have been combined into a single "Social Media" note type. All "short" notes have been converted into the new type which is a direct replacement for the older "long" type.
- Media Item DAB Notes: DAB notes have been merged into the existing "Digital Radio" note type. All "RDS" notes have been converted into Digital Radio Types.
- Mass Delete: The Mass Delete progress bar now has a cancel button allowing you to stop the process if nescessary.
- Restoring deleted Media Items: You can now also restore deleted media items that didn't have any audio.
- Find next empty Media Item: The way that Myriad searches for the "next" empty media item, especially in databases that are set to replicate with other systems, has been entirely rewritten to give a significant performance increase.
- Replicating to a remote location: Myriad now performs extra validation checks on the audio file that is to be uploaded to ensure it is valid and should be playable.
- Mass Delete: The Mass Delete progress bar now has a cancel button allowing you to stop the process if nescessary.
- Category+Attributes Sorting: There is a new option in Database Settings under Media Settings to sort Categories, Types, Genders, Eras and Tags alphabetically in the Media Editor, Media Library/Report and Mass Changer. Characteristics are not sorted and are always shown in order.
- Category+Attribute cleanup: There is a new button on the Database Settings > Advanced tab that is useful for stations that used to use separate Categories for each station but have now switched to sharing one set of Categories and Attributes across all stations. This button removes up the left over assignment information for each media item for all stations except the primary station. This can help resolve issues with items unexpectedly scheduling in those secondary stations when they shouldn't. After running this feature, you should rebuild your Song and Link decks to complete the cleanup process.
Myriad Schedule/Copyright Reports:
- Removing hours from the Scheduled Log that have a very high number of tested/rejected items has had a significant speed improvement.
- Schedule Hour Summary Report: This report now also includes an hour breakdown about how many Voice links, AI Voice Links and "live" links (based on red 'stop' indicators) are in the Scheduled Log as well as the total duration of those links - this can be very useful for stations that need to show how many hours a day contain 'Live' or 'As-live' content they are broadcasting each week.
- Tested/Rejected Reports: When scheduling, if more than 250 items are rejected for given log position, Myriad now only stores a sample of items for each rule that is being broken as an indication of which rules are proving the most restrictive. Previously all items would be rejected, but this could lead to massive amounts of data being stored in the database and lead to performance issues in some scenarios. There is a new option in Station Settings on the Schedule tab "Keep ALL items that were tested but rejected..." if you need to see all rejected items for diagnostic reasons, but you should be aware that this can have a significant performane impact.
- CRTC Copyright report: The "SUBCATEGORY" field is now populated from the Custom4 field on the Media Editor. Existing stations may need to remove the existing "CRTCAirplay-v5.xml" file in your DataLocation\Reports\Copyright\Templates so this file can be recreated to get this update.
Split Group Management
- You can now edit the Split Group assignments from the Station menu.
Log Import/Reconciliation Export via FTP server:
- You can now set Myriad to download and import Main and Advert log files from an FTP Server. Advert Rec files are also then uploaded to that same ftp server every hour. This is ideal for stations using 3rd party schedulers to generate logs for Myriad to use, but are at a remote location that does not have file access to the original scheduled log files.
- You configure the FTP server to use in the Station Settings window on the Log Import and Adverts tab respectively.
Security/User History:
- User Management: The Edit User window has been redesigned to focus more heavily on User specific fields such as Login name and email address. This is inline with the move to User Management being primarily for users, rather than the older "Contact management" design. The other fields are still available on the Contact page. The User Management list of users has also now got additional columns to show the Login name and email address for all users in the database.
- Media Wall Permissions: There are 2 new permissions that allow you to control if a security group or individual user has the ability to edit the stream details of Audio Stream Media Items, or the Command text of Command Media Items.
- Myriad Schedule edit history: Myriad now logs in the User History when a user adds, edits or deletes a Clock, Clock Assignment Set or a Station Rules set.*
- Scheduling User History: To reduce clutter in the User History, all Automatic scheduling and log cleanup of both Myriad and Advert logs is now logged in the User History as "System" events - to see these events you need to change the filter from "Normal Events" to either "All Events" or "System Events". Any Scheduling or log deletions that are done by a user are still shown in the Normal Events list.
- Station Settings User History: There is now a dedicated separate User History entry for Station Settings being edited. This can be found in the User History under the "Myriad Playout" application area.
Replication changes:
- Download Database Settings: When you download Database settings from a remote station, the local settings for whether to create Peak files are preserved and are not replaced by the settings from the remote system.
- Download/upload Station Settings: When you download/upload Station settings with a remote station, the settings for the Main and Advert Log file import locations are now preserved and not overwritten.
The following issues have been fixed:
- Media Grid view: Changing station would not update the Category and colours used to show the Media items.
- Media Library/Media Report: Some users would not see a list of available Song/Link/News Categories when using the advanced search filters.
- Importing Media files with CUE files: Cue files with non-western Title or Artist information would not import that information correctly.
- Media Import: Replacing a media item on the MediaWall with a transport file was not correctly moving the previous version into the recycle bin.
- Media Export: Exporting a transport file or replicating a media item to a remote system would not correctly include any "Display By" information.
- Media Editor: Only the first 15 tags would be shown in the Tag selector when editing a Song or Link
- Favourites: Playing Favourite that has a a rotating media item assigned to it could cause Myriad to exit including when triggered remotely or from a Command.
- Log Playback: Fixed a problem where an invalidly configured AutoHook item that was imported from a very old Myriad database could cause log playback to stall.
- Log Playback: Very short sweepers could cause Myriad to skip calculating AutoFade timings once the main song starts.
- Myriad Schedule: Tested but rejected item information was not being correctly removed from the database after the specified number of days. The process of removing very large numbers of items has also been slowed down to reduce the impact on performance on slower computers.
- Myriad Schedule: Importing Clock Assignments from AutoTrack would sometimes only work when importing into Station 0.
- Myriad Schedule Plus - Editing Clocks: You could not enter a year into the Start or End Year columns.
- Opus playback: Rapidly seeking around while playing back Opus files could cause Myriad to exit, and seeking could sometimes seek to a slightly different time than expected.
- Extro detection: The ideal position for the Extro would sometimes be inaccurate when scanning opus format files.
- SmartTransfer: Fixed an issue where transferring the Log between 2 computers that are connected to the same remote media engine would not correctly complete the process.
- Log Mixdown/Multitrack export: Fixed some issues with exporting log mixdowns with complex sweeper positioning.
- Logging in with One Time Pins: Some users were not able to login to Myriad desktop applications using One Time Pins and would see an error message saying "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". This did NOT affect logging in to Myriad Anywhere.
- Importing/Replicating Media Items: Importing a transport file or replicating a media Item where the media item is set to "Basic Media Item" was wrongly setting the destination media item's type to the type for the range, rather than honouring the original source media item's Item Type.
v6.2.2 4th September 2023
New Features/Changes:
SegueEditor:
- The colouring on the Segue Editor has been subtly adjusted to more clearly separate the different areas and elements being edited. This is particularly improved in the the Light theme.
Database Settings:
- The "Remove all Changed/Deleted media item instructions from the database" button on the Advanced tab in the Database Settings window now also removes any "tombstone" information for media items that have been deleted from the MediaWall. This information is used by the Replication feature to make sure that items that are deleted locally are also queued for deletion on the remote site, so you should make sure that you have replicated fully before using this feature, or before changing to replicate to a different station.
Importing media files:
- Added extra handling for files that have corrupted file or folder names.
The following issues have been fixed:
- Scheduling: Item "adjacent day" separation rules would not fully separate some items if you scheduled more than 1 day at a time.
- SegueEditor: This would not correctly show any custom gain being applied to items that were being played as part of a rotating or random list.
- MediaEditor: Clicking AutoDetect to automatically detect the best custom gain would not show any information if it determined that the item did not need any adjustment.
- Mass Changer: If you used the Mass Changer to try and assign the same category again to a media item as the Secondary Category, the Media Report would wrongly update it's display even though that change actually wasn't made - this is because you cannot set the Primary and Secondary categories to the same category.
- Finding next empty Media item: This would get slower and slower on databases that had had a very high number of items deleted. This could affect Jump to next empty item, recording new voicelinks, and adding new media items via the Media Library View.
- SmartInfo Window: This would not show the information correctly if you were editing a staton other than Station ID 0.
- Log Export: Exporting to an Audacity project could cause Myriad to close if certain types of log item were included in the hour.
- Command Line Utility: This was not correctly respecting the /Silent option on the Command line for advert scheduling/unscheduling/merge.
- Command Language: Using the command language to preview the hook for a media item that doesn't have a hook would wrongly leave a player in Preview mode even though nothing was previewed.
v6.2.1 12th July 2023
New Features/Changes:
Characteristics (Energy/Tempo/Texture/Mood/Burnout)
- Characteristics are now available across all editions of Myriad - you can now categorise your songs and links by up to 6 different values across 5 new "Characteristics" - Energy, Tempo, Texture, Mood and Burnout.
- By default, Energy and Tempo are pre-populated with 3 values each to get you started, but you can edit the captions and add/remove values via the Categories and Attributes option on the Settings menu. AutoTrack users can also import the captions from their AutoTrack database via the normal "Import from AutoTrack/SE" button on the Categories and Attributes window.
- You set the characteristic value for each song/link on the Categorisation section of the Media Editor.
- You can import import existing characteristic values set on each Song and Link card in AutoTrack by running a Media Report then highlighting the items you want to import for and choosing the Import From AutoTrack option on the ribbon. Important - only the AutoTrack "Start" characteristic is imported as Myriad Schedule uses a single combined value rather than 2 separate values.
Artist Groups (Myriad Schedule Plus)
- Artist Groups: Myriad Schedule Plus users can now create Artist Groups and set rules to control separation - for example, you could create a "Spice Girls" group and add in the names of the individual members, as well as "The Spice Girls" and then use rules to ensure that a Emma Bunton song won't play too close to a Spice Girls, or Mel C song.
- Artist Group Management: To manage your Artist Groups, go into the new Manage Artists/Item Titles" window and you will see an additional button to view all of your existing Artist Groups as well as showing the Group Members. You can also import existing Artist Groups from an AutoTrack database.
- (Experimental) Crowd sourced Artist Groups: You can also download a pre-built set of Artist Groups that Broadcast Radio has created and stored on a new crowd sourced data service.
- This service is available free of charge to Myriad Schedule Plus users, and the data it provides is gathered from other users.
- The first time you use this service it will ask you if you are happy to have your Artist Groups uploaded to the service to help improve the list of Groups offerered, and we encourage you to say yes to this so that it helps improve the lists of Groups then offered.
- As part of this service, you can also then allow Myriad to silently update that contribution if you later change the Artist Groups.
- Important: The data uploaded does not contain your personal name or any other details, and is reviewed and moderated manually before it's then made available to other users for download.
- Initially the available Artist Groups Collections are predominantly English language based artists, but we are keen to include Artist Groups from as many countries and languages as possible going forward, so we hope you will choose to upload your groups so we can keep improving this service.
- Artist Group Separation Rules: To add in the Artist Group separation rules, edit your Station Rules Set and select the category you want to add the rule to and click Add Rule and select it from the top of the list of available rules.
Artist/Title Management:
- There is a new menu option on the View menu to open the new "Manage Artists/Item Titles" window.
- From this window you can see a list of all Artists and Titles in your database, as well as seeing a full list of any Media items that they are used in - for example, by selecting the Artist "Kylie Minogue" you will then see a full list of all Media Items that have her listed as an Artist on your Media Wall.
- You can also edit those items - for example, if you have a misspelled artist, then editing their name here will then show the new corrected name on all Media Items that that Artist is listed on. There are also options to delete and manually create new Artists.
- There are also options to see a list of all unused Titles and Artists, and buttons to remove those unused items.
- You can also select 2 or more Artists and "Merge" them to under a single Artist Name which then edits all of the Media Items for the artists being merged and updates them to use the single new combined Artist. This is ideal for situations where you may have 2 or more artist names that refer to the same item - for example "Pink" and "P!nk" and want to merge them to make sure that Artist Separation works correctly.
- You can also open the Artist History report directly from this window for the selected artist.
Myriad Schedule:
- Clock Editing: You can now specify an "Item Ending" type for Song and Link items in the Clock Editor. For example, you might want to specify that the last item in the hour must have an "End" Ending type.
- Clock Editing: there are new columns in Advanced Clocks to allow you to set a specific song or link to have a specific Characteristic - for example, the first song after the news might have to be an uptempo song.
- Clock Editing: There is a new option in the bottom left hand corner of the Clock window to show the Item Type colour all the way across the Clock grid, instead of just as a small prefix to the item type column.
- Station Rules: You can now set a Min/Max in a row for each of the Characteristics, as well as which level can follow each other - for example, you might not allow slow tempo songs to come immediately after fast tempo songs to prevent a rapid drop in tempo.
- To enforce these rules, make sure that each Category has the appropriate Characteristic Rule added to the list of rules to enforce - there are two rules - "Characteristic Follow in a row" and "Characteristic Min/Max/Sep in a row".
- AutoTrack users can use the Import Rules buttons on the List Station Rules window to import a pair of Show and Global Rules together into a new Station Rules set that includes any existing Characteristic settings from the AutoTrack database.
- Myriad Schedule Plus users can also set a minimum separation between items with the same value - for example, after scheduling a low energy song, at least 3 others songs must be play before another low energy song can be scheduled.
- Tested/Rejected Report: You will now see new items in the Tested/Rejected reports when an item is rejected due to Characteristic rules.
- Information Windows: There are 2 new options on the View menu to show a floating Media Item Information window and a SmartInfo window. These windows can then be left open and will automatically display the information for the most recently clicked item in the Media Grid, Media Report or Log View windows. This is ideal for keeping an eye on the Warnings grid to see when an item has been scheduled nearby.
Per-User 'Stream Urls':
- Audio stream Media items can now be set to use a "Stream Url" for a specified Contact instead of needing the specific URL.
- You set the Stream URL for that Contact via User Security by editing that User and entering the Stream Url into their Contact card.
- For example, you might have several presenters who stream their show using private Icecast Streams and you want to keep that information in their User account rather than showing the stream URL on the Media Item itself.
- You might also have a presenter where you have multiple different length Media Items all streaming from the same Audio Stream for different shows that they present - for example a 1 hour show, a 2 hour show and a 3 hour show. By entering the Stream URL on their Contact instead, it means you only need to update that stream in one location if their stream location ever changes.
Media Items:
- Media Editing: Myriad now recognises " x " as a multi-artist separator.
- Mass Changer: You can now use the Mass Changer tool to set a Bound Item on multiple items simultaneously.
- Import Wizard: You can now import Gender, Type, Era and Tag information when loading a list from a CSV or XLS file.
- Publish to Mixcloud: This window has been updated to have dark and light theme, and the Track Section display section has been streamlined.
- Publish to Mixcloud: This now applies any Custom Gain that has been applied to the media item.
- Replication/Syncing: There are new options on the ribbon and on the right click menus to be able to easily download or upload media items from/to your remote station. These options are available on the Media Grid, the Media Library and the Media Report. Users must have the correct local permissions to be able to Sync Read/Write, as well as the account used to connect to the remote station having permissions in that database to alter the items being uploaded.
Scheduled Log:
- Replication/Syncing: There are new options on the ribbon and on the right click menus on Hour Start items to be able to easily download or upload entire hours from the log from/to your remote station. Users must have the correct local permissions to be able to Sync Read/Write, as well as the account used to connect to the remote station having permissions in that database to alter the items being uploaded.
Reports:
- Media Report: There is a new option on the Media Report ribbon to control whether highlighting an item should also display that item in any visible SmartInfo windows or views.
- Media Report: In Advanced search mode, the Date/Hour restrictions button has moved to the right hand end of the ribbon adjacent to the new SmartInfo button.
- Play Log Reports: You can now quickly text search within Play Log results and also Group by column to easily track down and analyse your play histories.
The following issues have been fixed:
- MediaWall Grid: Selecting the Search tab was wrongly leaving the Jump buttons panel visible. This is now correctly being hidden to show more search results.
- Media Import Wizard: When loading the list of items to import from a file, the column that shows a clickable hyperlink to display the details of any file parsing errors would not open the window to show the list of errors.
- Media Editing: Editing an Advert then moving onto a new item, then changing it to be an advert would then wrongly show the Advert Scheduling information from the previous advert.
- Media Report: Export Transport files was not honouring the selected Export transport file audio format setting in Database Settings.
- Clock Editing: Dragging multiple lines around would cause Myriad to close.
- Scheduling: If you had specified a Start/End year for an item in the Clock, items could sometimes be selected from outside that year range if there were no other items available.
- Scheduling: Artist Separtion could sometimes reject a song based on a future play, even though it is actually outside the Separation.
- Log View: Some icons including the time stretch indicators would show using the wrong colours in Light Theme
- User Security: You could not alter the end date for a user.
v6.1.4 21st June 2023
New Features/Changes:
Command Line Utility:
- ImportMediaFiles There is a new option in the Command Line Utility to mass import files listed in a file. This works in the same way as the ImportWizard but can be run from the command line.
- This example imports all media items listed in the "NewMusic.csv" file located in the C:\Import folder, overwriting any existing items if the new audio file is newer, and also looks for matching artwork in the D:\NewSongsArtwork folder. Finally, it writes the results to a report file in C:\Import\Results.HTML file:
-
MyriadUtilityCL6.exe /Action=ImportMediaFiles /StationId=0 /Filename=C:\Import\NewMusic.csv /ItemType=Song /OverwriteIfNewer /ReportFilename="C:\Import\Results.html" /ImagePath=D:\NewSongsArtwork
Replication:
- Support has been added for uploading to Myriad Cloud Standard. Downloading from Myriad Cloud requires a Myriad Cloud Pro or Ultimate subscription.
- Improved the warning message display if your Remote Station is not enabled for Myriad Anywhere Schedule.
The following issues have been fixed:
- Media Playback: Playing an item then recuing it when it had only a few seconds left until the end was reached would cause the item to be wrongly ejected from the player instead of re-cued.
- Media Import: In some very unusual situations, an audio file would not have the leading silence auto-topped correctly resulting in the Start being set to exactly 1 second into the Media Item.
- SegueEditor: Trying to adjust volume points in the Segue Editor when running with some non-English regional settings would cause the envelope points to disappear.
- Replication: The Scheduled Log hours to replicate summary information was being shown in UTC time, not in Local time.
v6.1.3 17th May 2023
New Features/Changes:
MediaWall:
- MediaWall Grid: The Replace option that was previously only available on the right click menu is now also available on the Edit ribbon in the 'Edit/Move/Replace' group.
- Media Editor: The colour of the current cursor position indicator now follows the selected Theme.
Media Engine:
- Media Engine Settings: There is a new button on the Settings window to reset the player colours to the defaults.
The following issues have been fixed (17th May 2023 update):
- Mass Changer: Fixed a problem where you would be wrongly displayed a message that you had not correctly assigned a Tag to add/remove if you hadn't even selected the option to change the Tags.
The following issues have been fixed:
- Media Library: You could not drag the column headers into the Group By box.
- Media Import: Importing a media file that has multiple artists in it's embedded metadata would import all the Artist names on the first Artist Name as well as in the additional Artist Names fields.
- Media Editor: Exporting a section of a waveform to another Media Item would fail if your MediaWall is set to use Opus audio as the primary audio format.
- Media Editor: The full edit mode in the Media Editor would not change theme fully when switching between users who have selected different themes.
- Mass Changer: Ticking the option to add or remove a Tag from a Song or Link would wrongly display an error message that you had not selected any tags to alter.
- Mass Changer: Mass changing an Advert and ticking the option to set the Start or End dates but not specifying a date would cause Myriad to close.
- Segue Editor: Editing a Segue where one of the media items is an Audio Stream could cause Myriad to close.
v6.1.2 27th April 2023
New Features/Changes:
MediaWall:
- Media Editor: The name of the button to restore previously deleted versions has changed to "Restore Deleted" to better explain what it does.
- Media Editor: The list of previously deleted versions now shows the title of the item at the time it was deleted.
- Duplicate Media Finder: There is a new button on the Finder window to quickly see item information for the selected media item as well as seeing if it is currently scheduled in the open Station's Scheduled Log.
Scheduled Log:
- Social Media Log items have a new icon (a "hash" symbol).
Scheduling:
- Saving an "Un-schedule" preset now also saves the state of the "Remove all" option as well as the per-category etc. options.
Myriad Schedule:
- Clock Item Ending types: There is a new column in Myriad Schedule Clock Editor that lets you specify that the media item must have a specific End type - for example you might say that the last item in the hour MUST have an "Ends" type. This information is also now imported from AutoTrack Clocks.
- There is a new option in Station Settings on the Scheduler tab to set Myriad to schedule "For the next 2 hours" - this will ensure that you always have at least 2 hours ahead in the log.
The following issues have been fixed (27th April 2023 update):
- Station Rules: Fixed a problem where editing the settings for a Station Rule would cause Myriad to exit.
The following issues have been fixed:
- Clock Editor: The clock editor could sometimes show odd colouring depending on the item type and whether the row was selected or not.
- Media Playback: Fixed a problem where trying to right-click seek while playing a stream media item could cause Myriad to close.
- Media Recording: Audio would be recorded from the wrong device in some scenarios including with a D&R WebStation
- Media Library/Media Report: Right clicking on the header row would cause Myriad to exit.
- Media Library/Media Report: In Advanced search mode, dropping down a selector for a text field (for example the Title or Artists) could cause Myriad to slow down if you have thousands of different possible options for that field.
- Media Editor: Restoring an item would not work after a DST change
- Media Editor: Restoring an item would not display the audio in the full editor until you closed and re-opened the Editor window.
- Media Processing Window: Myriad would close if you attempted to detect the normalisation level for a media item in a range that doesn't have a normalisation type selected.
- Segue Editor: Segue Editing an item that is already showing in the Dashboard would not immediately trigger the Dashboard to update itself to reflect the changes made in the Segue Editor.
- Segue Editor: If you have a sweeper or voice link between two items, but the first song was still playing after the end of the Sweeper, attempting to seek to preview from AFTER the sweeper would still play the sweeper, but in the totally wrong place.
- Log Export: Exporting an hour to Audition CC would not export correctly and Audition would only show the first track.
- User Security: Creating/editing a new user was not showing the username correctly at the top of the window.
- Licensing: The Evaluation License was not showing the correct Product Name.
v6.1.1 22nd March 2023
New Features/Changes:
Media Items:
- Format Support: Myriad can now also import from 24bit and 32bit audio files, even up to 96kHz.
- Previous Versions: In the Media Editor Window, on the Edit ribbon, there is a new option to see a list of previously deleted versions of this Media Item. Selecting one of those versions will then ask if you want to restore it over the top of the current item, or into a different media item. Ideal for when you accidentally delete an item and urgently need it back! To enable this feature, go into Database Settings>MediaWall tab and turn on the 'Move deleted items to a 'Recycled' folder so they can be recovered if necessary' option.
- Native Opus Audio support:
Myriad now has support for using the Opus audio codec as the main Mediawall format allowing very high quality audio but with a significant saving in disk space used. We strongly recommend that stations still use linear WAV files as these are truly lossless, but if space is a premium then OPUS may be a suitable option. If you configure Myriad to use OPUS as the native MediaWall format then no transcoding is needed for remote users to preview audio files.
- Important note: Due to limitations in the way Audacity handles OPUS files, you cannot export hours to Audacity project files if the hour contains any media items that are stored in the OPUS file format.
- Due to limitations in the way the opus file handler works, you also cannot "scrub" seek around in opus files by right clicking on the media player progress bars.
Myriad Schedule:
- Schedule Plus users can now have multiple Clock Assignment Sets which can be set to automatically become active during a specified date range - for example during the festive period you might want different clock assignments for each hour from your usual assignments.
- Clocks now have new "Show Title" and "Presenters" fields, which are separate from the existing "Clock Name".
- The Clock name is primarily designed for use within the station, whilst the new Show Title is targetted for use outside the station. For example, the breakfast show may be made up of 3 separate clocks called "Weekday Breakfast 1", "Weekday Breakfast 2" and "Weekday Breakfast 3", all of which are used to schedule the "Wake Up Today!" show. By entering "Wake Up Today!" in the Show Title field for all 3 clocks, this allows you to then use this information to send to Myriad OCP for use externally.
- Myriad OCP now has several new fields that allow you to access this Show Title and Presenter information. See the OCP Version History for more information.
- The Set Now Playing Info views have also been updated to allow you to manually update this information.
Database Settings
- There is a new button on the Advanced Tab to manually trigger the Housekeeping process immediately. The housekeeping process normally runs every new hours, but this button can be used to start the process running immediately.
Station Settings
- You can specify different background and text colours for Item Types to be used in the dark theme vs the light theme.
User Security
- By default, User events are now kept for 365 days and are then automatically deleted. You can change how long items are kept for, and even turn off the automatic cleanup from the Security Settings window.
Key changes compared to Myriad Playout v5:
Media Playback and Recording:
- All media is played back using our latest generation SMX6 Engine.
Supported Operating Systems:
- Windows 10 or higher, or Windows Server 2016 or higher are now the required minimum operating system versions.
Other changes:
- Supported audio formats: Support for some less common audio formats has been removed, for example you can no longer import from WMA, nor export to ogg, mp2 and WMA format audio files. To import/export these we recommend you use an external audio file format converter to convert the required format to or from a wav file.
- Recording to IMA ADPCM format audio files is no longer supported and should not be used. The IMA ADPCM codec is extremely old and more modern audio formats offer much better compression with considerably higher audio quality.