One of the key aims of the product is to make it affordable to all potential users. To this end Autoplus and Westcountry Broadcast provide a scaleable purchase and support package. You can buy the basic package at an extremely competitive rate and then buy future upgrades as they are deemed useful to you. Alternatively you can buy a package with ongoing support and inclusive upgrades. We can tailor a solution to your needs or budget. We offer a special academic pricing structure for all UK schools and colleges for teaching purposes. We will also apply this pricing to selected overseas schools and colleges.

Of all the radio facilities that might benefit from automation, the best example must be hospital radio where 24 hr coverage cannot be realistic due to the very nature of this voluntary service. Equally, last minute emergencies can mean uncovered shows. A PC automation system can save the day, provide infill coverage and help to make the whole operation rather more slick and professional without losing that essential personal nature of the medium.

We understand the financial constraints placed upon hospital radio stations and to this end we have set out to produce a product that all stations can afford.

As well as the software we can build a PC system to your requirements. We can install the software or whole system on site in your studio and of course we can integrate Autoplus as part of a new studio complex. We also provide on-site training for presenters and technical staff at extremely reasonable rates.

The support can be at any level. Autoplus will provide email and telephone support, a dedicated website for Autoplus users which includes latest software upgrades and patches and on site support for those wanting the ultimate level of service.

Also now available is a compact remote keyboard with all the major Autoplus functions on large, convenient buttons meaning you can drive the system without the main keyboard or mouse. Visit the RITA1 page for more info.

Recorder...

The recorder is the screen where audio carts are setup. Here you can title the cart, set intro and outro markers, set a window of dates that the cart is valid (e.g. for trails or commercials), categorise and sub-categorise the audio, launch your choice of audio editor to top and tail and normalise and even set colours or add helper text for the carts.

Cart Players...

There are 5 playback machines that are stacked vertically.  To play audio in a cart player is very easy.  Simply select the cart you wish to play in the library, then drag it into the desired cart machine and press the Play button.  You can also double click the cart into the queue, right click the cart and load it to the top or bottom of the queue or into any available cart player directly. Once loaded, a cart can be ejected or played.  Whilst playing, the cart can be faded and the position changed by drag and drop of the yellow progress bar. (not a good idea if you are on air at the time though!).  Each machine is capable of playing one piece of audio at once.  All five machines can play audio simultaneously, ensuring that even the most demanding segues can be achieved.  Each cart machine can be assigned to a particular output device on a multi-track soundcard and the players can be set in any combination of sequence play.

In version 3.6 cart player size is completely scaleable, the colours of each player can be set individually (complete with a colour gradient from top to bottom) as can the font and font size for each player. This allows to easily associate players with faders on your mixer/console.

Quick Buttons...

Formerly the Button Box Quick buttons are an array of buttons, each programmable to play a cart or fire a command cut. To assign a button to a cart or command cut, you simply drag and drop from the library. To play the cart or fire the command cut, simply press the button.  It will play instantly.  The Button Box has it's own built in player ( two in version 3.6) which can be assigned to any sound card output device available. There are 20 pages of buttons available for each Autoplus user, each page having 20 buttons. Each button can have its font and background colour set individually.

Cart Library...

The Cart Library is where all the recorded audio carts are displayed.  When a cart is recorded it's assigned a category.  This then ensures that you can easily find the audio carts.

There's advanced searching facilities into the Cart Library that enables you to search for a cart by description, artist, cart and length.  The library is fully resizable so you can make it larger or smaller depending on your needs.

Double clicking a cart in the library loads it into the queue.  You can also load carts into the queue by pressing the enter key, right clicking for many other options or by dragging and dropping.

Playlist and Voice Tracker

Use a music or commercial scheduling system?  Autoplus can read in schedules from most scheduling systems.  Autoplus has been developed closely with Music 1 scheduling software in mind and Music 1 has a specific output filter for Autoplus. Every playlist can be edited using simple drag-and-drop functions.  It's also possible to create playlists manually and save them for use at a later time or date, or in another studio. Within the playlist you can drag and drop carts to move them around, you can edit one-off segues and you can add voice tracks. You can even edit the voice track seque with a drag and drop timeline editor!

There are a number of advanced applications and options for Autoplus. These include multi-site networking, presenter cueing for contrib booths, network monitoring (Autoplus HBM) and news playout. We also have the TINGA16 16 in and 16 out i/o card for your Autoplus servers and workstations. For information on any of these please see below or contact us.

Setup and Networking

Autoplus can run in many configurations, the smallest being a stand alone PC, the largest being multiple systems running over a LAN or WAN network.
The standard Windows file system is utilized to ensure compatibility with existing hardware. All machines on the network have access to the centrally stored library of audio and playlists.

Some situations call for advanced system configuration.  One of the increasingly popular setups is to either split your transmission areas for commercial breaks and/or opt into network programs from company HQ (music/chat from a central studio, local adverts/IDs fired).  With Autoplus anything is possible.  Our new Site-Server system lets all our software communicate effectively.

Site Server also lets you share hardware resources between multiple Autoplus systems.  This is particularly useful when you want to control transmission routers or any serial device.  You connect this to our site server and it becomes available for all machines on the network to use (traditionally you'd of needed to purchase a device per machine)

We can also supply our Network-Box software. This can be installed in radio network studios.  Each button on the page can be configured to fire a specific network command, such as playing a local advert break/jingle.

Site Server is highly configurable and we offer custom interfacing with your existing broadcast equipment.  If you're starting from scratch we can recommend and supply various broadcast equipment that is already compatible with our systems.