If the necessary api-calls are available, i think i could build a scheduling application. We'd need to discuss what that application should be able to do: recurring elements at fixed intervalls, like commercial breaks every half hour? elements scheduled at fixed times? or rather elements scheduled in a given order, like a slot-machine? Once the scheduling logic is defined, the actual implementation shouldn't be that hard to code.

How about that: tell me how you would like the frontend to work, in terms like "i want to select files from folders an drag them to a timetable", then we can discuss a way to build it.

Once we know what the scheduler should be able to do, we can explore what additional api-calls that would require...

This is all a little to generic for my understanding. Could you elaborate on some of the points? What do you mean by "watch foldered files"? And what means "'X' minutes or 'X' files"?

To code a scheduler, i need to understand the basic concept of how the schedule should look like, e.h. give me a sort of "sample" schedule, marking what media are scheduled at fixed times, and what media are selected randomly. Are we aiming at a lot of short clips (like music videos mixed with random commercials and weather/news at fixed times/intervalls)? Or is there to be few longer elements (like movies or episodes of tv series) at fixed time slots with the gaps filled with random material (commercials)? Is vmix to be controlled only by the schedule, or would there be times when we switch into "operator mode", meaning that an operator is controlling vmix for a given period of time, e.g. halting the scheduler while we do a live show?

There are a lot of different approaches to the scheduling, and some ideas conflict with others...

Thank you for the explanation, that's really helpfull.

So basically we'd schedule not media elements, but rather "operation modes", where an operation mode could be:
- play clips from a folder (or other kind of list) randomly, e.g. random commercials, or random videoclips
- play a specific media element or playlist (e.g. teaser -> weather forecast -> prerecorded newsflash -> premium commercial ("the following show is sponsored by") -> tv series episode -> premium commercial)
- load a specific vMix-configuration (and don't do nothing until next event, because vMix will be controlled manually until then)

To facilitate the "random element" operation modes, both vMix and the scheduling machine would need access to the same media library (e.g. shared folder), or at least vMix would need to provide metadata about the contents of a local / shared folder (e.g. list all playable files in folder x, including playtime), so i'd say we think of running vMix and the scheduler at least in the same local network, right?

Is vMix able to seamlessly load a new configuration while it's playing a video? E.g. playing the prerecorded opening sequence for our live show while loading that show's configuration in the background?

right, would be good if just one machine could run vmix and schedule app. i know that this can increase CPU usage but this is just to avoid sharing issues on the network.


good questions, i didn`t think about that... maybe change preset during a live event or a "non-live" event will cause some issues.
let`s improve presets...
1. "Non-Operator" Preset;
2. "Non-Operator" + "Operator" Preset;
The user will work with just one of these two presets. to avoid issues, no changing preset is needed. these presets give to user the possibility to choose if he wants to just make an automated broadcast based on pre-recorded files ("Non-Operator" Preset) using categorized playlists or combine categorized playlists with live video/audio sources ("Non-Operator" + "Operator" Preset) if a live stream is needed.

changing a little the subject of the topic, let me ask you... are you think about to sell the aplicattion or just free distribute it?



i agree 100% with a drag-n-drop timeline, it will be a big improvement. very nice perspective by the way.

regards,

melody
www.espiritosanto.cc

I'm not interested in selling software, i neither have the programming skills nor the time to develope a fully grown, sellable application. So please don't expect too much from what i'm offering here, there'll surely be no shiny, polished app, but from what we've dicussed so far i think i could code a working tool with a simple gui that will do the job (e.g.: don't expect a full featured timeline like in video editing software, rather expect an ordered list where you can drag/drop elements and sort by mouse).

I'd like to build the application in a way that it _can_ (but not necessarily _need_ to) be run from an other machine in the same local network, so that one operator could schedule the next day from pc#1 (scheduler) while someone else performs a live show at pc#2 (vMix). But of course scheduler could also run on the same machine as vMix. Probably the programm will actually be two programms, one "server" running on vMix machine, providing local services (like listing folder contents, or transferring files to/from the machine) and actually controlling vMix, while the other part is a "client" running on a deliberate machine, providing the GUI to setup the schedule.

Once we create a working version of this programm - probably with Martins help, adding some API functionality - i think there will be others who'd take the concept (or even the code) and adjust it to their needs, building on top of and extending the basic concept we provided...

Some personal note: please don't expect me to provide said software in the next couple of weeks - in my daytime job i have a school to run, and right now we are heading to the final exams...

macjaeger, feel free to take the time you need and to do what you know. every time you need help you can count on me (and Damn2Good4U i say :D)

i just need to say a big THANK YOU VERY MUCH for you to take this challenge. just tell us something about your application when done :)

regards,

melody
www.espiritosanto.cc

our web site is down due an hacker attack... nothing that a (blessed) daily backup system can`t restore... a few hours more and all will return to normaly.

so, about your app, for all you need from me just post here... i will look into this post to see the updates...

regards,

melody
www.espiritosanto.cc

Glad to hear you two on board ;-)

I've done a little basic testing yesterday, and found that vMix will stop the output when you load a preset. That's no big deal though, there's actually no need for seperate presets. The scheduling app will add an input, run it, and afterwards remove it - so basically the loaded preset won't be touched. New inputs will be added to the end of the list, so it won't even alter the order of inputs, which may be critical for running live shows.

I've successfully built a basic application that calls vMix' web-api (sending http requests and receiving the results), and could add inputs, make them active, start and stop them, and remove the input - so the basic building blocks of our scheduler are all available. But there are some obstacles:

To my understanding, web-api-calls only reference inputs by number. But the numbers change when you rearrange the inputs (happens only occasionally) or when an input is closed / removed (happens all the time), making it difficult to _reliably_ reference the right input. In my testing application when i want to remove clip "myclip.avi" after it was played, i have to call the api without parameters to get the list of inputs, parse it, extract the input number corresponding to "myclip.avi", and then send the api-call "remove input number xx". This produces some overhead (two api-calls instead of one) and could lead to problems if the input-number changes at that exact moment.

It would be a lot easier and more effective (in both terms of workload and reliability) if we could reference inputs by some other identifier that won't change, preferably one that could be set when adding the input via an api-call. Each input has a "name", with video-files that usually is the files name, this could be the identifier used to reference the input, but that would be ambiguos as multiple inputs can have the same name, and there's no way (that i know of) to change/set the name via api-calls.

Martin, are you with us?

Could you add an additional parameter to the "AddInput"-api-call to either set the inputs name or to set some other global unique identifier (guid)? And could you extend the other api-calls so that the "Input=" parameter would accept the inputs name or the guid respectively? This would help a lot!

I'm going to evaluate videolist and playlist for our purposes soon, right now i am a little blocked because my developement pc was running the trial version of vmix which happened to run out a few days ago, and my video-machine is in use at school... i'll have to setup either yet another machine running the trial, or maybe a virtual one, to continue my testing (basic version won't allow playlists).

That would greatly help designing the scheduling application! If using our externally provided guid poses problems (e.g. you can't be sure that our guid is really globally unique...) it would be enough to send your internal guid with the web response. Like:



returns something like




That's exactly what I asked for ;-)

It would also help to see the guid listed in the xml-style status-display (the one you get when calling api without parameters).

Thank you Martin for reading in and considering to add to the api!