The pre-flight check

Pre-flight answers one question: if you pressed Go Live right now, would the show actually go to air? Press it before every broadcast.

Where to find it

The Pre-flight button sits in the rundown header, next to Mark ready and Go Live.

It is most useful after you mark the rundown ready. Screens and cached media can only be checked once the engine has the show. Before that, the pre-flight still runs the checks that do not need the engine and tells you the rest could not be checked.

What it checks

Engine and screens

Whether the engine has your rundown, and how many output screens are connected and listening.

This is the one to never ignore. "It would NOT go to air" means no screen is listening: the engine is loaded, but there is nobody to send the show to. Use Copy the output link or Open the output and get the output page open on the playout machine.

Media cached

Whether every screen has downloaded the clips and images the show will use.

"Almost — still downloading" means exactly that: give it the standby window before going live, or the first clip may arrive late.

What ready means here is worth knowing precisely: every screen reports having stopped downloading the files. That is not the same as a guarantee that each file is complete and still on that machine's disk. It is a record of intent, not an inventory.

Integrations

Every integration this rundown uses, and whether it answers. OBS and vMix are reached for real, directly or through Helmo Middleware. Cloud services are reported unknown, because their APIs cannot be probed from a browser, so check those by hand.

Rundown contents

Checks that run whether or not the show is armed, and the ones that catch the quietest failures:

• an element pointing at a subcomposition that is no longer in the published package: that element does not fail, it airs, does nothing, and says nothing
• dead asset links
• packages that were never published
• heavy files, flagged amber, never as a failure

Reading the headline

The three repair buttons

• Wake the screens: nudges any output to reconnect. One in this browser reconnects now; one on another machine within a minute.
• Fetch the files again: asks the screens to retry files they gave up on. Safe with the show on air: nothing goes off air.
• Reload the screens: a full reload. The screen blinks. Use it only when a screen is genuinely stuck. A rundown puts its air back by itself on reconnect; a manual take does not.

A minute to air

For shows that arm ahead of time, the engine checks itself about a minute before air and speaks up in the panel only if something is wrong: no screen listening, or media still missing. A check that reports "fine" every night trains everyone to skim it.