Last week we went over many tips and tricks for holiday scheduling within GSelector, so for this installment of RCS Live, we decided to do the same, but on the Zetta front. Today we went over third party audio editor integration, Shows vs. Mini-Logs, and how to get the most out of your holiday / year end programming.

Starting with third party audio editor integration, did you know that Zetta can trigger another program to open so that users can record, make edits and that audio is automatically saved within Zetta? We understand that Zetta’s Multi-Track Editor is a great tool that is free and built into your Zetta system, however, if you find yourself with an additional paid license for Pro Tools, Audition or another premium audio editor, we acknowledge that you’re paying for these specific advanced features, so why not integrate the two? Remember, since those third party audio editors are installed on a specific machine, we need to integrate starting with each computer. So Configuration | Computer | External Editors. From there, you define a name and a location of the desired program. If you need to quickly find the location, simply right click on the desired program’s icon, choose Properties and note the Target destination. Copy and paste everything up to the “/Program.exe” so that Zetta can properly discover the file path. There aren’t many settings to configure, however make a note of the saving options. You can either save as you modify the file, which takes up additional resources, or work from start to finish and then save the final product into Zetta upon closing the third party audio editor. MDI refers to a third party editor’s additional floating window.

Once your third party audio editor is configured, then users have the option to Edit Media with said program. In this exercise, we added a new element, briefly saved the asset so that it’s part of the Zetta environment, then we used the Edit Media | Adobe Audition to open Audition. We recorded a new piece of audio, closed Audition to officially save it within the Metadata module, then we added metadata to the existing element.  There is no right or wrong way to achieve this workflow. Users can add all the metadata first, save and then record via the third party audio editor or record first and then insert the metadata.

Next, we broke down the differences between Show and Mini-Logs. Essentially, they’re identical, except that Mini-Logs allow for time stamped assets like Spot Blocks or Hour Markers. There are many ways in which users can curate a long form piece of content and it’s really about YOUR desired workflow. You can create multiple segments within Shows and schedule them around existing Spot Blocks or use Mini-Logs and include Spot Blocks to continue the traffic log load. Both Shows and Mini-Logs allow users to voice track and those voice tracks will not expire as they’re tied to each Show or Mini-Log. When users drag them into the Log, the voice tracks are dragged in as well. Note the Mini-Log settings found under Configuration | Stations | Log Settings, including Mini-Logs maintain existing elements, Skip elements, or delete elements. If you have any questions on the most efficient method to curate and schedule your show, don’t hesitate to reach out to RCS Support or direct message us on social media.

We’re still looking for GSelector 4.9.0 and Zetta 5.20.1 Beta users! If you’re interested in getting the latest and greatest from RCS, reach out to your local RCS office and let them know you would like to become a Beta power user. Don’t forget to send us your “work from home” photos for some RCS goodies and we have more sessions on the way as we continue to broadcast live every Thursday at 11am ET. Don’t forget to follow us onwww.Facebook.com/RCSSoundSoftware and RSVP for future RCS Live sessions.

It’s hard to believe that 2020’s holiday season is upon us and you know what that means – holiday music and year-end specialty programming! Asst. GSelector Product Manager John Bonou joined us again to help identify holiday best practices, tips and tricks.

First, we began with understanding how GSelector handles Active versus Inactive elements. Essentially, if you don’t need GSelector to acknowledge the elements during the scheduling process, then deactivate elements. This will greatly improve GSelector’s performance while maintaining the deactivated element’s history and attributes. Don’t interpret deactivating an element the same as deleting an element.  They’re simply in the background, waiting for you to activate and play them. Blue circles are active and orange squares are inactive.

Next, it’s time to work on your holiday clocks. Remember to work smarter, not harder. Utilize tools like the Clocks and Grids Save As function to duplicate your existing Clocks and Grids and then replace them with holiday positions. Any schedule can have a defined grid, which can be overridden by any clock or schedule of clocks. Switch to a new grid via the override tab: Clocks | Assignment | Grids | Definition | Schedule | Dates. Pro Tip: When you set the override holiday grid, don’t forget to make sure you are correctly returning to original programming when the holiday schedule is complete.

Once we have the content and clocks ready to go, we can start to analyze our projected turnovers using the Goals tab. From the Daypart and Grid window, don’t forget to select your desired holiday Grids and yes, you can define your Holiday clock schedule and then work within that “environment” by switching between grids. As long as you’re not coping settings across your primary and holiday grids, you can freely work within these two grids and it won’t affect your “on air” schedule.

John Bonou presented the concept of scheduling based on a single Category Group / Category and then defining Station Content, like Primary, Secondary, Fill, etc… Either create rotations based on natural projected turnovers or implement Content Goals by going to Goals | Content. John recommended users work off a desired percentage with some flexibility for GSelector to properly find and schedule elements. For example, John wanted a turnover of roughly 30% of his hourly clocks to include Holiday Primary Content. So within the Goals | Content tab, he defined a Content Goal with a percentage minimum of 20% and a maximum of 40%. Don’t forget to add the Station Content Goal into the Holiday Priority List!

Continuing with additional scheduling tips and tricks, we migrated to holiday Priority List best practices. First, we broke down the difference between Title & Song Minimum Separation. Think of Song as, “Boyz II Men – Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” versus all Titles “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.” With the amount of similar holiday music, it’s always good to use a duplicated Priority List and identify “holiday rotations” versus “regular rotations.” John Bonou even offered the concept of packeting titles together, maintaining the traditional Song Minimum Separation rules and then creating a sub-packet rotation based on the desired packet turnovers. Did you know that GSelector can even match elements with the same Title and Artist? You can adjust that setting by going to Setup | Station | Features | Attributes and Song Identification.

Finally, if you’re not switching to holiday music this season, but would like some relief by mass scheduling stock programming, like a Year End Countdown, A-Z long form programming or any other type of Theme, remember to again – work smarter, not harder. Isolate elements via the Library | Browse and then utilize the Browse List to drag and drop desired elements. You can filter by attributes on the left and/or single click on the Library Browse’s column header to sort A-Z. If you want to do a year end countdown, pending your History settings, add an attribute field like Total Spins, sort A-Z and then drag and drop them over to the Browse List.

If you’re looking to schedule and then repeat a long form piece of programming, we recommend embracing the Copy Schedule option from Scheduler | Copy Schedule. You just choose the source and target station and yes, they can be the same station. Repeat this process for all of the desired times you wish to repeat/duplicate your schedule. If you have questions on which option to use, don’t forget about F1 for the dynamic help. If you’re planning on returning to your original programming halfway through the day, users can easily duplicate a third grid with a split schedule or simply define a single grid for the transition day and use the Clock Override, Clocks | Assignment | Overrides, to override the hour(s) by a clock.

We’re looking for GSelector 4.9.0 and Zetta 5.20.1 Beta users right now! If you’re interested in getting the latest and greatest from RCS, reach out to your local RCS office and let them know you would like to become a Beta power user. We have more sessions on the way as we continue to broadcast live every Thursday at 11am ET. Don’t forget to follow us on www.Facebook.com/RCSSoundSoftware and RSVP for future RCS Live sessions.

Since its inception over a decade ago, Zetta has always been able to scale with technology and customer workflows. With the latest Zetta 5.20.1 version, RCS is continuing to expand on Zetta’s flexibility, performance, UI experience and more. As we get closer to Zetta 5.20.1’s official release, we thought it was time to breakdown some of Zetta 5.20.1’s new features.

Starting with the layout and design, users can now choose between the traditional Zetta “Metal” skin or switch to the new Dark Mode theme. Users will also notice Zetta is more crisp and the colors are more vibrant, as we have also enhanced Zetta’s UI experience. And don’t forget, all of the colors throughout Zetta can be customized. Users will also notice slight enhancements to modules like the Hot Keys, in which Zetta can now display a visual action when a user triggers a hot key.

Aside from the reorganized Modify Column | Add or Remove metadata, we also introduced the concept of Server-side vs. Client side Library search. Simply put, Server-side search allows a user to search an entire library without having to load each individual asset. So if your library has a large number of elements, Zetta will save the resources from having to load every asset, offering better performance, and in addition, the user won’t have to scroll through the library to find their desired asset. Instead, users can now search from either the Title or Artist field and treat their Library module as a search engine. Administrators also have the option to enable a Server-side vs. Client side toggle setting so that within the Library module, users can switch between the two search types.

Moving onto the Multi-Track Editor, users can now enable a “snap” when working with two wav files. Pending on the defined snap settings, while working within the Multi-Track Editor, or MTE, automatic snap is a timing saving user feature that quickly can combine two assets so they play as one continuous file. Users can also add or remove Clips, as well as labeling each Clip so that they can now be dragged and dropped throughout Zetta, maintaining the same name. In the past, users could highlight a section and then drag and drop the highlight to create a Quick Record element. With Clips, it’s the same behavior, but now users have a list that is saved within the Clips window and when they are dragged and dropped over, Clips will respect the defined custom name.

Switching gears to Zetta2GO, off the bat, users will see the new Dark Theme enabled by default, as well as the new enhanced UI experience. We’ve added a couple new layouts to choose from, including three module layouts, but one of the biggest enhancements is the ability to now switch between modules, removing the “Edit Layout” function. Now, users can simply click on the module header on the top left of each module and toggle to the next desired module. There’s also new Zetta2GO Hot Key features, like Enable Hooks.

Finally, we demonstrated how users can log into the new Zetta Cloud Based Disaster Recovery and voice track, which automatically will land in the corresponding Zetta site. For example, if you were in a talent scheduling conflict, users can bypass a VPN and log straight into their Zetta Cloud Based Disaster Recovery instance, voice track, save and as long as you record over an Empty Voice Track, that voice track will update back in the studio. All of this is done automatically via Site Replication.

We’re looking for Zetta 5.20.1 Beta users right now! If you’re interested in getting the latest and greatest from RCS, reach out to your local RCS office and let them know you would like to become a Beta power user. We have more sessions on the way as we continue to broadcast live every Thursday at 11am ET. Don’t forget to follow us on www.Facebook.com/RCSSoundSoftware and RSVP for future RCS Live sessions.

New version. New features. Same old reliable GSelector. With the pending release of GSelector 4.9.0, John Bonou, Asst. GSelector Product Manager, joined us to breakdown the new GSelector Clock feature in which users can define any quantity of clocks – from one minute to 24 hours.

Starting with the setup, the new GSelector Clock feature doesn’t have to be enabled unless you would like it to. Even enabled, just because you have the option to create minute long clocks, doesn’t mean you’re obligated to.

Once enabled, you’ll notice the new Clocks interface, found in the same location: Clocks | Assignment | Grids | Definition, only it will have a nice cosmetic facelift. Think of the new Clocks feature as an “in addition” to existing Clock workflows. So the usual Windows keyboard shortcuts or the right-click Assign Clocks will continue to operate as normal. However, now, users can drag and drop clocks and you’ll notice there is a gear icon that will allow you to control the Clocks display. For example, if you find yourself working within a minute by minute clock format, then you would switch from the 60-minute clock display to perhaps 15 minutes or less. User’s choice!

Before, users would create a clock that was essentially split between two forms of content. There are lots of examples, but we focused on the pre-Morning Show clock. Let’s say your Morning Show has a “Best of” from 5:30am – 6:00am. Currently, you would create one single clock and then essentially split it – 30 minutes of content and then 30 minutes of “Best Of.” With the new Clocks feature, you can continue the existing “Overnight” clock from 5:00am – 5:30am and then have a single 30 minute “Best Of” Clock that would air Monday thru Friday at 5:30am – 6:00am. Same applies for a “Top 5 at 5,” Sunday morning PSA or as Henrik mentioned in the comments, a 15 minute reoccurring “Top of the Hour News.” If you reverse that, let’s say you have a four-hour podcast show or longer form content, users can now schedule a single multiple hour clock. So a single clock from 8am to 12pm.

A couple human scheduling points to make and we’ll use extremes to properly identify these examples. If you schedule a 24-hour clock with only an hour worth of music, then GSelector will do EXACTLY what you tell it to – one hour of content for a 24 hour block. Note that you cannot carry clocks over days, IE: A 28 hour clock that spans Monday over into Tuesday. However, if you do schedule a half hour clock and don’t finish that hour with an additional half hour clock, when you save or exit the Definition tab, GSelector will prompt you with an error that you need to fill the empty clock positions.

Along with the minute clock breakdown, we’ve also added a Song & Link override option. So if you wanted to essentially ignore a daypart Goal/Rule Priority List, you could, as John detailed, create a “Dummy” daypart with no goals or rules and then using the Clock Override option, use another defined Priority List for your Songs or Links or both.

Keep an eye on our Facebook page, www.Facebook.com/RCSSoundSoftware , for upcoming RCS Live Events, including Zetta 5.20.1 New Features, More Efficient Holiday Scheduling with GSelector and more! We’ll see you next and every Thursday 11am ET for another episode of RCS Live!

Despite COVID, it’s business as usual for RCS and we continue to install all of our products all across the world. We thought it was time for an onboarding refresher to break down all of the steps on how we help you install and configure your RCS system. For this session, we were joined by Brian Willard, Field Technician Services Director, and Adrian Guanipa, GSelector Support Lead, to go through each product and how we guide you through the onboarding process.

The most important part of any install and configuration is knowing all of the details. That’s why Brian and Adrian have complied a checklist of every small detail that you may have missed. Let’s be honest, you’re operating your station(s) AND learning a new piece of software. That is a lot to juggle for you and your staff. By taking point, let us help you with the process. Throughout this RCS Live, we joke that we’ll “hound you for information” and that’s because we want to make sure everything is installed the way YOU need it to be. So as the first major step in the onboarding process, we’ll be asking you a lot of questions to make sure we know the answers and understand your specific workflows. Of course, if you’re installing Zetta, most likely you’ve already worked out the major details between Sales and Brian himself.

If your onboarding consists of Zetta and GSelector integration, we prefer to space out training sessions for you and your team so that we don’t overwhelm users. Usually, we schedule the GSelector training two weeks before the Zetta installation. Every new GSelector client will receive three one-hour training sessions and two half hour follow up sessions. If you’re upgrading to Zetta, then you’ve already purchased Field Technician Service time, in which our FTS team will conduct multiple training sessions for you and your team. We like to break these up between departments, so there might be a programming session one morning, traffic in the afternoon, and when we switch over to live Zetta, we’ll be on hand to answer any questions during the morning show. Both the GSelector server installation and the onboarding training can be scheduled online via one of our RCS onboarding portals. If you’re an existing RCS customer, it’s the same installation portal if you’re looking to schedule an upgrade your current system.

In regards to metadata, we have seen all types of ways users have created a database. Simply put, we’ll convert whatever metadata or audio you give us. In regards to GSelector, we can import or build any database as long as we know where to include the data. Most users define an Excel column header with their desired attribute, which we can convert so that GSelector can correctly import it.

At the end of the day, we have thousands of clients who have converted their database and we have seen it all. Rest assured, we’ll be available to not only ease your mind, but provide any helpful tips or guidance along the way. And if you do have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to your onboarding contact. Finally, we’re also very flexible and understanding in case life throws you and your team any curveballs during the onboarding process. Again, your onboarding contact is here to help guide you, so don’t hesitate to contact them. Also note, if you would like a copy of any of the documents reviewed in this video, please reach out to your local RCS Sales Representative and we’ll forward them along.

Here at RCS, we are excited for our upcoming products releases, including Zetta 5.20.1 and GSelector 4.9.0. Expect RCS Live sessions in the upcoming weeks, in which we’ll break down each product’s new features. We’re also planning on demonstrating Zetta Site Replication vs. Z-Casting, Zetta Hot Sparing, and of course, more GSelector scheduling tips and tricks. We’ll be posting Facebook events to RSVP and set reminders. Make sure you follow us on www.Facebook.com/RCSSoundSoftware and if you have questions you want answered, let us know and we’ll cover them every Thursday at 11am ET.