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Forum: Wishes and new features

Topic: VDJ 8 (or any) - Write now playing metadata to external text or html file, preferably both.

This topic is old and might contain outdated or incorrect information.

This has been a long requested need going back as far as PCDJ VJ /Ver 6 for those of us using VDJ in the professional and semi pro broadcast community that use DSPs and external asio or AES hardware with real time dsps and external encoding devices or live transmitters and DAW's. Look in any search engine or dj forum and you will see discussions about this dating as far back as 2005 and it is completely unfathomable to see this long standing feature request totally ignored for near 12 years. This is a simple no-brainer feature that would be a game changing marketability addition and should be as easy to implement as a typical software update. With all the new and increasing web possibilities and social media platforms this is a near must have and virtually every other "automated dj" software platform already has this as well as VDJ's freeware based linux competitor. None of these applications have VDJ's feature set so for those of us that want VDJ performance and features with live real time dsps and monitoring and external encoders / repeaters and webpages have always had to find workarounds that either are resource or bandwidth hogs and its just a pita in the end.

When I have seen this brought up in the past everyone seems to think theres a way to do this within VDJ's own feature set but obviously there must not be as nobody has been able to do this successfully yet that I am aware of, and if it is I stand corrected and will update this post but the thing is for no code users this needs to be a simple built in feature that is routinely easy to set up and grant permissions to do. Just a simple "write now playing data to file" checkbox and a browse button to set it to a folder is all that would be needed with choices for text or html or both. Album Art for newer encoding and webpage systems would also be a plus as well as preset selections as to how you want it to appear in the feed.

Some years back I did a post in this forum using VDJ 7 and a shoutcast 1.98 server along with winamp that is the most reliable option I have found and at least then you can use a text scraper to snatch it from winamp but once again now you are running two encoders, and a server and a separate media player along with VDJ and whatever software needed to convert the scraped text and upload via ftp or other means to a webpage to get this done, none of which should be necessary and this option produces an update that posts 20 seconds after the song has reached the listener, it works but it's not pretty and is resource laden causing even more latency issues. All of this could be built into VDJ which most of it's competitors have done successfully.

Many have tried to create plugins or simple code to scrape it from the logs but none of those could actually be deemed professionally reliable or robust enough to be stable. This is a long requested much needed feature that should receive immediate attention.
 
Posted Sat 12 Nov 16 @ 5:10 pm
I am missing from your post what you would do with such a file.

The latest song playing is already logged to the track history, anx when broadcasting to icecast or shoutcast server it is sent as well
 
Do you want a plain textfile with just a single line with the title - artist that is now playing?
 
i requested this as well a while back ... i wanted to use it for a external broadcasting system.
just as you say pachn in your post.

+1
 
Ok... I'll try something ;)
 
For anyone using VDJ with an external processing or studio routing systems or an external encoding system such as the Orban Opticodec or Omnia softwares its a necessity. This is for professional streaming and broadcasting. The built in encoder is useless for such a setup as there is no way to insert a decent broadcast class dsp between the mix and the encoder, especially when feeding web systems and transmitting encoders that would display the information on car stereo's and other devices. It's one long needed piece that any VDJ software has never had that would open its doors to the professional broadcast community. Also: more professional streaming systems are using aac he and exAAC, and not the shoutcast-icecast standard. Those are ok for the hobby and semipro streamers but for professional broadcast streaming in real time those encoders are a lot different, as well as setup requirements for terrestrial broadcasting. This is something thats long overdue. Most stations want to use VDJ in support of the existing systems for more mix flexibillity alongside the daily commercial and regular feed softwares or in conjunction with a daw in the broadcast studio. This would open a lot of new doors for VDJ in places where it's not (can't be) being used now.
 
I've written a small tool that creates such a text or html file.
But need some final testing.

Maybe it's nothing, maybe it will help you.

I'll PM you later.
 
Sounds great I am willing to test if you need that.
 
Likewise. I am running a dual DSP dual encoder system and would be willing to try anything. Also have been a FCC licensed broadcast engineer for over 40 years, just an old no code analog dog :)
 
Check your Messages :)

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PachN wrote :
Check your Messages :)

There is a button "My messages" at the top of this page. Click on it.


I have also interest in this script since I processing also on my stream with VDJ,
thanks in advance!
 
 


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