Scheduling Questions

thurmansevolution

Hey!

I'm really enjoying ErsatzTV so far and have some channels up and running that are pretty basic and are configured to shuffle media content 24/7 with no fillers.

I'm wanting to create a few additional channels that have scheduled programming like you would see on broadcast tv (and mainly retro stuff). I've read through the ErsatzTV documentation and understand how to schedule media content to start at a certain time. However, I'm a bit clueless on how to schedule content that would play once a week (e.g. a Friday night movie or a block of Saturday morning cartoons). I've searched google and even tried ChatGPT, but not having much luck. I've seen a couple of posts where people had weekend schedules, and AI mentioned that there were workarounds to get something like that working, but no direct way as of yet.

Is something like this possible currently in ErsatzTV, and if so, how do you schedule content to play weekly or on certain days of the week?

Thanks in advance! 🙂

jason

Yeah, we really need a documentation update. Right now your choices are:

Classic scheduling: when you create a playlist you select a default schedule. You can also create "alternate" schedules which will select an appropriate schedule for each day (from the prioritized list you provide).

Block scheduling: blocks are better for fixed start times, but do not support mid-roll filler yet. When you create a block playout, you can then edit the playout and edit the templates in a similar way - where it's a prioritized list of block templates, and ETV will select the appropriate one for the current day.

thurmansevolution

Thank you for all of the info! I feel like I have a better understanding than I did before, and was able to create a test channel that uses an alternate schedule for Saturdays, and looks to be correctly configured according to the playout detail. I'm excited to get started building playlists and blocks. 🙂

When you mentioned that blocks do not currently support mid-roll fillers, I have a followup question...and this one may sound like a stupid question lol...are you talking about the filler that plays in the middle of a show or movie, or does it include all fillers within the entire block (including the fillers before and after each tv episode or movie)?

jason

thurmansevolution by mid-roll I specifically mean filler that would play at chapter markers.

Blocks allow you to manually include whatever pre-roll you want to start the block, end the block, etc. Each block item can be included or hidden in the EPG as desired. Decos can then be used to fill unscheduled time after the main block contents until the block duration is filled (kind of like a post roll that pads to the duration of the block).