Introduction
Myriad Playout v5.25 introduced a new way to control secondary Playout Systems - for example, you might have a secondary playout system that is responsible for playing "Local" adverts/spots.
In Myriad, advert breaks that are not played by Myriad Playout itself are referred to as Split Advert Breaks (or just Split Breaks) and normally you would use Myriad Playout's sister application "Myriad Network" to do this natively within the Myriad ecosystem, however some users do need to trigger a 3rd party system instead, then wait for it to complete before Myriad Playout continues.
Myriad does this by activating "hardware" logic lines - either physical or virtual - then waiting for a hardware line response when the break has completed. This might be as simple as Myriad needs to activate relay to trigger the other system, and the system will then activate a second relay when it has completed, or might be more complicated involving a TCP/IP message needing to be sent to a specific IP Address.
The strong advantage to using this system instead of basic hardware lines and setting the end of a Log Item to a "Stop" chain type is that it works in either Live OR AutoFade mode, making it ideal to use even during automated hours.
Prerequisites
This article assumes you have already installed and configured the Broadcast Radio Hardware Service and have connected Myriad Playout to a suitable device on the Hardware Service. For more information about that, please review this article.
There is also this article which shows some more advanced configuration of the Hardware Service to show how to send a specific message to a remote device, either using RS232 or TCP/IP.
Configuring Myriad
Enabling Split Playout control
On the Myriad Playout menu, select Station then Station Settings and on the Connections tab, and select the "Basic hardware controlled Split Playout (Adverts only) option" and click OK:
You can also optionally set the maximum expected duration for an advert break. This helps myriad with it's hour calculations so it can estimate how much time the advert break will usually take, and also gives a safety fallback in case the 3rd party system doesn't send the break completion signal back for some reason.
Configuring the hardware lines
The next thing to do is to assign 2 "hardware" lines - one to signal the other system, and another that will be used by they system to indicate that the it has finished.
Configuring the hardware line to start the other system
On the Settings menu, go into Hardware settings and ensure you have a valid connection to your Broadcast Radio Hardware Service. For more about setting this up, please review this article.
In the Hardware Line section, click Add to add a new hardware line assignment:
Give the new Line Assignment a suitable description, select the device and the line to use, and the select Myriad Network Status Display for the assignment type and Split Break Playing for the Action/Status. In this example, we are using Line 1 to trigger the 3rd party system. Then click OK:
Configuring the line that the other system will use to signal it has completed
In the Hardware Line section, click Add to add another new hardware line assignment, and give it a suitable description, select a different hardware line, and this time, select Myriad Network Control and Split Break Completed then click OK:
You should now have 2 hardware lines that look something like this:
Click OK to finish configuring the hardware lines.
Testing the configuration
In the Scheduled Log view, go to a suitable location in the Log, and on the Edit ribbon, select Add Item and choose Split Advert Break. You can also do this from the right click menu on the Log:
You will see the "Add new Split advert" window, select a valid time and click OK. These reference times are important when using Myriad Network, but for basic split playout you can actually select any time, however we recommend using the same time that your other system uses to make it easy to relate which break is which:
In your Scheduled Log you will now see the Split Advert Break you just added. Don't forget that you can set the Advert Break symbol to a local currency icon in Station Settings:
If you now set the log running, you will see the first hardware line activate at the start of the Split Advert item, and then when you pulse the second line, the break will complete and the log will carry on:
Scheduling Split Breaks into your Scheduled Log
Using Myriad Schedule or Myriad AutoTrack, you just insert a Split Break placeholder into your Clocks in exactly the same way as you would for a normal Advert Break. You can even place them next to each other, so you might play adverts from Myriad Playout itself, then followed by a break provided by your other system, before returning to the Myriad Log for the rest of the hour.
If you are using a 3rd party scheduler then you should consult the documentation for that system, as well as the Myriad Log Import documentation that is available on the Windows Start menu on any PC that has Myriad Playout v5 installed.
For the new Main Log Import format, this will be a line that starts with an asterisk, for the Legacy Main Log Import format, this will be a line containing the word "SPLIT"
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