Producer Client with IFB interrupt/Reporter Client

[mmccarthy]

We would love to see dedicated user clients for Producers and Reporters...

A reporter client would focus on Program Feeds instead of the Party Lines. Reporters generally only want to listen to Program Feeds (used for talent mix-minus and IFB cueing) - so a way to inhibit incoming Direct Talk messages whenever the reporters selected Program Feed has tally would be a really great feature.

A producer client would include the ability to interrupt individual Program Feeds so they can cue individual reporters. What I'm imagining is the current Windows Touch client with a pane on the right-hand side with Talk buttons for each Program Feed. When a Producer presses a Talk button, their mic is routed to the associated Program feed and the associated input audio source on the server is "ducked" or muted so all users listening to that Program Feed hear producer cues or instructions. Additionally an "ALL Feeds" button would be helpful so a Producer would be able to speak to all Program Feed listeners simultaneously.

[ChuckD]

We're not sure why you're not using the ducking feature and assign-to-users feature of the Unity Server. You can go into the Audio Feeds tab in the server and only allow various users to access certain feeds (their own mix-minus for example). Then by implementing the ducking on their Volume pages in the apps, you can duck program feed audio if a director/producer talks to them. Does this not solve this problem? Perhaps we don't understand exactly what you're looking for.

[mmccarthy]

Our audio console only has 6 mix-minus busses and we have many more reporters, therefore we cannot dedicate a separate mix-minus bus for each reporter. As a result, reporters are assigned different mix-minus feeds every live-shot. The existing user client would only work for IFB if we purchased the expanded channels upgrade and used PL channels for IFB instead of program channels - but this still would not accomplish ducking. Direct-Talk for IFB isn't a good option as remote crews usually consist of at least 2 users - you can only Direct-talk to one user at a time, whereas with IFB everyone listening on that channel hears simultaneously. This setup is pretty standard at most TV stations - I'd be happy to provide more details.

[JosephAdams]

You could also route your program feed audio channels into Unity as party line channels, and then set the producer PL’s as priority which will auto duck the other channels the reporters are listening to.

[mmccarthy]

Usually our producers only want to talk to one field-crew at a time. Using the above method, everyone would have to listen to the producer PL, therefore everyone would hear instructions whether they were meant for them or another crew.

[JosephAdams]

Couldn’t you dedicate a PL for producer communication to each field crew and then set the accounts of each person in that particular crew to only have listen access to the producer channel they need?

[mmccarthy]

That could work if the crews and crew members didn't change every show.