Playout has always been an important pillar of our solutions portfolio from day one. The playout solutions are available as Live Production PCR (just:live) and 24/7 Automated MCR playout (just:play) variants, and share our template based real-time graphics capabilities. just:live was designed to meet the fast-paced, time-critical demands of Live TV broadcast, including news, sports, talk shows and live events, whereas just:play was designed to meet the automated 24/7 broadcast playout demands of TV stations, with state-of-the-art scheduling that can be planned and executed weeks in advance, live input switching, automatic Gaps and Overlays detection and the support for redundant playout scenarios. Given its industry-standard client-server architecture, our robust playout real-time core engine – just:out – is designed to handle live as well as continuous 24/7 playout without interruption, combining top-notch usability and industry-standard system reliability. From the licensing perspective a maximum of 7 video layers, 7 FX layers of real-time graphics and 3 events layers (to accommodate external triggers) can be added additionally to the base license. Amongst many usability improvements and stability enhancements that will benefit daily operations, version 3.1 of just:live and just:play feature full SDK and UHDp60 playout support for qualified AJA and Blackmagic Design devices and introduces just:control as the new main user interface to unify the control user interface for both ingest and playout solutions.
Download our latest just:play or just:live version 3.1 here...
Full compatibility support for Apple Silicon based M1 Macs is part of an upcoming version once all third-party components will be officially available from the respective vendors.
Our development team is working hard to ensure feature-parity with former versions and we would kindly ask you to get in touch with either Peter or Manuel before upgrading to version 3.1 for new and especially existing customers.
WARNING: This version requires a valid v3.1 activation code and ALL previously generated v2.x / v3.0 codes will NOT work. Please contact TOA sales team for new activation codes under sales@toolsonair.com
This software requires macOS Catalina (macOS 10.15.x) or macOS Big Sur (11.x) and Intel based Macs only!
MacPro5,1 is not supported anymore and this is the last version which support Macmini6,2 and Macmini7,1
AJA / BMD Video Devices: Always use the latest driver release.
Using a device from BMD for play-out you MUST run just:out and just:control on separate machines, otherwise audio dropouts will occur while generating the Poster Frames or while working on Finder level.
Please read all important information here...
Version 3.1 Changes - just:live & just:play
- Version 3.1 Changes - just:live & just:play
This version brings official support for macOS Big Sur. Please make sure to use AJA driver version 16.0.2 or higher, or BMD driver version 12.1, depending on the video device used.
Logs are now archived every 24 hours to the folder ~/Library/Logs/ToolsOnAir, and these logs are included in the system profile. This means that logs are now available going back further than the current 3 days.
The “Audio Monitor” menu item has been moved from the audio bars context menu to the “View” menu and now has the shortcut cmd-alt-A to toggle the audio monitor for the channel. In addition there is a new menu item to clear any audio “peaks” for the channel.
Channels now support up to 7 video layers instead of the previous 3.Added 2 new types of event: HTTP(S) and TCP. The HTTP(S) event type can be used to construct a URL that is sent to a server that supports a HTTP (REST) API, for example the AJA Kumo video switcher. The TCP event type is similar, but supports devices offering a “plain text” TCP API, for example Blackmagic VideoHub, Ross devices that support RossTalk, Evertz devices that support Evertz Quartz and Sierra devices that support Sierra Aspen. Both event types support parameters changeable by the user that can be used to create a preset, for example setting a specific input on a specific output on a video router. Legacy event devices specific to a certain device (e.g. Blackmagic Videohub) have been disabled and will be automatically migrated to use the new events.
The “Events” channel configuration tab now has two addition buttons for saving the currently selected event as a preset and for loading a previously saved preset.
Correctly show an alert on macOS Big Sur (11.x) when Apple’s Professional Video Workflow Plug-ins aren’t installed on the system.
Fixed an issue controlling “infinite” graphics via properties in the inspector.
Fixed a bug causing corrupt output with 10-bit output.
Fixed a bug related to the watch folder and added improved logging when using the watch folder in just:connect.
Version 3.0 Changes - just:live & just:play
- This version brings official support for macOS Catalina (10.15) and macOS Big Sur (11.x). Please make sure to use AJA driver version 16.0.2 or higher and the latest driver version from BMD depending on the video device used.
- We unified the formerly separately available control interfaces into one common application, namely just:control. Whether you‘re using just:live just:play or just:in: all ToolsOnAir applications can now be controlled by using a common user interface.
- There is a Group function available in just:control, which allows tasks like to end a live event (jump to next) or to start/stop a recording to be executed by a single mouse click using the same interface.
- Full SDK support for video devices from AJA and Blackmagic Design provides much deeper integration with the given video devices, which is the foundation for new features and functions like future multi-card and multiple out support on a single machine.
- Support for higher frame rates such as p60 and higher resolutions such as UHD is now possible and thanks to the reduced number of software components used to access the hardware, the stability is further increased and the channels setup vastly improved.
- Many improvements have been added to the user interfaces. It is now possible to open and collapse parts of the interface like the Library and the Inspector using keyboard shortcuts. This also works with the completely new full-size Trim window which now also supports JKL control. Further improvements are the ability to sort media in the Library by every kind of metadata and the configurable timecode and audio bar overlays of the “On Air” and “Coming Next” windows.
- Stability and speed improvements as well as several bugfixes allow to use the just:play interface continuously at full speed without the need to restart just:connect from time to time. And using just:live it is now possible to load approximately 5x more movies into the Workbench compared to v2.x, using the same amount of RAM for caching and pre load.
Combined Workflow Solutions: MCR and PCR Ingest / Playout Bundles
Based on the success of our stand-alone solutions, we have remained true to our "TV Channel in a Box" philosophy and have worked on the further development of our combined MCR and PCR workflow solutions, which combine ingest and playout on one machine while controlling both application instances via our unified user interface just:control. Our team is happy to discuss your requirements and propose a tailored solution that builds on existing software components thus offering a future-oriented investment protection.
just:play/live version 3.x and just:in multi version 5.0 can now run on a single mac, sharing the same Blackmagic Design video device. Combined with the xMac mini Server rackmount enclosure from Sonnet Technologies and Apple’s Mac mini (Intel now and M1 to follow), this compact MCR solution is the perfect fit to run a single playout channel (video + graphics) including live-input and one ingest channel on the same hardware. All controlled by our new unified user interface called just:control to provide the best user experience.
