POWER STUDIO

Format Planner

The Format Planner determines how playlists are generated. It uses two layers:

  • Day Format: the structure of a full broadcast day.
  • Clock Format: the structure of one hour.

A Day Format assigns a Clock Format to each hour. A Clock Format contains the rules that select tracks, jingles, macros, static items and live sources.

Start with simple rules and expand only when the generated playlists prove that the basics are working. A clear format is easier to review, explain and maintain than a complicated format that only one person understands.

Day Formats

A Day Format defines which Clock Format runs at each hour of the day. One Clock Format can be reused many times. For example, a station can use one morning format, one daytime format, one evening format and one overnight format.

The Day Format editor contains a list of start times and Clock Formats. Add one line for every planned format change. A common setup has one line at the top of every hour, but special days can use fewer or more changes when needed.

Each Day Format line can use Floating.

When Floating is enabled, Power Studio plays tracks in full and starts the next playlist as close as possible to the planned time. This sounds natural because music is not cut off.

When Floating is disabled, the next playlist starts exactly at the scheduled time. Power Studio may fade out music earlier to make fixed items, commercials or news hit the intended time.

Clock Formats

A Clock Format is the blueprint for one hour. Each line tells Power Studio what kind of item to place in the playlist.

Common lines include:

  • Music tracks selected by category, mood, tempo, rating or other criteria.
  • Jingles or promos.
  • Static items, such as a top-of-hour jingle.
  • Macro items, such as downloaded news or commercial breaks.
  • Live sources, such as a stream or remote broadcast.

To create a Clock Format, open the format editor, create a new Clock Format, give it a clear name and add rules line by line. Use names that match the daypart or purpose, such as Morning Drive, Daytime, Evening or Sunday Overnight.

Each line should normally define one type of item. When a line uses a Static Item, Macro Item or Live Source, the normal selection criteria for music are ignored for that line.

Power Studio warns when an administrator tries to delete a Clock Format that is still in use. Treat that warning as a dependency check. First find the Day Format, schedule or workflow that still references the Clock Format, then decide whether to replace it or keep it.

Clock Format properties include Duration and Extra time. Duration describes the intended clock length. Extra time gives the scheduler some room when searching for items. Keep these values consistent across normal hourly formats unless the station has a documented reason to do otherwise.

Important line options include:

  • Link to previous item when the line should stay attached to the preceding item.
  • Rotate tracks when the line should rotate through a smaller pool instead of only using normal planning priority.
  • Live source item when the line represents a live input or web stream.
  • Fill out when the line should still be included before a fixed transition.
  • Macro item for dynamic content such as traffic, news or downloads.
  • Static item for a fixed, named item.
  • Min/max filters for rating, BPM, year, tempo and mood.
  • Required Criteria, Special, Rotation, Audience, Decade and Language values.

Selection Criteria

Within one criteria column, multiple selected values work as OR. Across different columns, criteria work as AND.

For example, a line can mean:

Rating is 4 or 5
AND category is Hit or Current
AND language is English

Use this logic to keep formats readable. Do not create many nearly identical rules when one well-defined rule can do the same job.

When a rule produces no usable item, check the library before changing the clock. Often the missing piece is a category, rating, date range or other metadata field.

Use extra filters such as tempo, mood, year, BPM, language, audience or decade only when the library has enough matching tracks. A very specific rule can sound good on paper but fail when too few tracks qualify.

Rotation And Separation

Use category separation, artist separation and track separation to prevent repetitive playlists.

Useful settings include:

  • Maximum consecutive tracks from the same category.
  • Minimum separation between tracks from the same category.
  • Track and artist repeat protection.
  • Rating ranges to favor stronger songs.
  • Maximum-per-playlist limits for specific criteria, such as limiting one language or category to one item per hour.

For small categories, use rotation carefully. Very strict separation rules can make playlist generation difficult when too few tracks qualify.

Use Rotate Tracks for smaller pools where crate-style rotation is preferred. This can be useful for tightly managed hit, tip or recurrent categories.

Use separation pages to define maximum consecutive plays and minimum items between repeated criteria values. Use maximum-per-playlist pages to limit how often a value may appear in one generated playlist.

Fill Out

Use Fill Out for items that must still play before the next fixed moment, such as a commercial block before the hour.

When the hour is too long, Power Studio can shorten preceding music so the fill-out item still plays and the next hour starts correctly.

Scheduler Page

The Scheduler page assigns Day Formats to dates and starts playlist generation. The Options and Settings scheduler page also contains defaults such as:

  • Which Day Format is used for each weekday.
  • How many days in advance playlists are generated.
  • The time at which automatic scheduling starts.
  • Whether this computer performs automatic playlist generation.
  • Static items available to formats.
  • The default number of lines in a new Day Format.
  • Whether new Day Format lines are floating by default.
  • Macro pre-request timing during playout.
  • Whether macros are executed only on selected machines.

Run scheduled generation from one clearly assigned machine. In multi-computer installations, avoid having several machines generate the same future playlists at the same time.

Playlist Insight And Analysis

Use Playlist Insight and planning analysis when a generated playlist looks wrong. These views can show the planned line, selected item, number of tries, available record count and the Clock Format that produced the item.

When a line has too few candidates, review the track metadata and criteria first. Adding more rules to the format usually makes the problem harder unless the library has enough usable audio.

Best Practice

Build formats in layers:

  1. Define content types and categories.
  2. Create simple Clock Formats first.
  3. Generate test playlists.
  4. Review why items were selected.
  5. Add separation and advanced criteria gradually.
  6. Use static items and macros for fixed or dynamic content.

Keep a small number of well-named Clock Formats for normal operation. Add special formats for holidays, events and temporary schedules, but remove or archive them when they are no longer used.