Setting up Myriad v5/6 for Multi Station Playout

Introduction

With Myriad v5 the ability to play more than one station log inside a single running Myriad instance was introduced to allow customers to use one single Myriad Playout PC to run several separate stations brands in automation at the same time.

Before you start

There are a few requirement to take in to account before trying to use Multi-station mode:

In order to enable Multi-station on Myriad you will need to speak to the Broadcast Radio sales team about getting a new Myriad Playout license for the playout machine which allows for the number of station you would like to run, as well as a Station Enabler code for each station if you do not already have them.

Each station will need it's own audio device to play through. This could be a physical soundcard with enough multi-channel outputs for the number of stations (see broadcastradio.com for recommended soundcards) or a virtual audio device, such as VB Cable or Breakaway Pipeline.  In our examples here we are using a Roland Octa-Capture

We also recommend you have a slightly higher specification PC for Multi-station to allow for the higher CPU usage required to playout, schedule and likely encode more than one log simultaneously. A good rule of thumb is an i5 or i7 CPU with 2 cores per station. So if you are wanting to run 3 stations on single automation PC, a 6 core processor would be the minimum recommended. We also recommend a minimum of 16GB or RAM for these systems

Once you have the license and enabler codes to hand and have installed the required soundcards you should be able follow these steps to get Multi-station running on your automation PC.

Setting up the database for Multi-Station

If you have not already created the additional station(s) in your database, then you will need to add them now and install the Station Enabler codes supplied. 

In most situations, your main existing station will be Station0 in the list of stations and we recommend that you add your new stations as Station1, then Station2 and so on as the prebuilt layouts for Multi Station playout use these numbers. If your stations are already created and are not in this order, don't worry, the layouts can be tweaked.

Configuring the Playout machine

Now we have all the licenses installed and the stations have been create, we can start to configure the Myriad Playout PC to open the required stations and link them to specific sound devices.

You will need to update the Myriad Playout license code with the new license Broadcast Radio sends you to allow that machine to run the Multi-Station mode. This is done in the License Details window found in the Setting menu, Once the license code has authenticated, restart the Myriad Playout software to active the new features

We recommend that you set the default Media Engine of Myriad Playout to a spare audio device that you are not going to use for any Station Playout. In our example setup here we are using a Roland Octa-Capture with 4 stereo channels, but only need 3 stations outputs. This means we can use the 4th output for previews and editing without going through an onair channel. Open the Media Engine Setting window from the Settings menu and set all the output devices to the spare output. you could also reduce the number of players here to 2 as no Station log playout will use these.

Now open the Application Settings window in the Setting menu go to the Options tab. Select the Multi-Station mode option in the top panel and you should see a window appear in the lower panel that shows all of the Stations in the database. Make sure the correct database is opening at startup in the dropdown.

Tick the option to open the stations that you want to run on this machine, then on each one chose the option to use a dedicated engine.

You can now click the cog icon on each to setup the media devices for that station. For most situations you will want use at least 4 players for a Station and set all of them to use the same device on you soundcard. This is our first station, so we are going to choose the first Octo-Capture output. Set the edit and segedit device to be the same as the share engine above so these do not go out onair.

Repeat the same steps for the next station, choosing the next soundcard output for the 4 players and so on. Once you have configured all the station engines, restart Myriad Playout so that it picks up all of these changes.

As playout restarts, change the layout to be the default Multi-Station Layout and you should be able to see each of the stations 3 stations logs in the centre section on tabs and the 3 Dashboards and players on the right.

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