This page describes the new features and other notable changes in mAirList 6.0.

Note that not all features are available in all licenses/editions. See the product page for feature comparisons.

The complete changelog can be found here: https://www.mairlist.com/download/current/mAirList/v6.0/Changelog.txt

Software downloads are here.

mAirList 6 comes with new flat design icons and color set.

As a new design element, there is a colored vertical band running down the playlist, which will reflect the item color of the individual item colors, as an alternative to the row background color. For many designs, it will be look much nicer to keep the same background color for all rows, and only alter the ribbon color according to the item color. It is also possible to adjust the ribbon color through skin.ini, using RibbonColor entries similar to the existing RowColor mechanism.

Multi-Track Containers are a new kind of container playlist item. Unlike ordinary containers, items are not played one by one, but you can arrange them freely on the timeline using the Mix Editor.

Another special kind of container items. Just point mAirList to the required audio files for your news break (intro, music bed, etc.) and the actual news content (which can also be an HTTP URL), and mAirList will “magically” construct a container from it, mixing all items perfectly together.

In earlier versions of mAirList, we had the “Create Hook Container” command that would take a number of songs, copy their Hook In/Fade/Out points over to the regular Cue In/Fade Out/Cue Out points, and group them into a (regular) container playlist item.

mAirList 6 takes this feature to a new level. Hook Containers are now an item type of their own, which means that you can edit them at any time. There are new menu commands to add the hook container straight to the cartwall. And mAirList will also use a random 10 second part if you haven't defined any hook cue points for a particular item yet.

This has been request by a lot of people - it's now possible to place sweepers over the ramp in AUTO mode, also if the sweeper is shorter than the ramp. We call this “Paddding”, as the sweeper is padded with silence and started at the same time as the song. You can set the padding in the Mix Editor, just by dragging the sweeper to the right over some kind of virtual “notch”.

mAirList can now automatically remove underrun and overflow sections in playlist, by moving songs up or down the playlist until all gaps are filled, and no songs remain in overflow status. This is enabled by clicking the new Auto-Float buttton in the playlist control bar, or enabling the respective option in the playlist configuration.

Only items with “Normal” timing will be affected by auto-float. There is a new timing option called “Fixed” to be used for items that should never float. If you build chains of “Fixed” items (e.g. news opener + news file + news close), this will prevent other items from breaking the chain by floating it between two items of the chain. The same is true for chains of “Backtimed” items.

To prevent items from floating around particular “checkpoints”, e.g. the top of the hour, use the new Prevent auto float around this item playlist item option.

When doing voice tracking from the playout software (not the standalone DB app), you can now use the cartwall during voice tracking - it will switch into a special “VT” mode where mAirList records the start and stop of any carts, and creates a Multi-Track Container from the recorded voice tracks and all cart items. You can use the Mix Editor to edit the this voice track container later.

Another new kind of playlist item is introduced: Cartwall Page. It stores name of an .mcp (Cartwall Page) file, and when the DJ drags that item from the playlist onto the cartwall, the associated page is opened. This provides a very convenient way to include information about all required cart set directly in the playlist.

(Professional only) The new File Recorder can be used to make timed recordings and do easy rebroadcasts.

There are new actions that can be used to remotely control the Aircheck Recorder.

The remote control interface for DHD Series 52 mixing consoles has a new DHD Console window (found in the menu next to the mAirList button) that lets you remote control the faders of your DHD console, and trigger Logics from within mAirList. Export your DHD Toolbox config as XML and link that .xp5 file to your config in order to enable this feature.

mAirList can now detect changes in database playlists made by another user, and display overwrite confirmations when two people edit the same playlist.

There multiple sets of template assignments now. The default assignment, and separate assignments for e.g. “1st Monday in month”, “every odd each” and so on. There is also a “special” assignment that can be used for holidays.

The Mini Scheduler algorithm was optimized for faster generation of playlists.

Edit any audio file from within the mAirListDB library. Works with any external audio editor application that supports file names as command line arguments.

During file import, mAirList can now scan the audio file and determine loudness (EBU R128) and peak values to be used for normalization.

We have cleaned up and removed the REST API used by mAirListDB Server. We plan to release a public documentation of the API in the future, so you can build your own HTTP/REST based apps to work with your mAirListDB.

We now support activation using FTDI dongles.

User who are upgrade from earlier version should read the following note carefully, because some changes in this release may break existing configurations or workflows.

mAirList 6 drops the “desktop” feature found in earlier version. Instead, the playlists(s), open cartwall tabs, and open browser pages, can be saved separately in .mlp, .mcpx and .mlb files. Likewise, there are now default files for all three kinds (default0.mlp, default.mcpx, default.mlb, found in the config folder) which replace the earlier standard.mlt desktop template. You will find commands to save these default files in the respective menus of the playlist, cartwall, and browser.

There is now only one, global Event Scheduler per playout instance, accessible through the Events button in the main toolbar. The yellow events button was removed from the playlist control bar.

The old Hook Mode feature found in the playlist players and cartwall was replaced by the revamped Hook Container items; you can find commands to create hook containers, and add them to the playlist or cartwall, in the playlist context menu.

The Hide played items option and button was removed from the playlist configuration and control bar. Played/skipped items will always remain visible until they are eventually moved to the Recycle Bin.

When playback of an item is started, mAirList will remember whether the instance was in “on air” or “off air mode” at that time. This flag is applied when doing “stop logging” at the end of the playlist: If a logging interface is set to operate only in “on air” mode, the stop logging will always take place if the item was started in on air mode, even if you switched to off air in the meantime. This will give consistent output in start/stop logging.

The on air status is also passed as an additional parameter to background scripts using the OnItemStart' and OnItemStop'' procedures. You must manually adjust the definition of the procedures when migrating old script code to mAirList 6.

Old:

procedure OnItemStart(Item: IPlaylistItem; Region: byte; UniqueID: string);
procedure OnItemStop(Item: IPlaylistItem; Region: byte; UniqueID: string; Duration: TTimeValue);

New:

procedure OnItemStart(Item: IPlaylistItem; Region: byte; OnAir: boolean; UniqueID: string);
procedure OnItemStop(Item: IPlaylistItem; Region: byte; OnAir: boolean; UniqueID: string; Duration: TTimeValue);

In earlier releases, the input audio device for Live Feed items was set directly inside the item properties dialog. In mAirList 6, you only select one of 8 Live Feed Input devices now, and the actual assignment to a physical audio device is done in the Audio Devices section of the config app. This facilitates the scheduling of Live Feed items from other computers than the actual playout PC.

mAirListDB Server uses a new style of user authentication now, designed along the license of the popular OAuth2 standard.

On the server side, there is a brand new user management dialog where you create or modify users and their respective permissions.

On the client side, no username/password is stored in the local configuration anymore. Instead, you log in in order to retrieve an authentication token, which is then used to perform the actual database access.

The REST remote control uses the same new user management and authentication found in the DBServer.

Note to developers: Anonymous access is not supported anymore. While you can still use HTTP Basic authentication with username and password, we recommend that you use the new OAuth2-style authentication end point in order to retrieve an auth token, and then use HTTP Bearer authentication.

See Changelog.