Hello,
I am very new to the LibreTime world, and have a question that I am sure has been asked 100 times before but yet I cannot find a straight up answer to (mostly like as I am do not understand the terminology).
I think it best for me to outline my desired use case:
- DJ #1 authenticates with their own credentials and livestreams from 12am to 2am.
- DJ #2 authenticates with their own credentials and livestreams from 2am to 4am.
My question is: does DJ #2 have to perfectly time their connection at exactly 2am or can they somehow connect early (without kicking DJ #1 off his stream) then at 2am LibreTime seamlessly transitions from DJ #1 to DJ #2.
Thanks, and sorry for a newb post.
DJ #1 and DJ #2 authenticates with their own credentials at their own time. DJ #2 can connect at anytime after 2am and before 4am. No earlier than 2am. When DJ #1 time is over at 2am, it will disconnect DJ #1 and go to the next show where DJ#2 can connect to.
That’s exactly what I was afraid of… Ideally DJ #1 and #2 would both be connected in parallel (2 streams) and LibreTime would change to the DJ #2 stream at 2am. In this scenario it removes the race to connect as fast as possible once 2am hits, avoiding any “dead air”.
You’re able to monitor when they go off air and a DJ would have to be aware of his time anyways, that’s why the timer is there… so after going off air the Station ID will play on top of the hour and then DJ would come in (you can see when the Station ID is about to end). In my case, DJs would just wait into their intro is over unless they come in right after Station ID if no intro is available. As long everything is timed right, you can have the program manager take care of that (in case they need to add an outro or something to fill in), then none of them are racing to quickly enter at a time, and have no dead air.
I mean everyone uses it differently, but to have it the way you want it (unless there’s something I don’t know in LT) we would have to look into it, can add it as a feature request. Are there any programs out there that does this already? Maybe we can have some kind of fallback that will switch to DJ2 as soon as DJ1 goes offline (if DJ2 is in queue). I haven’t had time to look further into Liquidsoap to see if it’s possible, or maybe we can set something for DJ2 if they are allowed to broadcast next and switch them over once DJ1 goes off air.
I actually got pretty far down a custom liquidsoap implementation that would handle this… But I realized that I was going to need to basically build 90% of what libretime already offered and stopped 
I could look into it. I do know what you mean since I tried broadcasting a few seconds before. It would make it easier for any DJ. Should be if an admin sets Station ID in Settings then DJ comes in after a station ID or if left to none, then it’ll just be immediately after LT ends the scheduled show.
For now, you would just have to do what I mentioned above. From the LT panel you can LISTEN to the stream from the hardware (button below ON AIR, not the Stream URL) or simply look at the time left playing in a track (eg. Station ID or Show Intro) so you don’t get any dead air. So that’s something you have to keep in mind if having remote DJs, they can’t simply rely on a stream URL since it will be delayed compared to what’s actually being played in the server. As long they’re monitoring it inside LibreTime they should be fine.
You can have LT add Station IDs automatically if you create a playlist for it and then set that playlist in Settings > Intro Autoloading Playlist, and that would be an easier way to tell when to come in, or if you have an intro on a show then DJ2 would just have to wait for Station ID, then Show Intro before going live.
Side note: Not sure what program your DJs are using but if using a program like Mixxx, a DJ is able to enable broadcast live seconds before the scheduled show starts and it will automatically try to reconnect that way they don’t need to try to hit broadcast exactly when the show starts if you don’t want to add station IDs or intros. And it will show when it’s broadcasting. You can tweak up the settings.
