Needless to say, 2020 has been a crazy year, but it’s also been a year full of helpful tips and tricks with our RCS Live series. For our last video of 2020, we decided to return to our roots and talk about Zetta and GSelector integration. We’ll demonstrate how the process works and review a couple examples of how efficient and powerful their integration can be.
Starting with Zetta, we took a look at the Zetta Startup Manager and specifically the GSelector Services. Similar to the On-Air Sequencer, make a note that only one machine will have these GSelector services running as defined by the Zetta machine in charge of running the process. If it’s stopped, that will also disable the integration. Next, we can establish Zetta and GSelector relationships via Configuration | System | GSelector. You’ll notice there is a very red “…Only under RCS Supervision” in this window and that’s because this isn’t a window users should tweak, rather a “set it and forget it” window that RCS installers will configure. For this exercise, we simply wanted to take a deeper dive into understanding integration and where these settings are located.
From the GSelector perspective, we can also match on which GSelector stations are integrated with Zetta. Users can define relationships and other unique settings via Tools | Interfaces | Zetta. Make a note of the “Treat Asset Deletion from…” as delete or deactivate. You’ll want this setting to be the same on both sides and there’s right or wrong way to utilize this setting. For example, if you find your staff importing lots of audio, much of which will be ignored for future playout, then perhaps Delete would be the best function for you. Whereas, if you’re a heritage station that has plenty of storage space and you’re looking to archive audio, Deactivate would be the better choice. Also don’t forget to set your Hold Categories within GSelector so that when users automatically add an element into the Zetta environment, like an Auto Load, GSelector needs to know where to automatically save that asset.
Next, we went over basic integration practices. Remember, Zetta and GSelector are 100% live integrated, so if you make a change in one, that change is reflected in the other. And with the addition of Zetta2GO and Selector2GO, users can make a change remotely and again, it’s instantly available in both Zetta and GSelector. Although there’s no incorrect way, we recommend that users add audio and metadata in Zetta first because of the audio marks and Station Specific GSelector metadata. If there’s additional scheduling options, they can continue to operate in GSelector. We also demonstrated how to update metadata and adding music from Selector2GO.
Another unique overnight maintenance feature, Configuration | System | Scheduled Maintenance, Zetta also has the ability to request a log from GSelector if it’s missing a log as defined by the Zetta Configuration | Stations | Details | Future Days to Schedule setting. For example, a college of university can leave for summer break and their station will continue to run. There’s live reconciliation, so that if an element is skipped in Zetta, it’s reflected in GSelector and available for future scheduling consideration. When overnight maintenance is triggered and there isn’t a log, Zetta will automatically request a schedule from GSelector, maintaining a “fresh” music log without any programming interruptions.
We’re still looking for GSelector 4.9.0 and Zetta 5.20.1 Beta users and don’t forget to send us your “work from home” photos for some RCS goodies. This will be the last RCS Live of 2020 and although we can’t thank you enough for watching, I think we can all agree, we can’t wait 2021. After the holidays, expect an extensive list of RCS Lives as we’ll continue to broadcast every Thursday at 11am ET. Follow us on www.Facebook.com/RCSSoundSoftware to RSVP for future RCS Live sessions.
From all of us here RCS, a sincere thank you for watching and we wish you and your family a happy and healthy end to your year!
