version 0.887b

[jitterjames]

Edit: Here is version 0.887b with the language fix discussed below.

Look in options under advanced.  There are number of new settings to help control long phrases.  If a phrase is too long a warning will appear in the history window and the log file listing the offending phrases.

New in this version:  File Actions.  See the link below for details
http://voxcommando.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Actions#File

Other changes:

the biggest change in this version is that the processing (rebuilding) of grammars is multi-threaded.  One thread is created for each grammar (group).  This way you load times could be reduced to as little as "25%" of the original time if your CPU has 4 cores.

If you have all your heavy commands (play artist, play album, play song) in the same group, you can achieve faster processing by moving the commands into separate groups so that they can be loaded in parallel .  Usually "play songs" is the longest to load so you can just move it to its own group.  

This only affects rebuilding of commands.  If you are simply restarting, without making any changes, it will simply load the cached files which is much faster.  In this case you should see load times that are similar to the version 0.885.

[jitterjames]

As you can see in the attached image there are new options on the "Advanced" tab in VoxCommando.

The group "Phrase Processing" tells VC how to deal with long phrases in payloadXML files.

The best way to explain the settings is with an example.  Consider the song: "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow Instrumental"

now we look at all the different phrases that we must listen for just for this one song...

Code: [Select]

[too short]  I
[too short]  I Am
[too short]  I Am A
I Am A Man
I Am A Man Of
I Am A Man Of Constant
I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow
[already added]  I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow Instrumental
[too short] I
[too short] I Am
[too short] I Am A
[too short] I Am A Man
I Am A Man Of
I Am A Man Of Constant
I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow
[too long] I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow Instrumental
[too short] Am
[too short] Am A
[too short] Am A Man
Am A Man Of
Am A Man Of Constant
Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow
[too long] Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow Instrumental
[too short] A
[too short] A Man
[too short] A Man Of
A Man Of Constant
A Man Of Constant Sorrow
[too long] A Man Of Constant Sorrow Instrumental
[too short] Man
[too short] Man Of
Man Of Constant
Man Of Constant Sorrow
Man Of Constant Sorrow Instrumental
[too short] Of
Of Constant
Of Constant Sorrow
Of Constant Sorrow Instrumental
[too short] Constant
Constant Sorrow
Constant Sorrow Instrumental
[too short] Sorrow
Sorrow Instrumental
Instrumental
the total length of the song is 42, so it passes the first test "Maximum phrase length" = 60.  If it were longer than 60 characters then it would either be skipped (not included at all) or truncated (only the first 60 characters kept).

then we always start by adding the entire phrase, all words, no matter what.
then we look at all the sub-phrases and test their length.
in this example the minimum length is 4 characters, but VC will automatically raise this value a little bit if the phrase is very long.
Our maximum sub-phrase length will reject some of the longer subphrases such as "Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow Instrumental", but remember that the whole phrase will always be kept.

by setting these rules we have cut then number of sub-phrases down from 44, to 23.  If you look in your library, you will probably find some very long titles where the number of possible sub-phrases could be VERY high (greater than 100).

If possible you should edit titles such as:

 Take on Me (ft. Carlitta Durand)

since you would probably never request this song using the (ft. Carlitta Durand), by removing the  (ft. Carlitta Durand) the song will have 3 words instead of 6 and then number of subphrases will go down.  It will also be less likely to confuse the song with other songs.  Consider a song with 8 words in the actual title, followed by (featuring Bob Dylan, Joe Jackson, and Peter Tosh).  This will result in many sub-phrases that only cause more strain and use system resources for nothing.  By removing the last 8 words we reduce the sub-phrases significantly.

[jitterjames]

Also in the advanced options tab, we now have settings for iTunes special payloads of the form:

"Play Song ABC by XYZ"

the word "by" can be changed in case you are not using English, to something else like "par", "por", "von"

the field "any artist phrase" allows you do request a song when you don't know, or don't care about the artist.  This way you don't need a separate command to request a song by saying "play song ABC".
Creating two separate commands containing ALL your thousands of songs is wasteful)

Using the same command you can say either:
"Play song Fragments of Freedom by Morcheeba"
or
"Play song Fragments of Freedom by anyone"

Note that "play song" is the phrase defined in the command editor so you can change it as well.

to use this feature in iTunes, you must run GenXML using the new version (0.887 or later).  This will create payloadXML file

.\iTunesPayloads\SongByArtist.xml

with phrases that look like this:

Code: [Select]

<payload>
        <value>5C29FA0B2972EEAE</value>
        <phrase>A Space Boy Dream&amp;&amp;Belle and Sebastian</phrase>
        <subsetmatching>true</subsetmatching>
    </payload>
in this case the value is the ID used by iTunes for that exact song.

Looking at the phrase we see that the song title and the artist name are separated by &&  (which is actually: && ) and tells VC where the separation is between title and artist.  && gets replaced by the "by" word that you set in options.

In this case this song can be requested by saying any of the following:

- Play song A Space Boy Dream by Belle and Sebastian
- Play song Space Boy by Belle and
- Play song Dream by Sebastian
- Play song A Space Boy by anyone

you have to say "by anyone" you can't just say "Play song A Space Boy."

the command is attached so that you can import it.

[jitterjames]

mediaMonkey patch will be explained here.

In options, on the events tab there is a button to patch mediaMonkey.  Clicking this will add two features to mediaMonkey.

1 - mediaMonkey will generate play/pause events in VoxCommando so you can use this to announce songs.

2 - adds a context menu option to export selected songs to payloadXML files.  This is useful if you don't want VC to use all the songs in your library.  Perhaps you want to exclude all your classical music and audiobooks (just an example) to avoid confusion and to save resources and speed up loading in VC.

select all the songs you want to include, then right-click one song and choose "Export Tracks to VoxCommando PayloadXML".  Then browse to the folder for your payload files ...\VoxCommandoFolder\mmPayloads )

[Kalle]

Here is version 0.887.

Look in options under advanced.  There are number of new settings to help control long phrases.  If a phrase is too long a warning will appear in the history window and the log file listing the offending phrases.

Hi James,

VC starts in 1 or 2 seconds, but he regonized nothing    (API-Bug?)
The mic-level works, but VC understand nothing.

I have install as update 0.886

Kalle

PS: a full install with MM.zip the same

Take a look in VoxLog

[Wanilton]

Kalle and James,

Here the new version it´s ok, running perfect, commands recognized well, OS Win7 64 bits, Us-EN language in settings.

Wanilton

[jitterjames]

Hi James,

VC starts in 1 or 2 seconds, but he regonized nothing    (API-Bug?)
The mic-level works, but VC understand nothing.

it is a language error.  Please select your recognition language and then rebuild and restart.

[Kalle]

it is a language error.  Please select your recognition language and then rebuild and restart.

Yes that is right with german language works, thanks.

It works only with german language, i restart my system

[Kalle]

Yes that is right with german language works, thanks.

It works only with german language, i restart my system

My System-language is german, and when I use german in VC it works perfect.
When I change in VC options - Generaltab - to us-eng, VC understand nothing 
I don't no why, after restart my system the same, VC0.886 works perfect with both.

Kalle

[jitterjames]

all the language files are cached after building so that they can be re-used to make start-up faster.  If you change the language you need to do a rebuild because the cache will be in the wrong language.  I will try to detect this situation and rebuild automatically.  I am not sure what re-starting has to do with it though.

[Kalle]

all the language files are cached after building so that they can be re-used to make start-up faster.  If you change the language you need to do a rebuild because the cache will be in the wrong language.  I will try to detect this situation and rebuild automatically.  I am not sure what re-starting has to do with it though.

Ok, when I start the version 0.886 and copy then the renamed 0.887 (voxcommando1.exe in the same folder and start it, it works, crazy.

[Wanilton]

Kalle, Do you rebuild grammars??? in File Menu, here appears errors (warnings) after rebuilld (name very long), I fix in tags, and now, it´s ok...

[jitterjames]

Kalle, Do you rebuild grammars??? in File Menu, here appears errors after rebuilld (name very long), I fix in tags, and now, it´s ok...

Note that these are actually "Warnings" not really "Errors". 

even if you get this warning the command should load OK, but the song will be either skipped, or the last part will be cut off.  Also you can changed the maximum length, but I recommend you keep it as short as possible.

Deeper explanation is here:
http://voxcommando.com/forum/index.php?topic=474.msg3449#msg3449

[Kalle]

Ok, when I start the version 0.886 and copy then the renamed 0.887 (voxcommando1.exe in the same folder and start it, it works, crazy.

Wanilton, with this solution (copy and past the exe) is ok for me, but i hope James figured out this problem 

Kalle

[jitterjames]

well, I don't actually know what the problem is, so it is hard to fix it.

[Kalle]

well, I don't actually know what the problem is, so it is hard to fix it.

Ok, I will summarize:

1. I update the version 0886 to 0887
2. starting the 0887 version (us-en in VC-options) and run it, no errors.
3. when I say a command, nothing happens, the volume indicator works.
4. grammars rebuild and restart, the same.
5. change in VC options to German language, and restart - all works fine
6. change back to english language, and it is the same as in point 3
7. Copy the voxcommando.exe (887) to a folder with a backup of a Ver. 0886 and overwrite the Ver.886 voxcommando.exe, all works fine in both language with 887. I dont know why, but it works.

[jitterjames]

OK Kalle, thanks for summarizing.  I will have to install German on my machine to experiment.

after step 6, because you changed the language back to english, it is expected that you need to rebuild the grammars.  This is normal.

I don't understand why you have trouble after upgrading though if you didn't change anything in the options.  I will have to try some things to figure out what is happening.

[Kalle]

OK Kalle, thanks for summarizing.  I will have to install German on my machine to experiment.

after step 6, because you changed the language back to english, it is expected that you need to rebuild the grammars.  This is normal.

I don't understand why you have trouble after upgrading though if you didn't change anything in the options.  I will have to try some things to figure out what is happening.

Thanks James, I've left no stone unturned, but I had no success. I could imagine that it's one of the dll's which is causing the problem, as I said, if I only copy voxcommando.exe(0887) in the folder with the 0886 and overwrite the exe, all works.

Kalle

[jitterjames]

I don't think any of the dlls have changed since 886.  I think it is more likely that it has something to do with the options file. 

Please try the following, using only a fresh install of 887, or a version that you patched to version 887.  (not one where you copied files back to 886)

- Change the recognition language to English in VC options
- close VC
- delete the SRGS folder
- start VC

[Kalle]

I don't think any of the dlls have changed since 886.  I think it is more likely that it has something to do with the options file.  

Please try the following, using only a fresh install of 887, or a version that you patched to version 887.  (not one where you copied files back to 886)

- Change the recognition language to English in VC options
- close VC
- delete the SRGS folder
- start VC

the same, nothing happens

[Kalle]

OK Kalle, thanks for summarizing.  I will have to install German on my machine to experiment.

after step 6, because you changed the language back to english, it is expected that you need to rebuild the grammars.  This is normal.

I don't understand why you have trouble after upgrading though if you didn't change anything in the options.  I will have to try some things to figure out what is happening.

Ok, noted the problem is with the Speech API.
Desktop language changed to English, VC started, en-us in VC works fine.
Change in VC to German, do not work.
Curiously, when the desktop language is returned to German, works in VC only with English not with german. 
I am assuming the VC does not change the language properly or something is lost, everything works fine in version 0886.

Kalle

[Wanilton]

Hello Kalle and James,

I changed language to PT BR in O.S. Win 7, VC started ok in this situation, setting Option SR = en-us ->  VC works fine here, no problem.
Tested all comands, and worked fine, is fact what Windows in PT no support for speech recognition,  distinct German OS Windows, but is
more one reference to James, vox work in other language in the new version.

New test, after rebuild grammars, the same situation Kalle happens here, no work too, before it´s ok, only after I rebuild grammars in PT BR OS
the situation appears.

For work correct is necessary rebuild the grammars with OS in english in my case.

Wanilton

[jitterjames]

thank you both very much for your help with this.   I think I had a moment of inspiration.

I create a new thread for each group to speed up loading, but each thread needs to have its culture updated to match the speech engine (stupid Microsoft thing).  In the past I thought only the form had to have a culture that matches the speech engine culture.

Please try with this updated .exe

I was able to test quickly, by using english GB I was able to get the same error and this seems to have fixed it.

[Wanilton]

Hello James,

This fix work great for me, no more error, thanks,

Wanilton

[jitterjames]

great.  thanks.  I have updated the file in the first post to 0.887b with this fix.

[mclough6]

A very minor thing.  When you push the button to patch Media Monkey, the dialogue box has changes spelled incorrectly.

[mclough6]

The warning feature that lists all of the songs with names that are too long is an excellent addition.  Is there any way to print the list out?

[jitterjames]

The warning feature that lists all of the songs with names that are too long is an excellent addition.  Is there any way to print the list out?

yes, you can copy and paste from the log file: "voxLog.txt"

In case you didn't already read about it above you can also set the maximum length in advanced options.

[jitterjames]

A very minor thing.  When you push the button to patch Media Monkey, the dialogue box has changes spelled incorrectly.

minor yes, but thanks for pointing it out.

[Kalle]

thank you both very much for your help with this.   I think I had a moment of inspiration.

I create a new thread for each group to speed up loading, but each thread needs to have its culture updated to match the speech engine (stupid Microsoft thing).  In the past I thought only the form had to have a culture that matches the speech engine culture.

Please try with this updated .exe

I was able to test quickly, by using english GB I was able to get the same error and this seems to have fixed it.

Thanks James,
everything works, as always, perfect service 

Kalle

[mclough6]

This program just keeps getting better.  Hats off to you James!

[jitterjames]

thank-you 

It seems like it has been very quiet around here lately, so it's nice to hear.  It helps a lot that I have such patient beta testers and faithful supporters.

I'm pretty excited about 0.888. I am finally doing some checking when you edit the command tree to see which groups have changed, and then only rebuilding for those groups.  Restarting after making edits will be nice and fast now (which I like since I edit a lot), unless you edit a group that has a big command in it, like "Play song ABC".

Restarting after genXML will take a while still, because it means rebuilding all the big groups.    And if you change your prefix this will also require a full rebuild, but the multi-threading helps with that.  I actually need to do some testing to see how much faster the new version is compared to the older ones.

I have been daydreaming about strategies for dealing with really immense music libraries.  I have some ideas but they all have drawbacks.  Maybe something will come of it eventually.  In the mean time I am trying to find ways to make it easier for people to exclude music they don't need voice control for.  Right now I'm looking at having VoxCommando scan all the music in a single "VC" playlist in MediaMonkey, instead of scanning the entire library.  That way you can set the playlist up however you want (e.g. songs I have heard at least once, or only certain genres, or with higher ratings, only songs that are on my e: drive, etc.).  For my own use I would probably exclude classical, audiobooks, and songs with ratings below 5.

[painy]

I've got a problem

VC doesn't seem to be able to control MM anymore.
When I tell VC: "Mediamonkey (prefix) play" VC just jams up a couple of seconds, the MM icon in the taskbar starts flashing and VC gives me the error:
System.runtime.interopservices.comexception (0x80080005): Retreiving the COM class factory for component with CLSID (.....) failed due to the following error: 0x80080005 at Voxcommando.control.mediamonkey.mmAction(string strAc
Running MM as administrator didn't fix it

On a side node: I had the same, or a similar, problem right before updating to the newest version and I hadn't changed any options before it happend.
And right after updating I had the same problem as Kalle (though i downloaded version b and only have US english installed).
Then I updated grammars and deleted the srgs folder and now i have this new error.

Also a question: Shouldn't the 'events' button in the main VC menu be doing anything when i click it? Nothing seems to be happening when i do.

Cheers

Painy

[jitterjames]

Sorry Painy. As far as I can tell, this error is caused by MediaMonkey and can only be solved by running it as administrator.  Maybe a reboot will help.  Then run MM as admin (and I mean right click and choose "run as admin", it is not enough to be logged in with an admin account). Then run VC.

I haven't touched the code that communicates with MM at all so something else must have changed on your system.  An update or something.

The events button on the menu is populated by events that you create in the options.  I wouldn't worry about it.

Did you ever try to patch MediaMonkey from the button on the events tab of VC options?  If you did, that is the only thing I can think of that might be causing problems.

[painy]

Ok, you're not going to believe this.

I did the same thing with my PC, using pretty much the same VC configuration as my laptop.
I had the exact same problems as when i updated my laptop's VC.

The funny thing is, VC stops communicating to MM when it's run as administrator, NOT when it's run normally. I tried this a couple of times, with the same result.
I also get different errors when using the MM patch in VC. If MM is run without admin rights it says: Access to path 'C/......../udpsender.exe' is denied.
If it is run as administrator i get the error:
Retreiving the COM class factory for component with CLSID (.....) failed due to the following error: 0x80080005

:S

[jitterjames]

ummm.  If I understand correctly the solution is to run "not as administrator"?  and to remove the patch.

to remove the patch go to C:\Program Files\MediaMonkey\Scripts\Auto and delete the two .vbs files that start with vox...

you may also be able to eliminate some problems by turning off UAC.  I personally find it annoying to no end so turning it off is one of the first things I do whenever I get a new system up and running.

In general you should not need to run mediaMonkey as administrator every time.  Just once to register the com objects.

[painy]

I don't think my MM was ever patched, as I got errors when I tried.
I checked the folder you suggested, and that didn't contain any Vox .vbs files.

I don't normally boot MM as administrator, I only did it because I got the 'Access to path 'C/......../udpsender.exe' is denied' when i tried applying the MM patch.

Kinda strange though, as i have used VC in combination with MM run as administrator in the past to get it working the first time, and now it can't communicate anymore :S.

[jitterjames]

well, I'm just getting more and more confused since you are saying things that are self-contradictory.  you said

"The funny thing is, VC stops communicating to MM when it's run as administrator, NOT when it's run normally."

so that means that it works if you don't run it as administrator.  Therefore don't run as administrator.  Problem solved.

You also said

I also get different errors when using the MM patch in VC. If MM is run without admin rights it says: Access to path 'C/......../udpsender.exe' is denied.

clearly you have installed the patch.  To uninstall it you need to remove the files as indicated in my previous post.

[painy]

Sorry for being unclear

so that means that it works if you don't run it as administrator.  Therefore don't run as administrator.  Problem solved.

Well, not entirely, I still can't apply the patch to mediamonkey. I hope this screenshot I made clarifies things.



The auto folder you referred to only contains my Last fm plugin.


The purpose of my last replies were just to inform you some users, like myself, experience problems with 0.887b.
The problems i experienced when updating to 0.887b were:

1) The same error Kalle described:

when I say a command, nothing happens, the volume indicator works

Although the difference between me and Kalle is that I only use English for VC.

I followed your solution and this fixed it

- Change the recognition language to English in VC options
- close VC
- delete the SRGS folder
- start VC

2) I cannot patch Mediamonkey: As stated above
I don't need this fixed per se, as I probably won't use the options you added in the MM patch any time soon, just thought you should know

Hope this clarifies things

Painy

[jitterjames]

when you first started this conversation you said

I've got a problem

VC doesn't seem to be able to control MM anymore.

and that is the problem that I have been trying to solve.  Forget about patching MM for now.  I was concerned that you had successfully patched mediaMonkey and that you were subsequently having troubles controlling MM.  At this point the two issues have apparently been mixed up.

so the question is "can you control MediaMonkey or not" ? 

If you can then we can consider the problem of patching MM, although as you say this is not really critical since it is only useful for some people.  Still it is easier to solve if I know that it is only the patch that is not working.

[painy]

Ah yes, you're right.

I thought I had that problem because I kept running MM as administrator. But now I know that is fixed by just starting MM in normal mode and it's no longer an issue for me.

Only the patching problem remains

[jitterjames]

ok good.  It is probably just a matter of copying the 3 files over to your "..mediamonkey\scripts\auto" folder and then setting the permissions on the "udpsender.exe" file, or possibly adjusting permissions for the whole "auto" folder.

the files can be copied from the "VC\resources" folder and are called:

- VoxExportXML.vbs
(this is used if you want to only use part of your library (excluding certain songs))

- VoxCommandoEvents.vbs
- udpsender.exe
(these two are used to send events to VoxCommando, because the MM com events don't work and the MM team doesn't seem to care about it.

if putting these files into the scripts\auto folder causes problems for you, you can just delete them.

I think I mentioned earlier that UAC could be causing problems...

[painy]

It worked, my mediamonkey is now patched 

[jitterjames]

phew, [wipes brow], one down