What's New in the StationPlaylist Scripts

Copyright 2022, Hartgen Consultancy

If you wish to learn how to use the StationPlaylist products in combination with JAWS, please Purchase our comprehensive audio tutorial for beginners!

You may also like the StationPlaylist Workshop for more advanced use
You may also like our comprehensive tutorial for voice tracking.
This is ideal for those people who do not wish to invest in the entire suite of StationPlaylist products or even part of it.

We also offer the following:
Another Hour of Music Power: New in StationPlaylist V5.5.

The StationPlaylist Workshop 2021!

Every Radio Presenter's Essential Companion!

Changes in Version 6.0.

In order for some functions of the scripts to work correctly, it is necessary to make some changes within StationPlaylist Studio itself.

1. Launch StationPlaylist Studio, usually from the Shortcut on the Windows Desktop.
2. Press Control+O for "Options".
3. You should now be focused on the "User" Tabbed Page.
4. Press the Tab key repeatedly until you reach a Check box for "Accessibility Mode".
5. Press the Space Bar to check the box.
6. Press the Tab key to reach the "Background Colour" Button and press the Space Bar to activate it.
7. This is an inaccessible Dialog Box so please be careful. Press the Right Arrow key at least eight times. The rows in this table do not wrap, so you can press the key more times if you need to.
8. Press the Space Bar.
9. Press the Enter key which will set the background colour to White instead of Black.
10. Press Escape to close the "Options" Dialog Box.
11. Press ALT+Control+X to close down StationPlaylist Studio.
12. Start the StationPlaylist Studio program again in the usual way.

New in Recent Builds.

Compatibility with JAWS 2023 particularly in respect of StationPlaylist Studio which required considerable reworking in some areas.

Small changes particularly to keyboard processing in the Insert Tracks dialog and with cart keys.

New in Build 2.

When in the Track Tool, you can now press the Left and Right Arrow keys to move through the audio being played.

When in the Track Tool, Item Properties, pressing Left and Right Arrow will automatically select the Tabbed Page.

Within the Track Tool, in an Edit Combo Box such as to set the Intro time, pressing Left and Right Arrow will cause JAWS to announce the newly selected character.

If in a Playlist in StationPlaylist Studio, and a Breaknote is encountered, JAWS no longer says "File Unavailable".

Added details of how to change colours to the scripts documentation.

When in the Edit Cart window, press:
ALT+Control+A for Add File.
ALT+Control+V for Remove All Files.
ALT+Control+O for OK and Finish.
ALT+Control+F8 for list of all controls in the dialog. Arrow down to a control to be focused and press Enter to move to it.

Made very significant changes to the scripts to ensure that unwanted text is not spoken when navigating playlists, such as the scheduled time of a playing item.

When using Left and Right Arrow keys to move through tabbed pages, such as those to manipulate sound devices and item properties, the page is automatically selected as it is with previous versions. This is not standard Studio V6 behaviour.

When using the Up and Down Arrow keys in the Genre field of the Insert Tracks dialog, the focused genre should be spoken and sent to Braille.

When disconnecting an encoder from the SPL encoder using the Context Menu, the SPL Recorder should stop recording if it was doing so.

When within the SPL Encoder, the keystroke function key F7 is a toggle action, and is designed to perform an extra check to ensure that the encoder is connected to the server. This option is disabled by default. It is only implemented for those people who attempt to connect to the server while another user is broadcasting. Most users will not wish to change this setting.

Changes in Version 5.5.

New in Recent Builds.

Field labels are now correctly identified in the SPL encoder Configuration dialog.

You should be able to name more than 9 encoders successfully in the SPL encoder.

When tabbing to the Genre edit field in the Insert Track dialog of SPL, JAWS should now speak anything which is present there, in point of fact the name of the genre if it exists.

With the Sam encoders:
Activate the context menu and select New to create a new encoder.
When the new encoder screen is revealed, press Enter. An MP3 encoder should be created without error. You should then be able to change the necessary parameters.

Fixed a problem where pressing the Space Bar within the Insert Track dialog was not saying the word "Space".

A new option has been added to the Copy Playlist Dialog, ALT+Control+Windows+C. This is to copy the track artist and title, separated by a dash character. The list does not include spot items, only manually added tracks.

Added the keystroke, ALT+Windows+Semicolon, so as to output the current cell in the playlist table, such as the album title.

If a file has been added to a playlist, and it is subsequently removed from the computer or access point, JAWS reports if the file is no longer available.

Further tweaks to Quick Navigation mode.

Fixed a problem when using Enhanced Arrow key mode, not available using Quick Navigation. When pressing the Down Arrow key in environments such as the Insert Track dialog, it was not possible to move through the Radio Buttons.

Speech can now be muted or unmuted from any application by pressing Insert+Space followed by ALT+S.

When in the VT Recorder for remote voice-tracking, pressing ALT+Windows+Enter will stop and fade in Studio if it is playing and will start the next item.

Quick Navigation Mode.

You may have noticed when browsing the playlist that the response time is reasonably slow, from the time you strike the Up or Down Arrow key to the response given by JAWS. This applies to whichever screen-reader is being used. This is because the track or item needs to be highlighted prior to JAWS announcing the information.

However, this is not ideal for screen-reader users and is not the way in which blind people want to work. A preferable method of working would be to "skim" down the items in a playlist so as to review what is present, especially in a busy radio show where you may wish to move items around quickly. Meet Quick Navigation mode.

To enable Quick Navigation mode, press Insert+Z. This has five states:

1. Speak Title, Artist and Length. With this mode enabled, moving through the playlist will cause JAWS to speak the item artist, title and duration.
2. Artist and Title Only. Activating this mode causes only the item artist and title to be spoken.
3. Speak Title, Artist, Length and Intro. With this mode enabled, moving through the playlist will cause JAWS to speak the item artist, title, duration and introduction value if it exists.
4. Speak Title, Artist and Intro. With this mode enabled, moving through the playlist will cause JAWS to speak the item artist, title and introduction value if it exists.
5. Default behaviour described in the User Documentation and which has been in place since 2009.

The concept is that you press Insert+Z to bring into view a List Box of all the items discussed above. Each one has a number associated with it, so you can now either press the number associated with the item you prefer, or press Down Arrow to reach the one required. Press Enter to select an item. The mode will stay in place even if you restart JAWS.

Now, quickly press the Up or Down Arrow keys to move through the playlist. You will notice that the response time is much faster. In most cases, once you have set the relevant mode with Insert+Z, you will forget it.

We need to do a little explaining as to what happens when one of the Quick Navigation modes are enabled.

The moment a playlist is loaded, or it regains focus, JAWS takes a snapshot of the playlist contents. When you move through the playlist with the Up and Down Arrow keys, the screen-reader will announce the previous or next item. The focus at that point has not moved to the item itself. You are only hearing about it, (or reading it in Braille), which enables you to move up or down quickly. If you stop moving for a short period of time, (the default value is three seconds), the item in the playlist which has been spoken is focused within Studio, which means you can perform any action on it, such as playing it by pressing Enter, copying it to the clipboard with Control+C, etc.

We have tried to anticipate anyone who is slightly impatient and wishes to perform an action on an item without waiting for a short time for it to gain focus. If for example you hear an item's title and do not wait, but you press Control+C instead, we will automatically force the focus to that item and carry out the copy action. Playing an item has special significance. If you arrow to an item and press Enter without waiting the required three seconds, Studio will play out the item almost instantaneously.

So what happens if you would prefer that Studio focuses to the spoken item a little more quickly? You change the keyboard timer.

The keyboard timer should only need changing in exceptional circumstances or if you are unable to use certain keyboard actions quickly. To change the timer, press Insert+Z, and select the sixth item in the list which is to adjust the Keyboard Timer. Press Enter on this item, and change the value as directed on screen. The minimum value is 0.5 representing half a second. Type in a new value and press Enter to save. You may like to discuss it with us first prior to trying this.

There is special Braille support which has been added for Quick Navigation mode. As you skim down the playlist, you will find that the display changes so as to reflect the newly spoken item. If it is not the one you want, you can skim to the next one.

If you have attached a Sticky Note (or request notification) to the item, you will see that in Braille as you always have.

There is one other aspect of this you will notice. As you move through the playlist, by default some items will be announced in a lower pitched tone, using the special Checked Items Voice. When you hear an item announced in this way, it means that it is checked. JAWS is not going to say the words "Checked" or "Unchecked" for purposes of speed. Checked items will be announced in a different tone to the regular PC Cursor voice and will have the usual sign displayed in Braille to denote the checked status.

It is more than possible that you will wish to change the pitch of the Checked Items voice.

1. Press the StationPlaylist Key followed by either Up Arrow or Down Arrow.
2. Release the Arrow key you have pressed.
3. Now, use the Up or Down Arrow keys by themselves. JAWS will announce a message using the newly selected pitch.
4. Note that a pitch of zero has special significance. This is the pitch of the PC cursor voice. There will be little point in announcing the checked item status using this pitch since you would be unable to differentiate between an item which was checked and one which is not. To that end, if the value is zero, you will hear a sound instead. The design of this sound is such that it will not intrude upon the first word of the newly selected artist.
5. When you have arrived at the pitch or sound value required, press Escape to save the setting.

In addition to our Find facility discussed below, we are trying to build tools which greatly assist a screen-reader user to quickly navigate playlists and Quick Navigation mode is one such tool.

Viewing the Content of a Playlist.

You may wish to examine the content of a playlist within a conventional List Box. This could be for two reasons:

• You can examine the playlist without disturbing the visual focus.
• You can quickly locate an item by using first letter navigation rather than using the Up or Down Arrow keys. For example, if you wish to find a track by Phil Collins which you know is in your playlist, type the letters PH quickly. When the item is located, press Enter to set focus to it.

To bring the content of the currently loaded playlist into a List Box, press the StationPlaylist Key followed by Control+B, for Build List.

Selecting and Deleting Items.

StationPlaylist provides standard Windows tools to select, copy, cut and paste items. When you arrow to an item, it is automatically selected, which means you can perform any of the above actions on it. You can also press Shift+Down Arrow so as to highlight items in a continuous range. Shift+Down Arrow is not available using Quick Navigation mode.

The JAWS scripts however provide an alternative method for selecting items:

1. Find an item you wish to select, such as item 1 in the playlist.
2. Press the comma key. JAWS announces: "Added to List".
3. Repeat as necessary until all the items required for manipulation are selected.
4. Should you wish to hear the items which have been selected, press the forward slash key, located to the right of full-stop or period.
5. When you have marked all the items for selection, press the full-stop or period key. All the items in your marked list are then selected, whereupon you can delete, cut or copy them.

Note that the keys comma, full-stop or period, and the forward slash are in a convenient line on the bottom row of the keyboard.

StationPlaylist Studio contains a keystroke, Shift+Delete, so as to delete the selected item (or any one of a number of items which have been selected). Within the JAWS scripts, pressing the Delete key by itself will now also deleted an individual item or selected items. You will also find, whichever keystroke you press, the response time between you pressing the key to delete an item and the newly focused one being spoken is far quicker.

Finding a Track in a Playlist

You are likely to come across situations where you want to find if you have a music track, spot group or other item included within a Playlist. For example, you may have a music track further down the Playlist from the item you are currently playing and wish to move it up the list.

You can use the Find facility in order to do this. Press the StationPlaylist key then F to search from the top of the playlist or the StationPlaylist Key then Control+F to search backward from the end of the playlist. A Dialog Box will appear asking you for the text you wish to search for. It is suggested that a track title or artist name should be typed and then the Enter key should be pressed to carry out the search. Capitalisation is not important here. The first item matching the search criteria will be located within a second or two.

If the item is found, focus will be set to it. If it is not located, JAWS will advise you of this.

An example of how you may use this feature would be as follows:

1. Press the StationPlaylist key then F.
2. Type the title of a song you know to be in the Playlist into the Edit Field.
3. Press Enter.
4. The track is located. Press Control+X to cut it to the Windows clipboard.
5. Press the Home key to move focus to the track which is currently playing.
6. Press Down Arrow to highlight the next track in the Playlist.
7. Press Control+V to paste the track into the Playlist. This will ensure that the item is next to be played.

In addition, pressing the StationPlaylist Key then F3 will find the next occurrence of the item previously searched for. So if you searched for the Beatles, and the first item located was not correct, press the StationPlaylist Key then F3 to find the next occurrence. Press the StationPlaylist Key then Shift+F3 to "find again" in the reverse direction.

Note that the Find facility is very flexible and can even include time values. If you know that you have a song in the playlist which is 3 minutes and 40 seconds, type "03:40" into the Edit Field and press Enter.

There are other keystrokes you can use so as to move to important components of your playlist. Press the StationPlaylist Key then:

• Windows+1 moves to the next spot.
• Windows+Shift+1 moves to the prior spot.
• Windows+2 moves to the next voice-track.
• Windows+Shift+2 moves to the prior voice-track.
• Windows+3 moves to the next checked item.
• Windows+Shift+3 moves to the prior checked item.
• Windows+6 moves to the last spot.
• Windows+7 moves to the last voice-track.
• Windows+8 moves to the last checked item.

Using the VT Recorder.

As mentioned in the above section, when you press Control+R, you will be located in the VT Recorder. The following paragraphs describe the special JAWS functionality for use in this recorder.

Pressing Control+R, or activating "Record Voice Track" from the Context Menu, launches the VT Recorder. This is a relatively new recorder offering a variety of functionality for recording voice breaks. Please refer to our training course for StationPlaylist Studio 5.20 for details or our training course on the use of voice-tracking. However in summary, press Enter to start or stop a recording, or to be guided through the creation of a voice-track.

To set focus to the recorder from within any other application, press the Insert Key with the StationPlaylist Key, followed by R.

The first decision to be taken is whether you would like any additional audio or Braille-based feedback as you are creating your voice-tracks. Our view is that unless you really need it, you disable all such functionality. It can be extremely distracting especially if you are using a Braille display as notes cannot be referred to, and even the audio beep to warn of an introduction's potential ending can spoil the flow of speech delivery.

To enable or disable such items, from within the recorder press Control+Shift+M for menu. As you move through the items in this menu, JAWS will speak or Braille the information together with the setting currently selected, for example, "Countdown Timer. Currently Enabled". Press the Space Bar to enable or disable an item and press Enter to save. The settings are retained until you change them, even if JAWS is restarted.

The available options in this menu are:

• Countdown Timer. Displays in Braille the number of seconds remaining of the outgoing item.
• Elapsed Recording. Displays the elapsed recording time of the voice-track, which could be quite useful if you need to ensure your voice-track can be accommodated within a specific time-frame.
• Intro Notification. Assuming an introduction has been marked as discussed elsewhere in this document, the remaining time of the introduction will be displayed in Braille.
• Intro Beep. Will play a warning tone at the desired interval when the introduction of the incoming song is about to end.
• Number of Seconds for Intro Beep Sound. When this is selected, you will be asked to enter a value between 1 and 9 to represent the number of seconds for the warning of the end of the introduction. So if you would like a 4 second warning before the vocals begin, that is what you will receive. Type it in and press Enter.

It is important to stress that all options are independent of each other. For example, if you selected to enable the countdown timer, the recording elapsed time, and the intro countdown time, the following will occur.

The last part of the song will play out, whereupon you would see the countdown timer value. When this is complete, the elapsed recording would be displayed instead. When the next track is started, and if an intro has been marked, the incoming intro countdown timer is displayed.

While inside the recorder, the following additional keystrokes can be used:

• ALT+3: Speaks and Brailles the outgoing and incoming item.
• ALT+4: Brailles the outgoing and incoming item.
• ALT+5: Brailles the incoming item.
• ALT+6: Brailles the outgoing item.
• ALT+7: Speaks the incoming item.
• ALT+8: Speaks the outgoing item.
• Control+Shift+E: Speaks and Brailles the elapsed time of recording.
• Control+Shift+T: Speaks and Brailles the remaining time of the outgoing item.
• Control+Shift+F: Speaks and Brailles the VT offset value.
• Control+Shift+O: Speaks the outro value.
• Control+Shift+I: Speaks and Brailles the intro value.
• Control+1: Selects the No Overlap option.
• Control+2: Selects the Manual Incoming option.
• Control+3: Selects the Manual Outgoing option.
• Control+4: Selects the Manual Outgoing and Manual Incoming Option.
• Control+5: Selects the Automatic option.

Pressing letter C, while in the recorder, will allow you to configure its settings. Of particular importance is the volume slider for the audio output of the voice tracks. It is also possible to apply audio compression to the recordings.

It is also recommended that you review the section preceeding this one relating to attaching request notifications (or sticky notes) to items for which voice-tracks will be created. Of particular importance is the fact that while the note is displayed in the JAWS Virtual Viewer, you can press the Enter key so as to step through the various processes of creating a voice-track. This means that you can refer to your notes on the Braille display if necessary together with starting the incoming item and/or the recorder.

If StationPlaylist Studio is running, and the audio from it is sent to a sound source captured by the VT Recorder, you are able to take advantage of the ability to play carts instantly and/or items within a playlist. This can be very helpful for playing carts or other items into your VT's, thus making the overall audio sound extremely professional. If you are using an audio mixer, it means you can vary the levels of these items as well which is extremely impressive!

While inside the recorder, you can use:

• Carts F1 through to F12.
• Carts 1 through to equals.
• Carts Shift F1 through to Shift F12.
• Carts Shift 1 through to the plus sign.
• Carts Control F1 through to Control F12.
• ALT+Windows+1 through to ALT+Windows+0 to launch the first 10 items in the playlist, with ALT+Windows+1 representing the first item. ALT+Windows+Dash will stop StationPlaylist Studio playing.

Note also that these keystrokes for interacting with StationPlaylist Studio can be used within the VT Editor. This gives you a chance to rehearse (or check) the keystrokes assigned to ensure that when you are in the recorder the correct item plays out.

Miscellaneous Improvements.

If you focus upon an item in the playlist, and press ALT+Windows+F12, you will hear the time at which the track should be started to ensure the end of it precisely coincides with the top of an hour. This assumes that the song to be played has been scanned or played out in StationPlaylist Studio first because the time value is likely to change if this is not so.

To hear whether the playlist falls short of the expected hour or whether the number of items exceeds it, press ALT+Control+R. This is already part of the speech output for SPL Key then R, however this new keystroke gives a condensed form.

While in the VT Editor, not the Recorder, press Control+Insert+1 through to Control+Insert+6 twice quickly to output the column information to the Virtual Viewer for review. Press Escape to close.

Note that while we have left the keystrokes in place so as to interrogate the EveryHit website, note that this is basic access and we recommend our product The Muze instead.