If you are using Natural Music 5 and OMT Media Touch 2, as we are at WUMD, you are probably using Log Tools to export your categories, and importing them into NM5. This is fine for NEW cuts, but what about when you delete cuts or they have expired? This is especially important for PSA’s, many of which have expire dates. If you don’t remove them from the NM5 database, NM5 will continue to schedule them, and of course, On Air won’t play them, possibly creating a ‘short’ log and putting On Air off schedule.
I needed an easy way to find these cuts that NM5 should not be scheduling, and NM5CheckOMT was born. It ‘reconciles’ the NM5 database to the OMT database, by category, and creates a report of cuts that should be deleted in NM5.
The checker scans the NM5 database and looks for the listed cut in the OMT database. It then compares the title, artist and album, and reports any significant mismatch. These can be fixed, usually, by re-exporting the ‘cutsforexport’ in OMT, and re-importing into NM5.
It also reports if the cut is not found or is expired in the OMT database. These should be deleted in NM5. I could have it delete these records automatically, but I am not sure of the impact, as the NM5 delete command may also affect other records in the database, such as play history etc, so for now, a listing of what to delete is created, and the user must manually perform the task.
The report also shows if there are MORE cuts in OMT than in NM5, indicating an export/import sequence is needed.
It’ll probably get more advanced features in the future, but for now, knowing exactly which cuts in NM5 to delete has been quite helpful in creating valid scheduled logs.
