Producer Tips for Making Station Automation Friendly Programs
1. Episode Titles
The way you name your file-based episodes is critical to a station's ability to properly identify and automate your program. The following guidelines for naming your episodes will make them easy for stations to identify in their playout systems.
Standard for episode titles:
The first 8 characters are a compressed-but-identifiable summary of the overarching program (series) title;
The next 6 characters (after the space) indicate the begin air date in PRSS style (yymmdd).
As an example, this results in: RadioRea 061218 for the program Radio Reader.
This will give station operations staff a way to easily identify what is in their playout systems.
2. Air Window Day of Week & Number of Segments
Stations will automate your episodes based on the number of segments and their associated cut identification numbers. In version 1 of the ContentDepot, those cut identification numbers are assigned based on the day of week that your air window begins. Now that you have established the scheduled air window for your program and the number of segments, you must be consistent in adhering to that schedule. Changing the day of week on which an episode begins will change the cut identification numbers--resulting in significant issues for stations. Changing the number of segments you produce without notifying stations to make a manual adjustment in their playout templates is catastrophic for stations.
Because of the importance of air window, segment number, and cut identification consistency, if you are considering a change to your normal begin air window schedule or program segmentation, you must contact PRSS at 800.971.7677 to make this change. Your PRSS representative will review this change with you and make sure that stations receive proper notification to process the change on their end.
3. Episode Lengths
Audio length must be consistent from episode to episode. A half second of silence at the beginning and end of each segment is required to prevent up and downcutting. Remember to calculate this silence into your total episode length. The ContentDepot will provide a total episode length when all segments have been uploaded that you can use to confirm the proper length.
4. Audio Levels
Stations are reporting that some programs are not compliant with the audio level specifications. The PRSS specifications for audio levels are available.
5. Audio Standards
When encoding audio, please make sure your files following the ContentDepot file specifications. Many of you have probably heard recently about an encoding specification called "frame padding". Frame padding is an encoding technique applied when digital audio files are generated using a sampling rate that is not mathematically pure. The net effect of the technique is to add a 'pad' byte at the end of some mpeg frames so that every frame is exactly the same length. Unfortunately, this padding is incompatible with some station automation systems. Therefore, the ContentDepot specification requires that frame padding be turned off during the encoding process. PRSS will be posting an updated list of encoders that meet ContentDepot specifications next week, and this information will be shared during the producer training sessions.
6. Quality Control
While NPR Distribution staff have initiated a process to attempt to manually verify the integrity of file deliveries, we cannot guarantee that every file will be checked. If you are not already doing so, please incorporate a quality control step into your production processes following file encoding. Checking your files before you upload them for correct audio levels, length, and format will ensure that the proper content is being delivered by the system. To listen to your files after they have been uploaded, click on the file names on your episode page to download them in the same .wav (broadcast wav) format that stations are receiving. You can listen to these files using current versions of Windows Media Player 11 and most audio production software.