Bug reports, questions, comments can be emailed to dougscripts AT mac DOT com. Include "Daypart" in your subject line. A response will be sent ASAP. Before emailing, be sure your topic is not already covered here or in Daypart Help. In the interest of expediency, bug reports should contain precise details.

General Questions

We are using Daypart to automate our internet/school/closed-circuit/WAN radio station and...

I wish you wouldn't. Daypart is meant to schedule playlists casually as one might at home, at work, a cafe, and so on. It is not intended to be an inexpensive substitute for high-end professional broadcast automation software in mission-critical situations, nor will it ever be.

Additionally, Daypart does not provide broadcast-like programming features, such as the ability to play IDs, promos, bumpers, stop-sets, and so on. You might be able to do some creative construction and scheduling of your playlists in order to achieve those effects, although don't count on to-the-second precision timing.

Nevertheless, if you have a reasonable suggestion or dilemma, I'm all ears.

Why doesn't the "Crossfade Songs" setting work when one Playlist Event segues with another?

iTunes' "Crossfade Songs" feature only works between songs in the same playlist. Daypart cannot replicate this effect between two songs in different playlists.

Whenever a playlist plays it always starts with the first track and plays the songs in order.

Unless you actually want a playlist to play in its current sort order or play order, always use the Scheduler's shuffle setting, which will shuffle the playlist before play begins. The particular playlist's original shuffle setting—on or off—will be restored after playing.

Does the time of a playlist have to be exactly as long as the Start and Stop times I've scheduled it?

No. If the time of your playlist is longer than its scheduled Start and Stop times, the song playing at the moment it is scheduled to stop (or when the next playlist is scheduled to start) can be set to fade or end cold. If the playlist is shorter than the time it is scheduled for, it will stop after all of its tracks have played—or, you can set it to repeat so music can continue uninterupted.

Can Events/playlists be edited while they are currently scheduled/playing?

For the most part, yes. Changes made to the current schedule will need to be updated in the Player. To update the current schedule in the Daypart Player after making changes to it in the Scheduler, disengage the Player, load the Schedule again, and re-engage the Player. If the Schedule is changed such that the currently scheduled playlist is different than the currently playing playlist, the current song will fade and the scheduled playlist will start

Can Daypart schedule playlists through Front Row?

No.

Can Daypart schedule playlists of movies or videos?

Probably not very well at all. Daypart is geared towards playing audio tracks in a playlist.

Can Daypart schedule just a single track?

Daypart is oriented toward scheduling playlists only. To play a single track, create a playlist and put a single track in it, and schedule that playlist. Make sure the duration of the playlist is at least two minutes.

Can Daypart schedule radio station tracks?

If a scheduled playlist contains a radio station track then that radio station will play. However, Daypart cannot anticipate the timing of tracks in a radio stream—that information is just not available—and therefore cannot end a song cold at a transition. In such cases, the radio stream will fade at the next Start or Stop time.

Can Daypart schedule a particular Album?

Daypart schedules playlists only. Assembling and coordinating tracks for a particular Album is beyond its scope. You can, however, create a playlist of the Album—by several means available in iTunes—and schedule that playlist.

Do I have to keep all of Daypart's windows open all the time?

Not at all. You can minimize, hide or close any windows you are not using. You can even hide the entire application while the Player is engaged.

The playlists in the Playlist Popup do not match my playlists in iTunes! What gives?

No matter what playlists I schedule, it seems only my Music library playlist plays! What up?

Both of these issues are indicative of a possible problem locating your current iTunes Music Library.xml file or the location of the selected multiple library (if you use that iTunes feature). Daypart gets information about your playlists from the current XML file, which by default is located in your [username]/Music/iTunes/ folder. If you use iTunes' multiple library feature, the XML file should be in the location you selected when you option-started-up iTunes. However, under some circumstances (which I outline at greater length here) the current XML file may have gotten lost; the System thinks it is in one place and iTunes thinks it is in another. As a result, Daypart is using the wrong playlist information for the Playlist Popup and, in the case of the Player defaulting to the Music playlist, the scheduled playlists cannot be found in iTunes. A possible remedy for these issues is discussed here.

Otherwise, if you have, for some reason, manually copied, moved, aliased, or symlinked any files from your [username]/Music/iTunes/ folder (excepting actual audio/video files) to some other location in the interest of making your life easier, well, shake hands with Bad Karma.

How can I get Daypart to start and play a Schedule when my computer starts up?

Technically, Daypart isn't an alarm-clock-like application (there are quite a number of good iTunes alarm clock apps). However: Assign Daypart as a Login Item for your Account in System Preferences. In Daypart, select "Load Most Recent Schedule in Player and Engage" as the Startup Action in General Preferences. Load a Schedule into the Daypart Player; that's the one that is now the "most recent" and that Schedule will play at startup.

If your computer is scheduled to Shut Down, you should make sure that the Shut Down time is at least a few minutes after the last Playlist Event for the day in Daypart is scheduled to Stop (be sure to take into consideration that a Playlist Event's Outro Action may be set to "last song cold" and therefore will probably stop somewhat after the scheduled Stop Time); at any rate, Shut Down should not occur while Daypart has a Current Playlist Event playing. (The issue is that at Shut Down the system will send quit notifications to applications in a somewhat random order and if iTunes is notified to quit before Daypart then Daypart may not quit gracefully.)

Why doesn't Daypart have a preference setting to be added to my Login Items? That would be great!

I thought about that. But it might have the potential of screwing something up at your house, so I'll leave it to you to add it to your Login Items manually.

Back to the Daypart product page...

Version History

v2.1.1 (jan 16 '12):
- Fixes issue with closing Template window
- Fixes issue with misidentifying Genius as Folder playlists
- Improves timing calculation at midnight crossover
- Minor stability fixes

v2.1.0 (nov 7 '11):
- Fixes issues which precluded scheduling the iTunes DJ playlist in previous version
- Adds preference to create a text log of played tracks (registered only)
- Adds preference to quit after last scheduled Event action of the current day (registered only)
- Un-registered versions limited to 90 minute demo period per launch

v2.0.0 (sept 27 '11):
- Compatible with OS X 10.7 (Lion)
- Adds customizable toolbar to Scheduler
- Adds text size toggle for Scheduler Table
- Adds "Duplicate Event" tool to Scheduler
- Improves Calendar View
- Improves "engaged" light in Player
- Improves transitioning from radio stream tracks
- Adds preference setting to automatically add new unique Event criteria to Templates
- Adds update notification through Sparkle framework
- Minor GUI updates
- Many minor fixes to improve stability and performance

v1.0.4 (feb 11 '10):
- fixes "invalid date and time" errors under Snow Leopard
- fixes an issue whereby Events starting several days in the future may not have queued correctly
- fixes problem with windows becoming unresponsive when set to load and engage at startup
- other minor fixes

v1.0.3 (aug 10 '09):
- fixes issue with malformed filepaths
- fixes issue with repeat setting

v1.0.2 (apr 28 '09):
- fixes issue with Calendar View re-display
- fixes issue saving schedule/locating .db file
- fixes issue with setting fade delay

v1.0.1 (mar 31 '09):
- fixes issues related to date/time formatting
- fixes "sortedDataRows" error
- addresses error issues when adding Event to Schedule
- addresses slight delay at startup issue

v1.0 (dec 27 '08):
- initial release