How to Capture Metadata from PlayoutONE into Rocket Broadcaster

Introduction

PlayoutONE by Aiir is professional radio automation software produced in the UK. Rocket Broadcaster is a modern streaming audio encoder often used alongside PlayoutONE for its enhanced connectivity, codec support, and broadcast processor. Rocket Broadcaster can be run on the same PC as PlayoutONE, or on another PC.

In this guide, you'll learn how to configure Rocket Broadcaster Pro to read "Now Playing" metadata that PlayoutONE automatically writes to a text file, so your streams can present accurate song metadata for your listeners.

Prerequisites

  • PlayoutONE 3.0 or greater
  • Rocket Broadcaster Pro 1.3 or greater

Step 1 - Configure PlayoutONE

To configure PlayoutONE to write the current "Now Playing" metadata to a text file on disk:

  1. In PlayoutONE, navigate to Launcher, then Type Manager.
  2. Look for the Billboard column, and check that box in the row for the "Song" type. If there are other audio types you want to show the metadata of in your stream, check the Billboard column for those rows too.
  3. Click Save to apply your changes.
  4. Click Launcher, then Settings, and choose the Billboard tab.
  5. Under the Billboard tab, enable "When receiving stream meta output it to the billboard and simple.txt".
  6. Click Save to apply your changes.

Step 2 - Validate billboard.txt

Next, let's check to make sure our changes from the previous step are working correctly. PlayoutONE should now be writing to a special text file each time a new song plays, so let's verify that.

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:/PlayoutONE/Data/ and look for a file called billboard.txt. If you see this file, open it in Notepad and ensure it contains the current Now Playing metadata. If it does, you can proceed to the next step.

If the file is missing or doesn't contain that metadata, check if PlayoutONE is installed in a different path, or go back to Step 1 and double check each step.

Step 3 - Configure Rocket Broadcaster Pro

To configure Rocket Broadcaster Pro to read the billboard.txt file that PlayoutONE is now creating:

  1. In Rocket Broadcaster, click Broadcast->Metadata Capture at the menu at the top.
  2. Click the Text File tab.
  3. Check "Capture metadata from a text file".
  4. Click the "Browse" button and select the billboard.txt file that PlayoutONE is creating (at C:/PlayoutONE/Data/billboard.txt).
  5. Change the Text File Format to "Two-Line Simple Text"
  6. Click OK to apply those changes.

The metadata from PlayoutONE will start showing up in the main Rocket Broadcaster window. If it doesn't show up, go back to Step 2 and validate that the billboard.txt file contains the metadata for the current song.

Step 4 - Test it

As soon as you complete the Rocket Broadcaster Pro configuration above, you should immediately see metadata from PlayoutONE appear in Rocket Broadcaster under "Now Playing". When PlayoutONE starts playing the next track, you should see this metadata change. The metadata will be automatically sent to your stream(s) as soon as it appears in Rocket Broadcaster.

Troubleshooting

  • If you don't see the metadata update in Rocket Broadcaster, double check that all your settings match this guide.
  • Check the Rocket Broadcaster log file for clues. (Help->View Log...)
  • Manually check the billboard.txt and make sure it contains valid metadata and contains the artist and title on separate lines. If it is blank or the formatting is incorrect, try checking the PlayoutONE configuration.

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