Announcing tracks in radio like manner...

[bp_pbs]

Alright Team,

So I redid mine to limit the doubling up and repeats. Works better now.
I'm not going to even try to touch jitterjames command...Like thesystemera said "impressive"...lol

[thesystemera]

Well JitterJames it does seem to work quite well.. 

I have one small and odd problem....  Once again it could be due to my centralised SQL database but I'm not convinced..

Occasionally when announcing the current track, it goes on the strangest rant spelling out what appears to be the creation date.  So it says the track and the artist and then continues to talk about a specific date and time..  Very odd...

Otherwise I"m very impressed with the command..  I want to streamline it and add some variales on what the announcer says but am to scared to touch it in fear that you will release a revised version LOL...  oh and I'll probably break some thing... I'm very impressed that your software can be utilized like this...

What I thought was even cooler was if some of us find the voice talking over the track annoying, it is easy enough to send an XBMCsend command to temporarily pause the track til the talking has stopped, you could even through in a generic soundbed in the background..  Hahah genuine radio styles...

I have a background in both broadcasting and audio-engineering so I have to say this stuff excites me quite a bit.  Mix this with my last.fm account and create a smartplaylist with some stings and jabs in there and you have your own personalized radio station LOL.

But shh, I"m giving away my master plan

[thesystemera]

oh bp_pbs, does yours only repeat every second time now?   What was your solution..

Thanks

[Kalle]

What I thought was even cooler was if some of us find the voice talking over the track annoying, it is easy enough to send an XBMCsend command to temporarily pause the track til the talking has stopped, you could even through in a generic soundbed in the background..  Hahah genuine radio styles...

If you like more radio style, you can insert a XBMC.softmute that is fade/set the XBMC volume to X percent of the current volume and after the TTS is finished to talk, it fade back.

[bp_pbs]

oh bp_pbs, does yours only repeat every second time now?   What was your solution..

Thanks

Honestly I don't know why it was repeating. I think it didn't like the TTS.SpeakSynch on the "Previous song" command so I just changed it to TTS.Speak. My theory is that the XBMC.MediaChangeAudioTtile gets stuck if it pauses for to long but that's just my theory.
Still getting repeats here and there but mine is random and not often.

[jitterjames]

Occasionally when announcing the current track, it goes on the strangest rant spelling out what appears to be the creation date.  So it says the track and the artist and then continues to talk about a specific date and time..  Very odd...

Otherwise I"m very impressed with the command..  I want to streamline it and add some variales on what the announcer says but am to scared to touch it in fear that you will release a revised version LOL...  oh and I'll probably break some thing... I'm very impressed that your software can be utilized like this...

You probably just need to clean up your id3 tags.  I noticed some of your songs have the complete lyrics stored in the artist tag (or it might have been song name or album - forget where it was stored).  It happens.  Keeping an mp3 library neat and tidy is not easy.

Don't be scared.  Make a backup and then mess about with it.  I'm not planning any changes personally.

[jitterjames]

Honestly I don't know why it was repeating. I think it didn't like the TTS.SpeakSynch on the "Previous song" command so I just changed it to TTS.Speak. My theory is that the XBMC.MediaChangeAudioTtile gets stuck if it pauses for to long but that's just my theory.
Still getting repeats here and there but mine is random and not often.

I frequently see repeats of the XBMC.MediaChangeAudioTtile event.  It is caused by XBMC broadcasting the event twice, but I don't know why it does that.  That's why I added the time check.  It should prevent the command running a second time.  Most songs are more than one minute in length, so I figured it was safe enough to do that.

[thesystemera]

Not just that James, but as an announcer you don't want to talking more than once every four or five minutes.. so that is definitely safe, I would even suggest extending it...  Oh and thanks for the advice..  I will clean my DB... One more thing to learn how to do.. 

Any of you guys recommend a good preferibly easy way to clean and organise my DB.....  I would forget how to dress in the morning if it wasn't for Google

One more thing...  In regards to voice dimming... I was going to ask is there a way for Brian to know XBMC's volume level and represent that with equal volume..  I had XMBC down really low, had turned up my PA and WOW Brian gave me a fckn heart-attack.... 

Is it just a matter of XBMCsend "Volume" save variable and use for TTS volume set...  and if so would this not be easier to implement across the board for all commands maybe via a dedicated option in the XBMC tag?

[thesystemera]

Sorry for being such a NOOB but I see the DtCustom{HH.mm} as a variable.  But where do I change this variable.  Or is this variable assigned automatically by "length of event" or something... 

I'm learning, I promise...

[Kalle]

Is it just a matter of XBMCsend "Volume" save variable and use for TTS volume set...  and if so would this not be easier to implement across the board for all commands maybe via a dedicated option in the XBMC tag?

Ok, my next starting point to give you a hike  
Take a look on attach picture. You can insert this "actions" in the "announce command" - becareful and insert it in the correct sequence (before the TTS speak).
The logic block is an example and I have found no solution to grap only the integer of the value in LastResult, so you must create logic blocks for the rest (7 to 2)
It is important, to insert at the end of the "announce command" a "TTS.SetVolume" with your normal TTS volume.

Kalle

PS: XBMC returns after "XBMC.send-GetVolume" ->  <html><li"current volume as interger"</html>  (without the quotes)

[Dave]

Hi Kalle,
I don't think this would work. For example: if xbmc volume is 98 your logic block would first set the tts volume to 95 which is right, but afterwards turn the volume to 85.

But it is easy to get the volume as integer since the phrases before and after the volume don't change. you can use Results.RegExReplace to replace the unwanted phrases.

[Kalle]

Hi Kalle,
I don't think this would work. For example: if xbmc volume is 98 your logic block would first set the tts volume to 95 which is right, but afterwards turn the volume to 85.

But it is easy to get the volume as integer since the phrases before and after the volume don't change. you can use Results.RegExReplace to replace the unwanted phrases.

Good point Dave, thanks.

That's the way I have not found 

Kalle

[jitterjames]

Sorry for being such a NOOB but I see the DtCustom{HH.mm} as a variable.  But where do I change this variable.  Or is this variable assigned automatically by "length of event" or something... 

I'm learning, I promise...

It's not a variable you can set. It is always equal to the current date/time. By changing what comes after the . You can customize the format. HH gives the hour in 24 hour format and mm gives minutes

[jitterjames]

Not just that James, but as an announcer you don't want to talking more than once every four or five minutes.. so that is definitely safe, I would even suggest extending it...  Oh and thanks for the advice..  I will clean my DB... One more thing to learn how to do.. 

One more thing...  In regards to voice dimming... I was going to ask is there a way for Brian to know XBMC's volume level and represent that with equal volume..  I had XMBC down really low, had turned up my PA and WOW Brian gave me a fckn heart-attack.... 

I like to use MediaMonkey to organize and listen to music. It does it all. There is a bit of a learning curve as a natural consequence of being so powerful.

The solution for your audio is to leave your XBMC volume alone and only use your pa volume. Or system volume. Only reason to adjust  XBMC volume is to soft mute for TTS,  then restore it to the correct volume.

[thesystemera]

Hey I know this has been a while.   But how would I go about revising this to work with the new Frodo XBMC.  I see it has changed considerably.  I guess you have a better understanding of what I'm doing here now James