Main Page

Welcome to the Rivendell Wiki dedicated to Rivendell

Here you'll find the collected wisdom of our contributors who are involved in broadcasting facilities of all shapes and sizes. Please feel free to contribute from your experience as well.

What is Rivendell?

Rivendell is a full-featured radio automation system targeted for use in professional broadcast environments. It is available under the GNU General Public License. See the Rivendell Project for a more detailed description.

Where is the old Wiki?

You can find an archived copy of the old Wiki on the archive.org website here.

Evaluating Rivendell

If you are new to Rivendell, you might want to start here:

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A Rivendell Broadcast Appliance CD based on the CentOS operating system (64 bit only) can be downloaded from here. This contains Rivendell version 2 and it can be updated on line to the latest version of Rivendell once installed. Rivendell can also be installed using an installation script. Instructions for this can be found here.

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Installation

• Installing Rivendell - How to install Rivendell on various Linux distributions.

Hardware

• Hardware Compatibility Lists - What Soundcards, Switchers and Touchscreen Monitors work with Rivendell
• Computers for Rivendell - What off the shelf machines are people using to run Rivendell

Getting Help

• The mailing lists - Probably the most active area for help and discussion on Rivendell.
• IRC - There is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel setup that various people frequent for helping others with Rivendell. Try this if you need interactive help or troubleshooting.
• Glossary - A glossary of terms you may want to be familiar with in the context of Rivendell.
• Facebook - Request to join if you are a facebook user

Planning

• Planning your installation - A list of things you should consider before installing Rivendell.

Rivendell Setup & Configuration

General

• Post installation configuration tasks - Things you may need to do after installing Rivendell.
• Choosing how to start Rivendell - Describes how to enable multiple Linux user access to Rivendell.
• How to change the text editor that RDLogManager logs and other reports in Rivendell display with to another editor
• How do I make Rivendell play Audio from the "Line In" of the Sound Card on the air?
• rdadmin database creation and other dialog screens - Contains examples of various Rivendell user dialog screens.
• How to import audio from a windows/samba shared folder on Ubuntu - Similar techniques can be used with other distributions.
• How to rename a Rivendell host
• Setting Up A Local Firewall On The Rivendell System
• How to Upgrade Rivendell to version 2 from an earlier version
• How to trigger events from tones on your network
• Streaming from Rivendell
• How to setup an On Screen Keyboard
• How to get now playing information into a text file - You may also need to refer to Rivendell Loadable Module SDK

Configuring Audio Subsystems (ALSA and Jack) to work with Rivendell

• • Configuring Rivendell to work with ALSA
  • ALSA/Audigy Multichannel Setup
  • Configuring Jack for use in Rivendell
  • Fine tuning ALSA for your sound card

Sound card setups

• • Delta 1010LT
  • Audigy Multichannel Setup
  • Sound cards known to work with Rivendell
  • Compiling Audio Science Drivers for older ASI4215, ASI4300 series that are not supported in the newest versions

Setting up a Networked Rivendell System

• • Setting Up the Audio Library On a Different Machine
  • Can I move just my audio carts to another Rivendell System?
  • Setting Up Rivendell for Remote Client Access
  • Setting up a dedicated Rivendell MySQL and audio store server
  • Setting Up a Hot Standby Host (appnote0003)
  • Setup of Hot Standby rdcatchd events
  • Proper MySQL database migration
  • DHCP vs. static IP addresses
  • NFS Server and Client Configuration

Touch screen Setups

• ELO touchscreen setup (debian/KDE)

Switcher Setups

• • Wegener Unity 4000 Satellite Receiver
  • Broadcast Tools SS 8.2
  • Flexroute Digital Receiver
  • Content Depot PRSS
  • Local Audio Adapter

General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) Setups

• • Axia Element board
  • Joystick port as GPI

Rivendell Setup Troubleshooting

• • RDAdmin first start - "Wrong access permissions for accessing mysql!"
  • Test tone will not play after initial setup
  • No Sound output or input after setting up Jack or Audio Science Sound Card when they were not the first card
  • Delayed playback response on click info
  • Garbled audio, alsa error 32: Broken pipe, Xrun errors
  • Ubuntu - No sound/sound card in Rivendell after setup
  • Ubuntu - After installation I get an error "Cannot start Rivendell daemons"
  • KXStudio or Kubuntu (KDE Desktop) - Can't set colors in RDlogmanager events/clocks
  • CHAIN TO at end of log does not always work properly
  • How to fine tune ALSA to minimize the varying delay/gap when segueing(~50-150ms)
  • Error Message - rdfilewrite: unable to open output file
  • Error Message - Cart Creation Failure Unable to create new cart for voice track
  • Gray buttons in RDLogEdit on Windows Rivendell Host
  • I have sound but the levels are very low. How do I increase them?
  • The meters only work if I am logged in as root
  • Importing an audio file gets to about 50%, pauses, and then fails with an unhelpful error
  • My Dropbox doesn't import any of the audio files I put in there
  • Serial port Troubleshooting
  • CD ripping Troubleshooting
  • GPIs and GPOs Troubleshooting

Documentation

User Guides

This section contains User Guides that can be used by end users. Information for system administrators should be placed in other areas of the wiki.

• Rivendell Operations Guide
• How to Schedule Music - on The-Brett-Blog - Excellent Work with Screen Shots!
• Managing Scheduler Rules
• Log Creation and Music Scheduling
• Creating logs from the command line
• Log Transitions
• How to setup a rotation of fill in logs that can be loaded via a macro
• What to use the Aux1 and Aux2 logs for?
• How to use wildcards in the logname, using the RML command LL
• Importing External Logs into Rivendell - Also see Importing External logs into Rivendell - Music and Traffic
• Delayed playback
• Using rdimport to import mp3 files - Also works for wav files.
• Generating Reports
• Recording airchecks with gpi from microphone switch
• How to do network breaks with multiple Rivendell machines
• How do I make Rivendell play Audio from the "Line In" of the Sound Card on the air?
• How to play time tone pips and fade the currently playing audio
• How to handle Daylight Savings Time/Summer Time changes in Rivendell
• How to delete old voice track carts from RDLibrary
• RDCatch - How to setup downloads and dayparting for prerecorded daily programs
• RDCatch - How to manually run missed events

System Administrator Guides

This secton should not contain information for end users or details of how to setup, configure or troubleshoot Rivendell.

• Understanding users in Rivendell - Describes various types of users, including Linux, Rivendell and Mysql users.
• Migrating audio and database entries from one Rivendell system to another
• Auto-Recovery After a Power Failure
• Remote Administration with VNC
• Rivendell daemons
• Problems backing up or restoring the Rivendell Database
• Rivendell Reference Manual
• Rivendell Operations Guide
• Rivendell Operations Guide is now available on-line.
• Rivendell Technical and Administration Guide - Only exists in skeleton form.
• Rivendell Documentation installed when Rivendell is installed
• Rivendell Application Notes
• Rivendell Design Documentation
• Preparing Translations
• Rivendell News File
• Rivendell Database Schema Versions
• Standard Rivendell documentation that should be installed in doc/rivendell
• RDGpiMon - How to monitor GPI events.
• RML MB command - How to use the Rivendell Macro Language (RML) Message Box (MB) Display
• RDLogedit
• Rivendell Loadable Module SDK - For Sending Now & Next Data to external systems
• Dropboxes - How to use dropboxes to send and receive audio.
• Podcasting crash course

Other Useful Resources

General

• Wishlist - Feature Requests - TODO
• Change Summary - a list of recent Rivendell changes
• Realtime kernel info
• ALSA resources
• JACK resources
• Low latency audio information
• Linux kernel page cache
• A Simple php Traffic Scheduler
• Windows and Linux interoperability
• Audio logging tool, rotter
• Sample icons
• Rivendell Wiki in Portuguese
• Hardware hacks
• Howto - Shiny buttons

Helpful Resources related to Radio and Broadcasting (Not Necessarily Rivendell related)

• Prometheus Radio Project

Other Treasures that can be found in the rivendellaudio.org/ftpdocs site

• AMB-OS interface software
• audacity-hpi
• Audio Science Drivers
• axia-alsa-gui
• Call Commander Call Screener System - a Qt-based program for managing live radio talk programs.
• EloCal is a utility for calibrating touchmonitors made by ELO Touchsystems using 'IntelliTouc' 2500S and 2500U controllers.
• gpilog
• GPIO Drivers (These only work for 2.X version linux Kernels)
• LAB - stand-alone system for the automated, unattended recording and playback of audio
• libtelos2101 - A small library for communicating with various broadcast telephone systems manufactured by Telos Systems.
• soundpanel

Commercial Rivendell Support

• Paravel Systems - USA
• Broadcast Tool & Die - USA

Hacks

• Rivendell Scripts and hacks on Github
• How To Connect Excel And Access To Rivendell Database

Coding Rivendell

• Source Code Repository on Github
• Coding Guidelines for Rivendell

Outdated?

• Code documentation
• Development direction of Rivendell
• Compiling Rivendell Components in Windows
• Changing the version number for RPMs
• WAVE file and meta data info

Rivendell Project History

Rivendell was created by Salem Radio Laboratories, a division of Salem Communications, a national network of Christian radio stations and program services. The main developer is now at Paravel Systems.