Auto Queue

[Shyone379]

For a number of years I have been using Donny's Quemaster, unfortunately due to his heavy study commitments, he is unable to continue devoting much time to Quemaster.

It is a concept I believe has merit that could be incorporated into MMC, with much of the work already being done by Donny.

The main area of interest to me is the auto queue function on periodic timer,
that auto Queues a track to "FIRST" on the queue list.

Additional periodic timers could be added also in order that several files could be played at varying set time periods. (first timer, takes first place in existing queue, second timer, second place in queue etc).

Another concept that Donny has been looking into (again of merit), that could be used for many purposes eg; DJ's and the Sight Impaired, is the adaption of the Big Info screen to export to a text Reader like TextAloud that would announce the Artist and Track over the top as it commences play in DAP/MMC

For my personal preference I would like to see a timer set up as previously mentioned, that could pause MMC and activate other programs like NewsAloud and WeatherAloud, then resume queued tracks, playlists or random play.

Perhaps someone with more expertise than myself could take on this concept, or, give Donny the much needed assistance.:smile2:

[donny]

Re: Auto Queue

I've done some work on the TTS and I think it works pretty good. not sure how well will it fit in with the auto que function but we'll see in a next version.

I'll post the new 1.5 version as soon as my web site settles down. soon probably.

I am thinking about allowing the user to put calling an external exe in regular periods of time. this could allow you to call any kind of service, including the news and weather aloud.
also you can control dap playback from other programs and/or bat files, with the control freak addon.

we'll talk more later

[donny]

Re: Auto Queue

and now it is finally out.

No improvements on the AutoQue feature, sorry.
But the TTS for reading tracks and artists is rather good I think. Maybe in a new version I could make it customizable, with optional reading of maybe the album, and maybe even a string like "Track [track], by [artist], from the album [album]". Although then it would probably need some kind of conditionals if there is no album... we'll see.

As for help - well that is always needed, though I am not sure how doable is it. Among other things, the code of the QM is now pretty much a mess, so sometimes I need time to find stuff. It is a result of several years of work, especially taking into consideration that when I started it I didn't really know much about programing visual applications, nor object oriented programming.
What would help is testing and reporting any weird behaviours, especially if you have some kind of an idea why this happens.
Though I think that he rotate function is very buggy and it would need an total rewrite, which would be pretty painfull Still you can talk about this feature too...

[Shyone379]

Re: Auto Queue

Works rather well???? Donny it's fantastic !!!!!!! very well done.
The TTS announcements are working exactly as required.
Auto que is still spasmodic and lists as the source file and full path. this is probably causing some of the corruption and doesn't announce well with full path etc.
Maybe the Auto que would be better if it was activated from the MMC enque menu function, then it would list as ID tag name, not source file.

New version does need an installer, currently it is not finding history & keyboard txt files etc.

RE: NewsAloud and WeatherAloud these would be servicable tho not optimal, if they could activate pause in Quemaster and resume on their completion.

Ideally to have them queue would be better, but not sure if a smoother operation like that would be worth all the extra work.

at the moment WeatherAloud has a built in timer function, so that could be easily used to create the pause/resume as i mentioned before.

NewsAloud is yet to have that function. tho it does have an auto read.... this may suit some pple,, but I doubt in general.

Presently, i think the change to Autoqueue I have suggested, will result in a VERY servicable program to dbpoweramp, (especially with your future ideas).

Quemaster is absolutely ideal with these features for DJ's and the Sight Impaired.
It's also Great FUN!!!! I recommend it to everyone.

Great work Donny

[donny]

Re: Auto Queue

I just want to make it clear that I can't autoamticaly from the QM, go to the MMC, use it's menu and then enque a file. I am using a call that is about exact as the one that the system uses when you right click on a file and choose "enque in dap". If you try this you will see that this is the same, it always gives the full path in the Queue.

On the other hand is the file is named properly and/or have a good tag, it should be recognized in dap, the title and artist showing in QM and then read aloud.

Now that I experiment with it, the problem is that QM is automatically trying to deduce the file properties based solely on the filename. I will think about how to imporve it, or maybe disable it.

A way about this (for now) could be to have the file named something like "announcment", and have a few seconds of silence at the beggining. Then when played, the TTS would read "announcment", and then the file would play the rest of it. That would maybe be acceptable for your needs. At least for now.

As far as using other programs, as I said, you could try and make somekind of a .bat file, and use it with somekind of a scheduler program (like the windows scheduled tasks).
It could contain something like:
---
dap-Pause.exe
ReadText.exe
dap-Pause.exe
---
Where dap-pause is part of the controll freak package, so it will pause/unpause the player, and ReadText is one of the programs you are using, idealy set to read on start, or with somekind of commandline parameters or something. Maybe runing a second audio player (not dap it is not posible to have two of these) to read a prerecorded message.

Oh and how do you mean it doesn't find the history file? You replaced the old quemaster.exe with the new right? and the file should be in dbpoweramp dir in QueMaster/history.txt If nothing else it should find the old files from the previous version. How did you unpack it?

[Shyone379]

Re: Auto Queue

I got the install corrected, thanks Donny.
The auto queue file used is named similar to as you suggested and tagged (also loaded into MMC) however the Quemaster still queues it showing full file path on Big Info screen.

Hence the full file path is read, not just the announcement name.

I've disabled using auto queue for this reason at present.

re .bat file suggestions, I'll do my best to get my head around that soon (remember this is an OLD head) I may need help.

So far I'm very pleased with what you have been able to do,, thanks again Donny.