Once the application starts, Etere Ad Insertion reads the automation playlist, searching for all scheduled ad insertion clusters starting at the actual time minus a preset timeout and going ahead for a maximum of three television days. If the search completed and events to be transmitted are not found, an error message appears on the bottom right of the window.
Ad Insertion mode
1. A break is loaded in the playlists,
2. The break is cued few seconds before its scheduled on-air time,
3. When the scheduled on-air time arrives, the break waits for a "play" command or "discard" command,
4. At this point, there are 3 possibilities:
•The play command transmits the break (see figure below),
•The stop command interrupts the break,
•The discard command skips the break.
5. Once the transmission finished (i.e. played, stopped or discarded), the playlists are cleared and the next break is loaded.
The Ad Insertion module loads only those scheduled events whose type has been enabled with the "ad insertion" property, the application "cue" the events for their subsequent and automatic playout.
When the cluster is in PLAY mode, the running commercial is indicated by the symbol . You can load up to 3 commercial events to the same main event to be played simultaneously for the entire event. At the end of the transmission, the cluster is deleted from the square and the system waits for the next event to be loaded. Once the On-Air ends, the commercials would be automatically marked as transmitted, and the cluster following the last transmitted one would be loaded.
Delayed and advanced start
In case no PLAY command is given, when the "timeout" has elapsed the cluster would either be automatically put in PLAY or skipped. In this case, according to the parameter "Start automatically when delay expires", the following cluster will be loaded.
Moreover, the on-air of the cluster cannot be anticipated, with respect to the expected time, more than the time indicated in the "Advanced broadcast" parameter, and cannot be postponed more than the "timeout" time. For instance, if the "start automatically when delay expires" is set to 600 seconds (10 minutes), the "timeout" to 300 secs (5 minutes), and the cluster scheduled time is set to 15:10:00, therefore, the PLAY command will be accepted only if given between the 15:00:00 (15:10:00 - 10 minutes) and 15:15:00 (15:10:00 + 5 minutes), otherwise, a message will alert the operator that "The on-air cannot be anticipated more than 600 seconds".