Introduction
Adding the ability to set a ‘start’ date on media added to Xibo.
Aim is to allow the quick addition of media to dynamic playlists, a heavily used feature of the platform.
Background
This feature has been requested multiple times over the years, with the earliest I could find being 2015. A few of these are listed below.
The core topics of discussion have been around if this feature would make it confusing for administrators of the platform to tell when media would be valid for play if manually adding it to a playlist… Would the media start date or the playlist start date take precedence if they conflict?
- Start and expiration dates attached to content. Not playlist, widget or container - #3 by JCEmpire
- Default Start/End Dates for Media Files
User Story
Currently, in order to add media to the platform and schedule it in advanced, you need to:
- Upload the media
- Add it to a playlist
- Set the start date
This process removes the ability to schedule media in advance by simply uploading media and tagging it with a dynamic tag. It also complicates the process of uploading media, meaning that we can’t simply provide basic instructions to new staff or volunteers.
I would like to see a ‘start’ date set on media called “Dynamic Playlist Do Not Play Before”. This date would be used to calculate the start date and time for media when being added to Dynamic Playlists.
The operation of this start date should not impact or have an effect on media added to a playlist manually where a manual start date is set within the playlist.
I’m hoping that this solution would resolve any issues that have been raised in the past around the complication for multiple start dates being attached to media.
I am a reasonably new user to Xibo, but other thoughts of systems that may need to update, but I don’t actually know the ins and outs of the system yet:
- Any calendar views within Xibo that display playtime lengths would need to be updated to calculate the playtime length based on start and end time of the media for any Dynamic Playlists.
- If the media ‘end time’ is actually an authoritative source that can’t be overwritten by a manual entry elsewhere, then Update the ‘End Time’ attached to the media to ‘Do not play after’ so as to more clearly show this is the final play time of this media.
Our Use Case
We operate a small not-for-profit community theatre where we use Xibo to show upcoming performances on TVs in the foyer. These change often and currently we need volunteers on deck on a Sunday to change the media and upload the new ones after the last ones have expired.
We use Dynamic playlists so we don’t need to go manually scheduling each individual item and can simply upload media with tags like ‘Bar’ or ‘Upcoming’