Scheduling Collections instead of TV shows

progrocktv

Hi, I'm trying to schedule a COLLECTION instead of a specific TV show to run at a scheduled time (for example, I've created a collection called 9:00am, which will 1 episode of specific shows at the Fixed time of 9am); however, the collection never plays, and the channel is shown "offline". Does anyone have any ideas what might be happening?

jason

A few things come to mind:

Make sure your collection actually has items in it https://ersatztv.org/docs/user-guide/create-collections
Make sure your channel has a playout https://ersatztv.org/docs/user-guide/create-channels#create-playout
If both of those are already true, try a dynamic start type and Flood playout mode with the collection https://ersatztv.org/docs/user-guide/create-channels#schedule-items

progrocktv

Thanks for the info. Went through the steps and it kinda worked, then POOF, everything works fine, Collections are playing at a scheduled time. One more question, if we add to a collection after some of the episodes have already played, does it start over and/or do recently added items play after the previously saved items. For example if I have a "Batman" collection which has Batman Beyond playing on a daily basis and then I add Batman '66 to the collection a few weeks later, would it start playing Batman '66 the next time the collection is played. Or does it remember where it was with "Batman Beyond" and continue where it left off even though I added new media?

jason

Depends on a lot of factors. Manual collections will "refresh" all flood playouts (those that use schedules) whenever they are modified, so you will notice changes immediately. Smart collections will be re-evaluated every time the playout is extended, meaning new items will work their way in over time.

Whether these changes affect progress through the collection depends on the playback order you have selected. Shuffled collections will shuffle differently when they have more items, so you may see repeated content sooner if you regularly modify a shuffled collection. Chronological collections should be better at maintaining progress through a collection, though it may be off by up to the number of items added to the collection, depending on if they sort before or after the current position in the collection.

With block schedules and YAML playouts, chronological should better at maintaining progress in almost all cases, and they use much more accurate history to remember the last item that was played, and will find it or the closest item in the collection before extending the playout.