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UI FTP Features

The UI is able to download audio files from ftp sites and convert them according to the criteria you have set up for your Amb-OS file transfers, including tweaking the cartchunk and, if you're converting to wav, the wav options like normalize, etc. A cartchunk is added to the file as it is downloaded from the ftp site. Note that mp3 files are currently just downloaded as-is, but "someday" the UI will be able to convert them to wav.

The FTP features are seen in three windows, the FTP Manage Sites window shown here, the FTP Status window that shows the 'dated' (daily, weekly) transfers, and a NEW Hourly status window that shows hourly transfers.

FTP Manage Sites

Note the NEW Site and list windows, with real columns. And gone is the Edit pgm button as just a single click will now open the pgm for editing.

Start with Add site. Enter the info at the right side and Save. Make up your own Name for the site. Something short.
For an anonymous site, just use anonymous as the user and a blank password. If that doesn't work, use your email as the password, or make one up as long as it has an @ in it.
Start dir Some sites have 'secret' directories, and you have to start in a special folder to get what you want. Eg for the Wallbuilders site you have to start in /radiostation/complete. You can enter that folder here. Otherwise just leave it blank.

NEW 1.31.28 You can access an SFTP site by checking that box as you edit the site.

What i've done in this example is select the reyware-amb SFTP test site and hit Edit site to show what the info looks like. When you select a site, the programs you have set up appear in the Programs window at the bottom of the window.

Also when you've selected a site, you can edit it or Open site (log in), which i've also done. This lets you navigate the site and elect programs you want the UI to transfer.

You can also select pgms to download just once using Save as, which allows you to save an oddball (schedule, pdf, etc) or an individual pgm to your disk. (An audio file will just be saved by this feature. It will not converted or anything else.) A progress bar shows the progress of the download.

With a site open, you can navigate thru the Directories (single-click!) until you get to the files you want.
Click on any filename. the UI will look for a date pattern and fill in the Pattern for you, in this case it finds mm+dd+yy. Modify the Pattern and Path as needed per the table below. Programs to be transfered hourly, eg newscasts, will have a plain name with no date. This is allowed when you pick hourly transfers.

the Path can have the filename Pattern can have
  • yyyy - 4-digit year
  • mm - 2-digit month
  • Mmm - 3-character month name
  • Mmmm - full month name
  • Qqq - quarter (eg 1st 2nd 3rd 4th)
  • Eee - 3-letter spanish month (Ene Feb Mar)
  • Eeee - full spanish month
for example
/RTW25/2013/128/04.April becomes
/RTW25/yyyy/128/mm.Mmmm
  • yyyymmdd
  • mmddyyyy
  • yyyy+mm+dd (the + substitutes for '_' '-' or ' ')
  • yyyy+mmdd
  • yyyy+mm
  • mmddyy
  • yymmdd
  • mm+dd+yyyy
  • mm+dd+yy
  • mmdd
  • mm+dd
  • Mmm+dd (eg Jul 23)
  • Mmm+dd+yyyy (eg Jul 23 2013)
  • Mmmm+dd,+yyyy full month with comma (eg July 23, 2013)
  • Mmmm+dd+yyyy full month (eg July_23_2013)
  • Mmmddyy (eg Jul2313.mp3)
  • yyyyMmmdd (eg 2013Jul23.mp3)
  • M+D+yy variable-length mon, day (eg 7-2-13)
  • ? - single-character wildcard. matches any char
  • * - skip (only one * allowed)
an example
RTWL1281-20130401.mp3 (where the 1281 changes every day) becomes
RTWL*-yyyymmdd.mp3
The Local name is just like your ambos local names with % stuff and path if you want. Fill in the cartchunk info. The UI adds a cartchunk to the ftp files for those systems that rely on them. The transfer routines are also expecting it to be there. In Schedule select how often to download the file, choices are
  • hourly - transfer a program hourly NEW 1.31.28
  • sameday - transfer on the same day (ie no 'correction' for afternoon)
  • daily+2 - transfer 2 days early
  • daily+1 - transfer 1 day early
  • daily - transfer each day
  • Sundays thru Saturdays
Use hourly for programs to be downloaded every hour of the day, eg newscasts. enter only the minutes in the transfer time. The hour will be ignored. Also, :00 minutes is not allowed. It will be changed to :01. Hourly programs have their own Hourly status page.

Use the daily options for 'daily' programs, ie that you will download more than one day each week. If they are scheduled after noon, the daily schedules will look for tomorrow's pgm, with the +1 and +2 looking an extra day out. The daily schedules ignore weekends. On fridays they will look for monday's pgm as 'tomorrow's'.

same day does not do the afternoon correction. It always transfers the pgm for that day.

Use the Sundays - Saturdays options for programs that will be downloaded just once a week.

Enter the time in 24-hr format. If possible, use the same time for all pgms on each site. That way the UI doesn't have to log into the same site so many times.

Select the correct Distributed for days so the UI will know the days to expect each program. ('Distributed' in the screenshot.) This should match the dates in the filenames - the days of the week when the programs are distributed. If you selected one of the daily picks, Mo thru Fr should be selected for you. You can also double-click anywhere between Mo and Fr to select or unselect all the Mo - Fr boxes at once.

Then Save the pgm and go on to the next.
In the screenshot, i have clicked on the gty-intl-%m-%d program in the Programs (bottom) window to show all the data already filled-in. Note: we used to double-click on a program to edit it (or click the Edit button). But there was no need for that. Now a simple single click starts the edit process for a program.

Each time you Save a program the ftp timer will recalculate the next ftp download and your data will be saved. You can close the window without losing any data. However, the Save data button will update your FTP Status windows. You can have the Manage and Status windows open at the same time, and keep them open as you continue to use the UI.

It is suggested that in the Status window you you update a new site "with downloads" to get everything up-to-date. Or just wait for the first timed event.

Finally, you can Export to file to save a text version of your site and program info. You can now save this file anywhere on your disk. You can also Import from file to retrieve data you saved. That's a handy backup, or way to move your data to another computer. This data is also backed up in the weekly ftp back to the Ambassador site. In the Support menu you can also email the ftpexport file to ambos support.

When you import data, it will be added to what is already in your Site manager data. This makes it handy to add new sites to multiple computers. Add a new site to one UI and export it. Copy the info for that site to a new text file and import that file into the other computers.

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