The un-registered version of OnTheAir (Home) Studio will run in demo mode. Please see below for the limitations.
To 'unlock' the demonstration and make it a full version, you need a registration code. In order to get the code, you will need to print, fill out and fax back to us the Order form (located near the OnTheAir application).
The "Demonstration" version has the following limitations:
- the application will quit after 20 minutes
- the documents can't be saved
- the preferences are not saved
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".pdf" documents
The OnTheAir Studio user's guide, registration form and order forms are ".pdf" documents that can be read with "Adobe Acrobat".
If you don't have this software, you can download a free "Adobe Acrobat Reader" from the adobe web site (http://www.adobe.com).
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IMPORTANT: MacOS 9.1 Compatibility
- in order to continue using the function keys for automatically loading documents, you should DISABLE the "Hot Function Keys" in the Keyboard control panel. Otherwise, MacOS will intercept the function keys and they will not work with OnTheAir.
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Known Issues
- Absolute time is not fully implemented and therefore should behave strangely when using pauses.
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Changes in version 4.7.1
- Another file format "SONS" has been added to the list of the MPEG-supported files.
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Changes in version 4.7
Automatic Restart (full version ONLY)
- In order for OnTheAir Studio to automatically re-open all the documents that were open when it was quit (or crashed), you need to set the "At Startup" option in the Preferences to "Resume Playback". All the documents will be re-opened and playback will be resumed at the beginning of element that was playing when the program was left.
Graphical Adjustment of the Out Point
- When holding the Control (CTRL) key while clicking on a preset button or playlist item, the dialog will now contain an "Adjust" button which will bring another dialog. In this new dialog, it is possible to set the out point while listening to the file. It works exactly like any Quicktime-based application. When you have determined where to set the out point, simply click on "Set Out". THIS FEATURE DOESN'T SUPPORT MPEG-1 LAYER II FILES.
Automated Cross-fades for background music
- A new playback mode has been added for playlists: "Automatic". In this mode, when the audio level drops under a specified limit for at least a second, the next sound file is automatically started. This simplifies greatly the playback of long automated playlists.
Global Playback Settings
- It is now possible to save the playback settings (set by holding the Control key while clicking on a preset button or playlist element) in the sound file itself. These settings will be recalled every time the file is dragged to a new document.
- In order to enable that feature, you need to enable the "Save in Sound file" default value in the Preferences or manually check it when you edit those settings.
- If this option is unchecked in the Playback Settings dialog, then the settings will only be saved in the document, not in the file.
- Since this feature creates a new resource within the audio file, it will NOT work on write-protected volumes like CD-ROM or some servers.
- The rules for applying the playback settings is now as follows:
- if a playlist has its own settings for an item, they will be used (this happens when the playback settings have already
been edited for the item in the playlist.
- if the playlist doesn't "know" the file, it will try to use the settings already in the audio file (if any).
- if everything else fails, the "Use Defaults" checkbox will be checked and default values will be used.
However, it is important to notice that when the "Use Defaults" checkbox is checked, the default values will be looked up dynamically, so if the change in the preferences, all the files will use them. This is different than unchecking the box and leaving default values. Those default values will stay until manually changed file by file.
Possibility to Drag entire folders directly onto Playlists
- It is now possible to drag a folder onto a playlist. The folder will be scanned recursively and every file in it (including those in nested folders) will be added to the playlist. However, since this process is very slow due to the parsing of the audio files, it can take some time. Therefore, we recommend not doing it while on-air.
- You can also drag multiple folders at the same time.
Native MP3 Playback
- MP3 files are now played through the Sound Manager and therefore, since they have a higher priority over other tasks, playback will always be smooth and not interrupted anymore.
- Added support for MPEG-2 audio files (sample rates lower than 32K).
Support of ID3 tags in the Playlists
- The ID3 tags are now read in playlists and track information is now displayed instead of the file name.
Track information includes: track title, artist, album title and year. Only AudioCatalyst-generated files have been tested so far.
- Swedish, Danish and other foreign signs should now be displayed correctly according to ISO-8859-1.
- The Genre field of an ID3 tag (if there is one) is now displayed instead of the Finder label.
- ID3 tags v2.3 are now supported (in addition to v2.2)
- ID3 tags are now supported in MP2 files.
ASCII Import/Export
- The ASCII playlist file format has been changed to allow the addition of an extra first line containing the playlist settings. The settings are tab-delimited (as the rest of the file) and contains these files in that specific order (try exporting a playlist to see an example):
LINE 1:
FIELD 1: loop mode (0 or 1)
FIELD 2: chain mode (0 or 1)
FIELD 3: fade all other playlist when playing ANY item (0 or 1)
FIELD 4: fade all other playlist when in auto-start mode (0 or 1)
FIELD 5: auto-start (0 or 1)
FIELD 6: auto-start must end at a certain time (0 or 1 -- the previous flag must be set if this one is set to 1)
FIELD 7: auto-start time (military format; example: "23:45:00" and NOT "11:45:00 pm")
FIELD 8: automatic mode (0 or 1)
FIELD 9: automatic mode: trigger level (in dB)
FIELD 10: automatic mode: number of 1/10th of a second under the above level before starting the next file
FIELD 11: automatic mode: time before the end of the sound file at which the automatic mode must be enabled
LINES 2 to N+1 (n is the number of elements in the playlist):
See "User's Guide" for details about the file format.
Absolute Time in a Playlist
- When a playlist is set to start at a certain time, this time will be reflected into the tracks starting times in order to provide an "absolute" start time instead of a relative one.
- Added a new "Absolute Time" mode in the Playlists that adjusts all the start times according to the current playback time. This new feature can be enabled through the Preferences. Due to this new setting, the Preferences will be erased and will have to be re-set.
- If a playlist is set to automatically start at a certain time, this time will be reflected in the start time of the individual elements as the ABSOLUTE start time instead of a time relative to the start of the playlist. For instance: 2:04pm instead of 00:04.
Absolute Time Pauses
- When a "Pause Until xx:xx am/pm" is inserted in a playlist, the previous track will be faded out if the time is reached (even if the file is still playing). This is good for instance for top of the hour IDs and commercials. Please note that only the previous file will be faded out, so it should always begin before the scheduled "pause".
AppleScript
- The opening of ASCII playlists is now scriptable through the following syntax:
tell application "OnTheAir Studio"
openASCIIPlaylist "HD:Folder:File.txt"
end tell
- It is also possible to perform the following through AppleScript: Start Playlist, Stop Playlist, Shuffle, Close.
The exact syntax can be found by opening the OnTheAir dictionary with AppleScript Editor.
Various
- When the audio level goes above 80% of the scale, the VU-meters become red.
- The Vu-meters now correctly reflect any modification of the volume in the playback settings.
- The VU-Meters are now logarithmic and their accuracy has been improved.
- ASCII playlists can now be assigned to Function keys (like Presets and Playlists).
- The scrolling of a playlist while dragging has been slowed down to make it usable on fast machines.
- The volume adjustment can now be positive or negative in the range +6 dB to -99 dB (= -infinite).
ATTENTION: because of this you should now enter the - (minus) sign before entering an attenuation value.
- New copy-protection scheme with new serial numbers.
- Added support for '.WAV' and 'PLAY' file types (MP3)
- Playlists now scroll to display the next two items when playing automatically.
- Pre-listening of MPEG Layer II files is now possible
- When hitting the letter 'P' on the keyboard, the playlist will automatically position itself so the currently playing item will be visible. This feature works only with audio files, not QuickTime movies.
- The playback settings now include a "Use Defaults" check box. Its purpose is to enable the use the values in the Preferences instead of the individual values. That way, if the Preferences are changed, the new values are immediately used in the Playback instead of having to update individual files. When this check box is disabled, the behaviour stays the same as before.
- It is now possible to interrupt the opening of a playlist using the "ESC" key.
- The playlist progress bar has been changed to blue instead of red to clearly differentiate it from the current file progress bar.
- Added a "fade other playlists" toggle button on the playlist document. This button, when enabled, will fade out all other playlists when an item of the playlist is manually started.
- Two new drag zones/buttons have been added: one on top of the playlist one at the bottom of it. When clicking on those buttons, the playlist will scroll to the beginning or the end respectively. Another feature of these buttons is that when you drag a file on them, the file will be automatically put at the beginning and end of the playlist respectively.
- It is now possible to double-click an ASCII playlist created by OnTheAir and it will automatically open OnTheAir and load it. The playlist text file must have a type 'TEXT' and creator 'OnTR'. If the document does not have the correct creator, it may be opened either by dragging it onto the OnTheAir application or by choosing the "Import ASCII Playlist" command in the File menu.
- Translucent dragging has been implemented for an improved visual experience.
- Dragging in playlists now indicate where the insertion (or move) will occur. Since this modification involved a lot of code change, please keep us informed on any strange behaviour of the drag & drop interface.
- It is now possible to Export and Import ASCII playlists in the Home Studio version.
- The size limit for playlists is now about 1,300 items, but it can be more if you use the new ASCII import/export format. The reason is that the native format uses resources and a file can only contain a limited number of resources.
- There 2 new menu key equivalents: CMD-I (for Importing) and CMD-E (for exporting) ASCII playlists.
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OnÑtheÑAir Studio User's guide:
A complete user's guide can be downloaded from IBS web site (http://www.ontheairstudio.com).
Please refer to this document in order to have full explanations regarding OnTheAir Studio.
If you prefer a short-cut here follows a very brief explanation of OnTheAir Studio features and also on how to use OnTheAir Studio.
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OnÑtheÑAir Studio Features:
Here are the most important features of OnÑtheÑAir Studio:
- Multi-channel playback: OnÑtheÑAir is capable of playing up to 20 sound files simultaneously. Of course, this is only a theoritical limit; more reasonable approach is to play no more than 2 or 3 sound files at the same time.
- Double output playback for "main" and "pre-listening" outputs.
- Robust, object-oriented architecture: allowing the creation and maintenance of playlists while the Mac is playing sound from the hard drive. It also allows the use of as many playlists as needed on the same screen.
- Automatic cross-fades: while a playlist is running in auto-chain mode, the files are automatically cross-faded during 1 second. In future releases, this value will be modifiable on a file, playlist or global basis.
- Better visual indications: while playing a sequence of sound files in auto-chain mode, you now have 2 progress bars: 1 for the current file and 1 for the whole playlist. A third kind of progress bar (displayed in orange color) is used for sounds pre-listening.
- Dynamic channel allocation: while previous versions of OnÑtheÑAir preloaded some parts of the file for instantaneous playback, the actual version doesn't. Due to the increase in hardware performance; it doesn't make any big difference in terms of starting time (about 1-2 tenths of a second) but offers an unlimited number of open sound files (instead of 20) and is less memory consuming.
- Cut and Paste support: it is possible to copy, cut and paste sound files from different playlists.
- Drag & Drop support: it is possible to import or move sound files directly from the Finder or between playlists.
- Better search engine for moved files.
- Individual cross-fade and level attenuation customization.
- Automatic generation of log files ("as run logs") for invoicing purposes
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How to use OnTheAir?
OnTheAir Studio requires the following elements:
- a PowerMacintosh with at least 64 Mb. of RAM.
- a hard disk with less than 14 ms of access time.
- Mac OS 8.6 is recommended, however previous MacOS version with Sound Manager 3.1 (or above) installed should be sufficient to run OnTheAir Studio.
- some AIFF, AIFC, IMA4, ╡LAW, Sound Designer II, WAVE, MPEG or Quicktime sound files.
- QuickTime 4.0 or later
When starting OnTheAir, you will get an empty preset. The preset can contain up to 24 sound files for immediate access. You may create new presets by selecting the "New Preset" command in the File menu. To assign a sound file to a button, click on the button while depressing the "command" or "option" key. You may also drag a sound file to any button from the Finder.
Depressing the "control" key while clicking on a preset button will display a dialog for setting different fade-out information. The Fade-Out option will determine if the sound file must fade out when another one is started. If you enable the "Fade Out" option, you must also specify the Fade Out duration (in tenths of a second). You may also specify the level attenuation for each individual sound file.
If you want to have sound files play in sequence, you may create a playlist.
To create a new playlist, select the "New Playlist" option in the File menu. When you open a file, its type will be automatically recognized.
When you have an open playlist, to add a sound file in a playlist, select the "Add Soundfile..." command from the "Playlist" menu. You may also drag multiple files from the Finder into the playlist.
When a line is selected in the playlist, the file will be added before the selection. When nothing is selected, it will be added at the end of the list.
You may create as many playlist documents as you need but keep in mind the following rules:
- different elements of the same playlist cannot be played at the same time BUT different elements from different playlists may be played concurrently.
- when using the auto-chain mode (the small button on the right with a chain icon), all the elements of the playlists will play in sequence. There will be a cross-fade of about 1/2 second between them. The total time will reflect the duration of the remaining files to play (from top to bottom).
- when using the loop mode (the small button with a looping icon), the selected sound file will play in loop if the auto-chain mode is disabled and the whole playlist will play in loop if it is enabled. ATTENTION: when playing only 1 sound file in loop, it will NOT be cross-faded with itself. To avoid this problem, put the same sound file twice in the playlist and activate the auto-chain mode.
From version 4.1 OnTheAir is capable of producing 'as-run' log files. If you want to take advantage of this functionality (for billing purposes for instance), you should enable the "Generate Log Files" option in the Preferences dialog. A new "Log Files" folder will be created in the same folder as the application and it will contain a new file for each day of operation.
The log file is a standard ASCII, tab-delimited file containing the date, time, operation and file name.
To startup playback from a playlist, you may either select a sound file and press any of the following keys: space bar, enter or return or you may double-click on the file you want to play.
