Operating System:

Windows 7 32bit Professional

64bit Operating Systems Currently Not Recommended

Hard Drives:

64K Allocation unit size

NTFS File System

Full Format

Disabled Indexing Service (under disk properties)

Separate hard drives for Audio and System

CPU:

We prefer Genuine Intel (Core 2 Duo,Core I series, or Xeon) CPUs

Drivers:

All latest drivers for motherboard and 3^rd party hardware (Video Card, AudioScience, Sentinel Hardware Key, Measurement Computing)

Memory:

Namebrand

2 gigs and up

Audio Cards:

AudioScience 5xxx or 6xxx series.

Windows:

1.   Notification Area Icons

1.      Check Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar

2.      Click Turn system icons on or off → Action Center = Off

2.      Power Options

1.      Create a power plan

1.      High Performance

2.      Plan Name: BSI

3.      Turn off the display: Never

4.      Put the computer to sleep: Never

5.      Click Create

6.      BSI → Change plan setting → Change advanced power settings.

1.      BSI → Require a password on wakeup → Setting: No.

2.      Hard Disk → Turn off Hard Disk after → Setting: Never.

3.      USB Settings → USB Selective suspend setting → Setting: Disabled.

4.      Power buttons and lid → sleep button action → Setting: Do Nothing.

3.      Region and Language

1.      Formats tab

1.      Short Date: MM/dd/yyyy.

2.      Long Date: MMMM dd, yyyy.

4.      Sound

1.      Playback tab

1.      Select last device of first audio card and click the Set Default button.

2.      Recording tab

1.      Select last device of first audio card and click the Set Default button.

3.      Sounds tab

1.      Sound Scheme: No Sounds.

2.      Deselect Play Windows Startup Sound

4.      Communications tab

1.      When Windows detects communications activity Do Nothing

5.      System

1.      Advanced tab → Startup and Recovery

1.      System Startup → Select Time to display recovery options when needed.

2.      Remote tab → Remote Assistance

1.      Deselect Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer.

6.      Windows Defender

1.      Tools → Options → Administrator → Deselect Use this program.

7.      Windows Firewall

1.      Turn Windows Firewall on or off

1.      Home or work(private) network location settings → Turn off Windows Firewall

2.      Public network location settings → Turn off Windows Firewall

8.  Visual Effects

1.      Control Panel → Performance Information and Tools → Adjust visual effects → Visual Effects tab→ Adjust for Best Performance

2.      Check Smooth Edges for Screen Fonts

9.  Time sync

1.   Control Panel → Date and Time → Internet Time Tab→ UNCHECK Automatically Synchronize with an Internet Time Server.

10. Network (if using network file sharing)

1. Start button → enter Network and Sharing Center in the "Search for programs and files" → click the Network and Sharing Center link at the top → Click Change Advanced Sharing Settings on the left hand side → choose Turn off password protected sharing radio button under Password protected sharing category → click on Save Changes

11. Auto Defrag

1. Start button → enter dfrgui in the "Search for programs and files" → click the dfrgui.exe link at the top → Click Configure Schedule → Uncheck Run on a schedule

12. Turn off UAC (only recommended for systems that have yet to be registered)

1. Start button → enter UAC in the "Search for programs and files" → click the Change User Account Control Settings link at the top → Lower bar to Never Notify → Click OK

13. Windows Updates

1. Start button → enter Windows Updates in the "Search for programs and files" → click the Change Settings on the left pane → Set to Notify me but don't automatically download or install them→ Click OK

Logs can be a very general term in the Radio Industry.  When referring to a log, one could be referring to a traffic log, a music log, a merged log, an event log, a reconciled log, a trigger log, or a BSI program log.  As you can imagine, this could get confusing.  In this FAQ, I will give a brief description of each of these types of logs and how they are used within the Simian software.

Traffic Log

Traffic logs are typically created with scheduling software such as Natural Log.  This will be a text file that will contain your traffic scheduling.  This file needs to be imported and most likely merged with a Music Log.  The common extension for this file is “.log”.   The default storage location for traffic logs is C:\BSI32\import.  A common traffic log name is 031512t.log (MMDDYY plus a “t” for traffic).

Music Log

Music logs are typically created with scheduling software such as Natural
Music.  This will be a text file that will contain your music scheduling.  This file needs to be imported and most likely merged with a traffic log. The common extension for this file is “.log”.  The default storage location for music logs is C:\BSI32\import. A common music log name is 031512m.log (MMDDYY plus an “m” for music).

Merged Log

Merged logs are the combination of Music and Traffic logs.  Sometimes these are merged with scheduling software; sometimes these are merged within Simian.  If already merged in scheduling software, import this log.  If not yet merged, import the traffic log and then import the music log.  You will now have a log that contains all of the traffic and music elements, but it will be out of order.  You now need to sort the log by scheduled time.  You can do this by running the SORTLOGBYTIME macro from the event builder or if you frequently use this macro, place it in a HOTKEY.

BSI Program Log

BSI Program logs are what are created when you save a log in Simian (done after importing and merging).  This is the final and complete log.  This file needs to be opened manually or by using the CHAIN macro.  The extension for this file is “.bsi”.  The default storage location for BSI program logs is: C:\BSI32\Logs.  Common BSI program logs names are 031512.bsi (MMDDYY) and mon.bsi (first 3 letters of day of the week).

Event Log

Event logs are logs of what has been played within Simian.  These logs are sorted by date (1 per day) and can be accessed by going to the Log menu, choosing “Event Logs”, and then selecting the date of the log you want to view.  Event logging must be enabled.  The button at the bottom of the Simian screen should say “Event Log is ON.”  The contents of the Event log are (in order): Status|Actual Time|Deck Number|Scheduled Time|Filename|Category|Artist|Deck Number|Storage Path|.

The extension for this file is “.lst” and the default storage location of these files is: C:\BSI32\EventLogs.

Reconciled Log

Reconciling logs occurs outside of Simian usually with scheduling software.  Simian event logs are imported into scheduling software and used to compare what played in Simian to what was scheduled within the scheduling software.

Trigger Log

On newer versions of Simian, there is an option to “Generate Trigger Log” under Tools<Hardware Options<Hardware Tab.  This log will keep track of what triggers you receive and when. The contents of the Trigger log are (in order): Trigger Time|Trigger Event|Trigger Number.

The extension for this file is “.txt” and the default storage location of these files is: C:\BSI32\Trigger Logs.

Your audio database may be corrupt due to a short AutoRefresh interval or punctuation in
filenames (especially apostrophes).

Try rebuilding your audio database. To do this, shutdown Simian, go to C:\BSI32\ and
delete the audio.mdb file. Restart Simian. The audio database file will automatically
rebuild. This will help prevent audio database corruption.

To prevent future database corruption, ensure that Auto-refresh is disabled in SoundHound if you are using local paths. When not in manual mode, Simian already refreshes when changes are made to the folders it is referencing with its default settings (shown in the below two images).

You can set SoundHound to refresh when certain changes are made by setting the
notification filter. For instance, this is handy if you want SoundHound to refresh when a file is modified.

If you need to delete punctuation from filenames, BSI provides a free utility (BSI File
Cleaner) to cleanup your files here: http://support.bsiusa.com/freeutilities.php

]]> http://support.bsiusa.com/faq/index.php?action=artikel&cat=10&id=29&artlang=en Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:37:46 GMT