Playback events appear in green rows. They tell AutoCast to play audio from your music library or a specific file.
Picks one song from your library that matches the filter criteria. TuneStacker's selection engine chooses the song whose artist was played longest ago first (least-recently-used), which ensures natural variety without the same artist appearing back-to-back. Among artists with equal eligibility, the pick is randomized for additional variety.
Parameters: One to three Attribute/Value filter rows. Example: Comment DeepGrooves picks any song whose Comment attribute is tagged DeepGrooves. Add Tempo Fast as a second row to require a fast tempo as well, and Decade 80s if you like. You can also use the "does not equal" feature, such as Decade!=80s or Artist!=Kenny G to assure the selected song doesn't have a certain characteristic. When you use multiple rows, all rows must be satisfied.
Tip: The "match count" shown next to the filter rows is useful as a reality check: it tells you how many songs in your library actually qualify for the parameters you've entered. If it's lower than expected, alter the parameters to something less aggressive.
Identical to Random in how it selects music — same filter syntax, same artist/title protection. The difference is that TuneStacker will only use them if there's room for them. So placing some Fill lines at the end of an hour is a way to avoid scheduling more music than needed and chewing through your library faster than necessary. TuneStacker will only use 'em if it needs 'em.
Fill Behavior: During log generation, TuneStacker tracks the cumulative duration of all content that has been added to the hour. When it reaches a Fill line, it checks whether the hour already has enough music to carry it past the Time-Correct point. If so, that Fill line and all remaining Fill lines are skipped. If there's room for more, Fill lines are used is to select one or more additional songs to bridge the gap to past the Time-Correct target. If some of the fill was unnecessary, a comment is written to the log: "## Some fill entries were not needed/added."
This means you can add several Fill lines at the end of a clock as padding — they'll only be used if the hour needs them, eliminating over-scheduling and dramatically reducing artist/title protection burndown.
Parameters: Same Attribute/Value filter rows as Random.
Place Fill lines after your Time-Correct command, or at the very end of the clock. TuneStacker needs to see the Time-Correct timestamp before it can decide whether a Fill is needed.
Works like a cart machine! TuneStacker maintains a rotation record for each unique Rotate command. Each time that Rotate line is executed, the next track in the sequence plays. After the last track in the rotation plays, it cycles back to the first. This ensures every track in the set gets equal airplay over time, in a predictable order.
Parameters: Same Attribute/Value filter rows as Random — and the same AND-combination rule. Rotate Comment Sweeper Tempo Fast rotates only through tracks that match both criteria.
Each unique combination of filters gets its own rotation record in your station's Rotations/ folder, with a human-readable name like Comment_Sweeper.txt for a single filter or Comment_Sweeper__Tempo_Fast.txt when two filters are combined. This means changing or adding a filter starts a fresh rotation rather than disrupting an existing one.
Tip: Rotate is ideal for jingles, sweepers, PSAs and promos, where you want controlled rotation rather than random selection. Random is better for music beds and song categories where variety is the priority.
Plays a specific audio file at this position in the log. The file path is embedded directly in the program log. Use this for station IDs, legal IDs, or any audio that should always play in the exact same position.
Parameters: Full path to an audio file. Click Browse… to use a file picker. The path is validated against disk — a pink row means the file wasn't found.
Among other things, PlayFolder can serve as your instant show producer. PlayFolder will cause AutoCast to play the entire contents (all the files) in a folder back to back. AutoCast will add them alphanumerically by filename, meaning that the way you name the files will determine the order they're played in. Since numbers come before letters, naming your files with numbers at the start is the perfect way to assure items play in a particular order. Here's a good example of how this can come in handy. Note the numbered filenames:
Parameters: Full path to a folder. Click Browse… to select one.
Marks a commercial break insertion point. AutoCast refers to that day's Traffic log, looks up the break at this position within the hour, and inserts and plays the specified recorded announcements.
Parameters: Minutes and seconds past the hour — e.g., :27:00 for 27 minutes into the hour. The hour itself is determined at runtime from the surrounding # Hour N marker in the program log; you never enter it here.
Format in the program log: # Break :MM:SS (with the leading pound sign and colon before the minutes). Example: # Break :51:30
Plays a pre-recorded intro for whatever song is up next, right before the song starts, such as "Here's Elton John." You record the intros and tag them by Artist, Album or Title, and ClockWork matches each one to the song it picks.
How to set it up:
FrontSells folder, named exactly like this: Artist=Elton John.wav. If you have more than one intro for an artist, add a hyphen and a number to the end of the name, such as Artist=Elton John-01.wav and Artist=Elton John-02.wav, and they'll rotate.FrontSell ArtistRandom Genre PopIf the song chosen by the Random event is by Elton John, the matching intro plays just ahead of it. You can use the same pattern with Album or Title intros, and mix them across your format clocks to keep things feeling spontaneous.
Parameters: A scope dropdown that selects the FrontSell category to use (Artist, Album or Title).