Scheduling presentation slides for television

[bjhawkins]

I operate a broadcast station that is running open office presentation Impress version 2.4 on a Windows operating system in between programs. The presentation loop runs continuously and contains community messages, station ID, program schedule, and sponsorship identification slides. When a program like Sesame Street ends, the switch goes to this loop and the loop is broadcast until the next program begins. The problem is that I cannot control which slide comes up first in the loop. I would like to be able to place my Station ID right before the program begins (ex: 13:59:55) and have it run until the program begins (ex:14:00:00). This placement of a single slide would happen multiple times per day. For example, the loop would run from 13:56:46 to 13:59:55, then the Station ID would run for 5 seconds, then the loop would run continuously until the next Station ID. Is there anyway to do this?

[acknak]

Not in OOo--OOo has no way to synchronize actions to a specific wall time. And I doubt that the slide timing that you can set in OOo is predictable within seconds over a few minutes.

I don't know for sure, but I expect you're going to need an external program that knows the time (or time interval) accurately, and then signals Impress to go to the specific slide you want when you want it there.

If you don't get an answer here, you may want to ask in the Macros and UNO API or the External Programs subforum.

[bjhawkins]

Thanks so much for your reply. What external program would you suggest?

[acknak]

Well, I imagine it would have to be a custom program, but I really don't know enough about controlling OOo externally to say for sure. You may well be able to control it through a simple script that's fired by the system at a specific time. Again, the folks on the programming forums can give you some better suggestions.

Since no one else has jumped in here, I'm going to move the thread over to External Programs.