Repeat event x times per hour

Hello everyone!

First of all I’m sorry if I’m about to ask something that has already been asked before. I looked through all forum categories but couldn’t find any topic that described the situation that I’m in.

I recently found out about Xibo and I’m now investigating into it to see if it can replace the commercial software currently being used for our outdoor digital billboards.

We sell advertising space on our billboards. Every ad has a standard duration of 6 seconds, with a variable number of repeats per hour. This ranges from 30 times per hour (once per 2 minutes) to 600 times per hour (full-time) and a few more steps in between.

So what we need to achieve is to schedule small events like this, that will repeat every x times per minute or hour. In between the events we want to show standard fillers.

I have tried to accomplish this by using a playlist and set the number of spots but since we don’t want the ads to run more times than the clients have paid for, we would have to fill each spot of 6 seconds individually which would be very time consuming.

So my final question: Is there a functionality which we could apply in our use case to easily schedule a repeat with these conditions?

Thanks in advance!

Sincerely,
Daniël

Please do take a look at our guide How to show Media at specified intervals using Playlists which utilises Spot fill configurations, to give you an idea of the flexibility of Playlists.

Do let us know if this would give you the functionality you require?

Thank you

Hi Natasha,

Thankyou for your reply!

I have tried the functionality described in the guide and I think this will be pretty sufficient to fit our needs.

I tested with a single lay-out that should always have a total duration of 120 seconds. I divide those 120 seconds into 6 second parts which gives a total of 20 spots. Depending on the advertising space sold, these spots are either filled with an ad or with a filler. Each filler/ad is contained in it’s own playlist so all playlists consist of just 1 image widget.

Example:

  • 1 advertisement playlist should take up 6 spots [Repeat]
  • 1 advertisement playlist should take up 4 spots [Repeat].
  • 1 filler playlist should take up the remaining spots (10) [Repeat].

The number of unique adverstisements is variable. If I have just 1 advertisement, then settings the playlist ordering to auto gives a duration of 120 seconds. But when I have 2 advertisements like the example above, when I set the ordering to ‘Auto’, the first advertisement is only shown 5 times even though the number of spots provided is 6.

When I change the ordering to ‘Round robin’ all 20 spots are being shown, but all content isn’t equally divided as much as it would be with the Auto setting.

Is this a bug or just the outcome with all the settings I have?

You could get your desired outcome by ensuring that your Filler playlist has 10 image widgets in it (they could be the same image) and then this list would be the first selected playlist used to Pad the other Playlists. Xibo would then work out how to distribute those evenly with the other playlists.

Try this configuration:
Playlist 1 - Filler (10 images) Spots - 0 Spot Fill - Pad
Playlist 2 - Ad 1 (1 image) Spots - 6 Spot Fill - Repeat
Playlist 3 - Ad 2 (1 image) Spots - 4 Spot Fill - Repeat

Playlist Ordering - Auto
Remaining Widgets - Add

This would play in the following sequence:

Filler, Filler, Ad1, Ad,2
Filler, Filler, Ad1, Ad,2
Filler, Filler, Ad1, Ad,2
Filler, Filler, Ad1, Ad,2
Filler, Filler, Ad1

In your configuration, Ad1 still only gets displayed 5 times, even though the ‘Spots’ option is configured to 6…

Ah, apologies! I shall look into this further :slight_smile:

No problem! Already a huge thanks for the help so far. Let me know when there is an update regarding this :slight_smile:

Looking at the available options when using multiple Playlists, I would suggest that the best solution would be to combine your two ‘Ad’ Playlists by doing the following:

Create another Playlist (Combined Ad’s) and add the Sub-Playlist Widget, select Ad1 and Ad 2 Playlists and specify Spots, and use the ‘Repeat’ for Spot Fill. I have set the Configuration tab to ‘Auto’ and ‘Add’.

Then in your Layout add the Sub-Playlist Widget and select the ‘Filler’ with 10 Spots set to Pad (so that this Playlist will be used to interleave content with the Playlist content) and the ‘Combined’ Playlist, set this to your 10 Spots and set to Repeat (so that the content is repeated to fill the set Spots.)
Again set the configuration tab to Auto and Add.

Your media should then play in the following sequence:
Filler, Ad1,Filler, Ad2
Filler, Ad1,Filler, Ad2
Filler, Ad1,Filler, Ad2
Filler, Ad1,Filler, Ad2
Filler, Ad1
Filler, Ad1

Hi Nathasha,

There are still bugs present in the newly released 2.3.1 update regarding this matter.

I have just tried your latest configuration example but it seems that only the second playlist in the combined playlist is used. I have set the number of spots for the second ad to 4 with a spot length of 6. The first ad has 6 spots and also a spot length of 6. The total duration of the combined playlist shows as 24 seconds (4 spots) while it should be 60 seconds (10 spots). If I change the number of spots of the first ad, this doesn’t change. When I change the number of spots of the second ad to 2, the total duration changes to 12 seconds.

So to sum up: It seems that the first playlist added to the subplaylist widget from the combined ads playlist is being left unused somehow.

I tried my best at explaining the issue, I hope it is clear and makes sense :wink:

Have you set the combined Playlist so that both Playlists have been given the required amount of Spots (6 and 4 to give the required 10) with both set to Repeat for Spot Fill. The configuration tab should be set to Auto and Add for this playlist.

The suggested configuration is working fine on my 2.3.1 instance so could I ask that you double check your options set.

Thank you :slight_smile:

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