MANAGING THE TUNETRACKER SYSTEM™ FROM A DISTANCE
The TuneTracker System™ is a great choice for stations that require remote administration. Using two tools, TT Anywhere and common FTP (file transfer protocol), you can do pretty much anything you could do if you were sitting in front of your TuneTracker computer. You can even engineer your own remote broadcast, right from the car dealership or other remote location, using any laptop and a wireless Internet connection.
TT ANYWHERE
The $79.95 TT Anywhere program is a server you can run on your TuneTracker™ computer, that lets you log in from other computers, regardless of location or operating system, using a free VNC client program such as RealVNC and a standard high-speed Internet connection.
Using TT Anywhere, you can literally bring up your TuneTracker computer's screen on your remote computer's screen and use the mouse and keyboard as if you were sitting in front of it. Because you have full remote accessibility, you can use TT Anywhere to do all the same sorts of things you would do if you weren't located remotely, including opening and working on files, all administrative tasks, and of course, viewing and controlling TuneTracker™.
You can use the link above to get more information and purchase TT Anywhere.
REMOTE POSSIBILITIES (Command Center Only)
As alluded to earlier on this page, it's very possible to literally engineer your own remote broadcast using TT Anywhere. Before leaving the station, just confirm TT Anywhere is running, and that your Marti receiver is patched into the line-in of your TuneTracker™ computer (and that you've properly calibrated levels so your Marti audio will be neither too soft nor too loud). Then set up your Marti and wireless laptop at the remote location, and log in to your TuneTracker™ computer. Tune in your radio station and monitor on headphones. You're ready to go! What follows is a suggested scenario you could then follow.
- When you're ready to go on the air, click Command Center's Auto button, to turn Auto "off."
- Wait until whatever is presently running comes to an end, then click Command Center's Live button, turning Live "on."
- Stay on the air as long as you want. Instantly access Command Center's hotbuttons if you like, to play intros, sound effects, bumper music, etc.
- When you want to go back to automation, just hit the spacebar on your keyboard or click Start, then click Auto to turn Auto back "on."
- Click the Live button to turn Live "off."
- Repeat as often as you like, until your remote is over.
USING FTP TO TRANSFER FILES
About the only thing you can't do with TT Anywhere is transfer files from your remote computer to your TuneTracker computer. For that, you'll need a to fire up your TuneTracker computer's FTP server.
Your TuneTracker computer doesn't care where you do your production. Perhaps your "mother station" is in Kansas, while your "child stations" are in Vermont, Florida, and Missouri. You can use FTP to transfer your audio files from your main location to all the other locations. See Network Setup for simple instructions on setting up networking and an FTP server in your TuneTracker computer.
In addition to the obvious benefit of doing centralized production for multiple stations, there's also the "from home" angle. Perhaps your station is unstaffed after 6 p.m., but you need to be able to update it with special weather alerts, closings and cancellations, or other information from your home studio. Just record the new cut and FTP it in to your TuneTracker™ computer, replacing the existing file.
TuneTracker™ is smart enough to just ignore lines in your logs that call for non-existent files. Take advantage of that fact by scheduling special announcement events on your log. In your format clocks and master logs, you might have a line that looks like this:
Play /boot/station/weather/special.wav
Most of the time, no file for those lines is found, and it is ignored. But when you do need a special alert to run, just FTP over a special.wav file to the specified folder. When you no longer need it to run, just FTP in and delete it. That simply, you can always be right on-top-of-it at your station, even when there's "nobody home."
SENDING FILES TO A CENTRALIZED LOCATION
If you need to update multiple stations' files, consider uploading your files to a central location on the web and having each station's TuneTracker™ computer automatically download them using TuneTracker Command Center's™ # Run command.
REMOTE FORMAT CLOCK AND MASTER LOG EDITING
Because all our system's format clocks, master logs, and program logs are plain text, they can be easily edited anywhere there's a word processor and simply FTP'ed to the broadcast computer.
Important Note! If you use a BeOS, Linux, or UNIX machine to do your text editing, no special steps are required. However if you use a Windows computer for your "distance word processing," it will add carriage return characters to the text when you save it, which will create problems when you send it to the BeOS machine for use in TuneStacker™ or TuneTracker. Just make certain that if you use a Windows or Mac machine you opt for a word processor that is capable of saving files in Unix format, without carriage returns. For Windows, we recommend "EditPad Lite" as a very capable word processor that will give you powerful capabilities to edit your logs, and even do global search-and-replace across multiple files, if you like.
REMOTE TUNESTACKER™ LOG GENERATION
Go ahead! Doll-up those master logs remotely, FTP them over, then use TT Anywhere to go into your broadcast computer and and generate a fresh new program log. You can even set up a batch file script and generate as many logs as you like, all from wherever you happen to be.
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