[RDD] Migrating Wide Orbit to Rivendell.

[Nathan Steele]

Heres the situation. I have two stations in the same building on
separate automation systems. The newer station is on Rivendell, It
started out streaming only and is now on-air. The older station is on
Wide Orbit, but alas due to finacial difficulties, its frequency was
sold and is now streaming only. I do not want to maintain two separate
automation systems, and we let our Wide Orbit support contract expire,
for many reasons which I wont go into detail but the cost was certainly
one of the reasons.

Rivendell has been mostly rock solid, and though I have had hiccups and
headaches with it at times, I mostly love it, and understand it in great
detail, since I was responsible for setting up every aspect of it.

Wide Orbit is buugy and crash prone, gives me constant headaches, and I
don't understand most of it. I installed the hardware but was merely a
contract engineer at that time and was not around for the software setup
or training (i was also working a full time job and couldn't be there).
It locks up all the time, needs constant reboots, and yesterday the
server just decided to reboot and fail to boot for no apparent reason.
after trying 5 times to boot it, I coned the HD and for giggles put the
original HD back in, it booted, and is still running, but I don't know
why, there was nothing useful in the system log.

I want to maintain only one system, and you should know which that is by
now ;)

What kind of nightmare am I in for in trying to migrate the music
library? please tell me I can import the songs and it will take the
markers from W/O. Scheduling is done from music master so there should
be no problem there. Biggest problem will be the one remaining user, who
is technically...err... not so computer literate and totally stuck to
the WideOrbit way. he has looked at the other stations Rivendell system
and thinks wide orbit is better because it has a prettier
interface....but he also thinks that music master and wide orbit are the
same thing, telling me "music master isn't working", so I head off to
his office and he says "no, in the studio", or "Wide Orbit's not
working", so I head to the studio, and he says "no, in my office". there
is nothing wide orbit in his office, and nothing music master in the
studio......

[Marcin Marzec]

Post by Nathan Steele
What kind of nightmare am I in for in trying to migrate the music
library? please tell me I can import the songs and it will take the
markers from W/O. Scheduling is done from music master so there should
be no problem there. Biggest problem will be the one remaining user, who
is technically...err... not so computer literate and totally stuck to
the WideOrbit way. he has looked at the other stations Rivendell system
and thinks wide orbit is better because it has a prettier
interface....but he also thinks that music master and wide orbit are the
same thing, telling me "music master isn't working", so I head off to
his office and he says "no, in the studio", or "Wide Orbit's not
working", so I head to the studio, and he says "no, in my office". there
is nothing wide orbit in his office, and nothing music master in the
studio......

AFAIR Wide Orbit / Google is nothing but revamped Scott Studios SS32.
SS32 was using standard Broadcast Wave Files, I was able to import its
files into AudioVault.
Since Rivendell imports BWF, all metadata you need for operation will be
imported as well.
Just try to import one of these files into Rivendell and you will see.

As for Music Master - basic setup for Rivendell takes less than 15
minutes with Music Master Export Designer.

Greets,
djc

[Nathan Steele]

thanks! musicmaster is good to go already, we use it on both systems.
I'll try an import next week. So I should not need to use any of the
rivendell importers, which I don't think I installed initially?

Nathaniel C. Steele
Assistant Chief Engineer/Technical Director
WTCF-TheCrossFM
Southernlight.us

Post by Marcin Marzec

Post by Nathan Steele
What kind of nightmare am I in for in trying to migrate the music
library? please tell me I can import the songs and it will take the
markers from W/O. Scheduling is done from music master so there should
be no problem there. Biggest problem will be the one remaining user, who
is technically...err... not so computer literate and totally stuck to
the WideOrbit way. he has looked at the other stations Rivendell system
and thinks wide orbit is better because it has a prettier
interface....but he also thinks that music master and wide orbit are the
same thing, telling me "music master isn't working", so I head off to
his office and he says "no, in the studio", or "Wide Orbit's not
working", so I head to the studio, and he says "no, in my office". there
is nothing wide orbit in his office, and nothing music master in the
studio......

AFAIR Wide Orbit / Google is nothing but revamped Scott Studios SS32.
SS32 was using standard Broadcast Wave Files, I was able to import its
files into AudioVault.
Since Rivendell imports BWF, all metadata you need for operation will be
imported as well.
Just try to import one of these files into Rivendell and you will see.
As for Music Master - basic setup for Rivendell takes less than 15
minutes with Music Master Export Designer.
Greets,
djc
_______________________________________________
Rivendell-dev mailing list
http://lists.rivendellaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev

[Marcin Marzec]

Post by Nathan Steele
thanks! musicmaster is good to go already, we use it on both systems.
I'll try an import next week. So I should not need to use any of the
rivendell importers, which I don't think I installed initially?

That's not like that - remember that Rivendell has combined way of storage.
Audio is placed on the HDD and the meta are stored in MySQL database.
Therefore you need to import files using Rivendell mechanisms.
In my case I used rdimport in commandline mode, so Rivendell could
rename files and use the metadata.

Good luck!
djc

[Nathan Steele]

oh no, that's not what I meant. There are supposed to be special
importers you can install to import from other automation systems. I
know I would still need to import to Rivendell like any other file.

Nathaniel C. Steele
Assistant Chief Engineer/Technical Director
WTCF-TheCrossFM
Southernlight.us

Post by Marcin Marzec

Post by Nathan Steele
thanks! musicmaster is good to go already, we use it on both systems.
I'll try an import next week. So I should not need to use any of the
rivendell importers, which I don't think I installed initially?

That's not like that - remember that Rivendell has combined way of storage.
Audio is placed on the HDD and the meta are stored in MySQL database.
Therefore you need to import files using Rivendell mechanisms.
In my case I used rdimport in commandline mode, so Rivendell could
rename files and use the metadata.
Good luck!
djc
_______________________________________________
Rivendell-dev mailing list
http://lists.rivendellaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev

[Rual Thompson]

Totally wanted to reply to this, unless i miss my guess WO is formerly Scotts
Studios, a software i grew up on in radio

Indeed you can switch to Rivendell, as you said it can be buggy but apparently
so can WO,(when Dave Scott sold that system it went downhill fast)

The bad news is unless someone jumps in to correct me you will have to re time
and tag your songs, maybe not tag them im not sure if WO has a specific title
format, but you will have to redo the segues and intros all over again,

Best approach is to get the library to WAVS and then import it with a default
Segue fade, and go and sniff out the bad apples that dont need the generic
fade

be warned though rdimport will freeze the best of machines, I have been
waiting an hour to get 40 songs in the dropbox, and i still cant use the
desktop while its frozen

hth

[Rob Landry]

Post by Rual Thompson
Totally wanted to reply to this, unless i miss my guess WO is formerly Scotts
Studios, a software i grew up on in radio

Scott Studios created the DOS Scott System and its successor, the
Windows-based SS32. The company was sold to Demarc, which was bought by
Google.

Google completely re-wrote the software, creating Google Radio Automation,
which they sold to Wide Orbit. I don't believe the WO software has
anything in common with the Scott SS32 other than still using the SCOT
chunk for its audio file metadata.

Post by Rual Thompson
be warned though rdimport will freeze the best of machines, I have been
waiting an hour to get 40 songs in the dropbox, and i still cant use the
desktop while its frozen

I have never experienced rdimport freezing a machine. In my experience,
when a machine running Linux freezes, there is a low-level problem,
typically related to hardware such as the video or sound card.


Rob

[Frederick Gleason]

Post by Rual Thompson
be warned though rdimport will freeze the best of machines, I have been
waiting an hour to get 40 songs in the dropbox, and i still cant use the
desktop while its frozen

Hmm. I must always have used better than ‘the best of machines’, because in 10+ years I have yet to see RDImport freeze a desktop.

I’d be checking my hardware if I were you. Sounds like you have some problems there.

Cheers!


|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer |
| | Paravel Systems |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. |
| Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts |
| to fit their views. ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen |
| to be one of the facts that needs altering. |
| -- Dr. Who |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|

[Sherrod Munday]

On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Frederick Gleason

Post by Frederick Gleason

Post by Rual Thompson
be warned though rdimport will freeze the best of machines

...

Post by Frederick Gleason
I’d be checking my hardware if I were you. Sounds like you have some problems there.

...

Post by Frederick Gleason
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. |
| Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts |
| to fit their views. ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen |
| to be one of the facts that needs altering. |
| -- Dr. Who |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|

I love Fred's .sig line... it speaks volumes.

What's scary is recognizing the nugget of truth therein that might
apply to my life every now and then, and it's not always because of
the "powerful" part... ;-)

--Sherrod

P.S.: If this were a different forum, that .sig quote could be applied
*so* many ways to many departments and individuals in the U.S.
government, businesses, etc., etc.... but that's a tangent for another
place. :-)