shane-mason
Bumps & Commercial Overrides Per Time-Slot
Currently, a station only has one pool of commercials and bumps to pull from - but sometimes you would want to pull from a completely different pool based on the show that is playing or the time of day.
Revisiting this issue since it came up in #57 - there are a couple of open questions here:
- Is it per time slot or per tag?
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- per tag would be configured via folder names and structure
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- per time slot be configured via the station config file
- In either case, how to specify.
- Need to align how this works with temporal filters (time of day, time of year)
Ah I see My commercials and bump folders are both within the channel's directory. So I figured each channel would pull from their own unique commercials and bump folder, and any "general audience" commercials could just be shortcuts to save on space for other networks or a separate folder/pool entirely.
For me, I may have set up my tags wrong. I have folders labeled "late" and "overnight" and also assigned tags for those within the config file for the channel. I thought that was how you were supposed to do it? I assumed that the late and overnight tags were really just suggestions for folder names, but they could be named anything since you can place any named or "tag" folder in the config file and designate them hour by hour.
So this is how mine is configured:
And here is essentially what the folder structure looks like:
I get the feeling this may not be intended.
I think the original language of this issue was confusing, so I updated it. Hopefully that will help.
To clarify:
- Each stations does have its own commercial and bump folder
- The top-level folders under your channel can be anything name you want them to be - I generally use things like 'sitcom' or 'movie' but will also use the actual show name if I want a specific show to play at a specific time.
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- These correspond to the tags in your config
- Sub-folders with names like 'late', 'overnight', "December' etc are actually more like filters - content will only be selected from them if it fits the time of day it is being scheduled for, but it still falls under the top-level tag.
- Sub-folders inherit the tag of the top-level folder, so this means that subfolders that don't have one of the magic names ('late', 'overnight', "December' etc) will all be treated as though they were in the top-level directory.
I'll also update the wiki documentation to be a bit more clear and try to de-conflict some of these concepts. I wrote most of the documentation before the temporal hints (late, overnight etc) were in place, so it makes it a bit confusing.
Ah, so if I rename those bumper and commercials folders then they should work better. It won't necessarily line up with the timing I have on the channel's tag config which is unfortunate, but I can just readjust for the time being.
It does sound like the way it's setup up currently however is going to keep tag specific bumper/commercials from functioning. So having a special block on Friday like Toonami just isn't possible as far as getting commercials/bumps playing correctly, though shows will work fine.
So having a special block on Friday like Toonami just isn't possible as far as getting commercials/bumps playing correctly, though shows will work fine.
You're correct - its not possible until this feature is completed. This is a great use case though, so let me look at a few things and I'll come back with a proposal about how we could make something like this work.
This is completed for bumps - you can use it like this:
"9": {"tags" : "myshow", "bump_dir" : "special_bumps"},
where special_bumps is a folder under the station content_dir
Okay - this is completed. You can now add commercial overrides at the time slot level:
"9": {"tags" : "myshow", "commercial_dir" : "myshow_commercials"},
It can also be used in conjunction with special bumps:
"9": {"tags" : "myshow", "bump_dir" : "myshow_commercials", "bump_dir": "myshow_bumps"},