View source for Working From Home Resources/WebStudio/Training

1.
Hi! I’m Alex Towells, University Radio York’s Production Manager. If you’re here, that means you want to know how to use our remote broadcasting tool, Webstudio! I’m here to take you through preparing and presenting a show using Webstudio, as well as showing you all the little features our computing team has added to make your life easier.

2.
First things first, there’s a specific web browser we need you to use when you use Webstudio, and that browser is Google Chrome. The reason being it had all the right bells and whistles to make our Computing Team’s lives easier when they were setting it up.

3.
After you’ve got that, you can find Webstudio on our existing backpages, MyRadio. If you’ve forgotten where that is, you can find it on our website here. Once you’ve logged in, Webstudio can be found under My Services, at the bottom of the list of Show Tools. Pick the show you want to work with, and you’re in! 

4.
If you aren’t already WebStudio trained, you’ll be able to access all WebStudio features, but you won’t be able to put yourself on air, so feel free to play around as much as you like.

5.
If you’re familiar with BAPS, our Broadcast Audio Playout System, WebStudio is very similar - you have three columns, representing three players, which can all play any music, jingles, beds and so on. If you’ve already prepared your show in Show Planner, the plan you’ve made will open up when you open that show in Webstudio. You can move things around within a column, and between columns, and you can use the sidebar to search up any songs, jingles, or beds you want to add to your show on the fly. Keep in mind, though, that changes you make in WebStudio won’t be saved - if you reload the tab for any reason, they’ll disappear.

6.
If you make changes in Show Planner while Webstudio is open, and want them to move over to Webstudio, you can find a “Reload Show Plan” button by clicking on the drop-down up here on the show’s time, though that will erase any changes you made in Webstudio. You can also change which show you’re working with by clicking the “switch timeslot” button from the same drop-down, though be aware this will completely reload webstudio. On smaller screens, this top bar will be hidden to save space - to access it, hold your mouse  over the bar labelled “hover for MyRadio Menu”. 

7.
If you want to use music, beds, jingles or entire plans from other show plans, you can do so using the import function. Just select “import”, choose the show, season and episode you want to import from, then you can choose which channel on the original show plan you want to import from. You can select specific items you want to move over, or click “select all” up here. If you want to clear your selections while staying on the import screen, click “select none”. Once you’ve chosen what you want to import, select which channel on your show plan you want to import to. The final step is to reload your show plan to bring up your imports, then you’re done! However, reloading your show plan will discard any changes made, so make sure importing is the first thing you do if you plan on making lots of changes in Webstudio in a session.

8.
To cue something up for playback, just click on it. The grey bar at the bottom will start to fill up, representing loading progress. Depending on the speed of your internet connection it may take a couple of seconds for a song to load, so make sure you’ve got it loaded up before you need it.

9.
To play an item, press the play button, to pause or unpause it click pause, and to stop it completely press the stop button. We also have some keyboard shortcuts set up for you  - Q, W, and E to play, pause, and stop the left channel, R, T, and Y for the middle channel, and U, I, and O for the right channel.

10.
Below the playback controls and the waveform you’ll find the fader. This has three levels - fully off, bed level, which is a suitable level for talking over, and fully on. To fade things in and out, click the relevant buttons, or use the keyboard shortcuts - A, S, and D for off, bed level, and fully on for the left channel, F, G, and H for the middle channel, and J, K, and L for the right.

11.
There are a few buttons above the item name on each channel. If the Auto Advance button is on, after an item finishes the next thing in its channel will be loaded in automatically. If Play on Load is on, an item will start to play immediately after being loaded in, instead of you having to click play. Using the repeat button you can set either one item to repeat over and over again, or the whole channel to repeat, running on top to bottom forever like a little music-y dog chasing its own tail. On smaller screens, these may be hidden to save space. To see them, hover over the bar labelled “channel controls” and they’ll appear. 

12.
You can mark intro, cue and outro points on songs by using the buttons between the waveform and the play/pause buttons on each channel. To set an intro, play the song until the end of the intro, then hit pause and hit the intro button. This will shade the section of the song up to your cursor light blue. Setting cue and outro points works the same way. A Cue point will add a green marker at the new start point, and an outro point will shade the section of the song from the marked point to the end red. Cue points allow you to start the song partway through; to toggle between the cue point and the actual start of the song, press “stop” while the song is loaded, but not playing. These markers can also be deleted - click the delete button to the right of the marker buttons, then click the button labelled for whichever marker you want to delete - for example, to delete an intro, click the delete button then click the intro button again. At the moment, cues work for every item you can load in Webstudio, but intro and outro markers only work for songs, not jingles or beds - keep an eye out though, our computing team is working on getting them to work with everything, so that’ll be coming soon. 

13.
To enable your microphone, click “Options” in the sidebar, and go to the Microphone tab. Click “Find Microphones”, grant permission if Chrome asks for it, and then choose a microphone to work with. To ensure that the levels are set right, speak into the microphone at a normal volume and adjust the blue gain slider until the volume bar is green while you’re speaking and yellow while you’re not - make sure it doesn’t hit the red.

14.
If you need to push the gain very high or very low, double-check the volume settings on your computer, as you may have accidentally turned your microphone’s volume too low or too high on your computer.

15.
To control the volume of your microphone, use the buttons in the sidebar. They work just like the channel faders, except the mic only has two levels - fully on and fully off. The keyboard shortcut to turn it on or off is X.

16.
After all that, you’re about ready to go live! But before you do, please close all programmes on your computer that aren’t Chrome. If you have programmes running in the background, they could overload your system, leading to sound dropouts during your show.

17.
When you’re ready to go live, just click the “Register for Show” button in the top bar of WebStudio. You must register for your show at least a minute before the news is due to start. If you do not register in time, the system will not know you’re there and will not switch to you - you’ll then have to register after the news, as the system is too busy blaring the news to hear you asking to join in. So make sure you do it a couple minutes before you’re due to go on air, to avoid running into issues right at the start.

18.
You should see the text next to it change from “Not Connected” to “Connecting”, and then to “Connected”. Once it says “Connected”, you’re good to go! You aren’t on the air yet though, that’ll happen after the news.

19.
Speaking of the news, you don’t have to worry about doing the news! It’s all handled by our servers. To cue you into your show, you’ll hear a jingle in your headphones at the appropriate time, but you don’t need to fade anything up or down during the news. When the news comes to an end, two minutes past the hour, you’ll hear a countdown and the News Out jingle - once it finishes, you’re good to start your show.

20.
To keep an eye on messages from your listeners, open the Studio Information Service (SIS)   in another tab - go to MyRadio and click Studio Information Service.

21.
At the end of your show, you’ll hear the News In jingle at 15 seconds to the hour. Make sure you’ve finished your show by then, else it’ll cut you off, which makes for a weird listening experience.  Once the news jingle has started to play, you’re safe to close WebStudio. The system will automatically do the news and then switch to either the next show or Jukebox. Congratulations on a (hopefully) successful show!

22.
So remember: your show starts two minutes past the hour, and ends 15 seconds to the hour; for example, if you have a 3pm slot, it’ll start at 15:02 and end at 15:59:45.

23.
If your show is longer than an hour, the news will also automatically happen in the middle of your show, on every hour gap, so make sure you’re aware of that as well. Again, starting at 15 seconds to the hour, and ending at two minutes past the hour.

24.
In a perfect world, this would be all there is to it. But sometimes, things don’t go to plan, and it’s possible that your connection to our servers fails for some reason. You’ll see the text next to the register button on the top change to “Connection lost, reconnecting”. If you see this, WebStudio will try to automatically reconnect and you don’t need to do anything. If it changes to just “Connection lost!”, click the “register for show” button again to reconnect, and go on with your show. If it still doesn’t work, reload the page and double-check your internet connection. If it *still* doesn’t work, it’s time to hit up the Remote Broadcasting channel in Slack and ask for help - hopefully someone will be able to get you up and running. After 30 seconds of silence, the station output will be switched to Jukebox - but if this happens, don’t worry, as soon as you can reconnect you’ll be put right back on air.

25.
That’s just about all you need to know about WebStudio to do your first show. Before you run off and blast the airwaves with your tunes of choice, we recommend you check out the Working From Home Resource Hub on our wiki, ury.org.uk/wiki. It has lots of useful information about how to optimise your setup for going live. Again, if you encounter any issues or need any support in your WebStudio adventures, message #remote-broadcasting in Slack and someone will (hopefully) get you back on track. Keep in touch, and happy broadcasting!