Text Playlist Import Format Specification

This document contains the specification of the “Text Playlist Import” (TPI) format introduced in mAirList 5.0.3.

The purpose of this format is to import playlists from 3rd party music scheduling systems.

TPI is a text/CSV based format that contains the IDs or filenames of the items to import, plus optional control information.

• TPI file files are plain text, with either <CR><LF> or <LF> line endings.
• Columns can be delimited by comma or tab. If a line contains a tab character, tab-delimited is assumed, else comma-delimited.
• Text encoding is always UTF-8.

• File extension should be .txt.
• In situations where it is important to tell the files apart from other text files, the file extension .tpi can be used instead.
• For automatic import in the Mini Scheduler, either hourly playlists (one file per hour) or daily playlists (one file per day) can be used.
• For hourly playlists, the file name must be one of the following:
  • yyyy-mm-dd-hh.txt
  • yyyymmddhh.txt
  • yy-mm-dd-hh.txt
  • yymmddhh.txt
• For daily playlists, the file name must be one of the following:
  • yyyy-mm-dd.txt
  • yyyymmdd.txt
  • yy-mm-dd.txt
  • yymmdd.txt

Each line contains four or more tab-separated columns:

• Start time is given in hh:mm:ss or hh:mm format.
• Start time can be left empty if unknown or irrelevant for that particular line.
• When using hourly playlists, the Mini Scheduler uses the hour part of the start time in order to identify the hour boundaries, so it is mandatory to specify a start time for at least the first item of each hour.
• The minute/second part is generally ignored, except when fixed times are used (see below).
• The minute/second part can exceed 60 minutes in this case. (Some schedulers give start times for overflow music as e.g. 12:67:23.)

The Timing column can contain one of the following values which correspond to the respective Timing settings in mAirList:

The Timing column can be left empty, in which case Normal timing is assumed, or the default value from the item metadata is used.

For Hard and Soft timing, a valid Start Time must be given in column 1.

The third column specified the type of the respective line. Currently, the folllowing types are defined:

Below it the description of all supported Line Types (column 3) and the corresponding Line Data (column 4).

Used to indicate the boundary of a (music or advertising) block. In column 4, the number of the block starting here is given. Column 4 can be left empty, in which case the number of the previous block + 1 is assumed. Timing is ignored and can be left empty. If the file contains no B lines at all, block 1 is assumed for all content.

Example:

12:00:00                B       2

Indicates the start of music/advertising block #2.

Adds a new Dummy item to the output playlist. In column 4, specify the title of the new item.

Example:

12:00:00        H       D       Start of Hour

Adds a new dummy with title 'Start of Hour' and a Hard fixed time of 12:00:00.

Adds the item with the specified External ID from the database. Example:

12:00:00        N       E       100810-01

Adds the item with the External ID 100810-01, with Normal timing.

Adds an audio file to the playlist. In column 4, specify the file name of the audio file; if no full path is give, the file name is assumed to be relative to the playlist file. Metadata will be fetched from the database, MMD files, or file tags automatically, whatever is available.

Example:

12:00:00        N       F       C:\news.mp3

Adds the file C:\news.mp3, with Normal timing.

Additional columns can be used to set fields on the imported file:

Adds the item with the specified (internal) ID from the database.

Example:

12:00:00        N       I       120577

Adds the item with the ID 120577, with Normal timing.

Specifies the options for the processing of all subsequent F lines. Start time and timing is ignored. Column 4 and 5 contain the name and value of the option. Currently the following options are available:

Lines of type R are silently ignored during import. R lines can be used to add comments to TPI file, to make it more readable by humans.