Having only one .talk file for all my songs...

[darkarn]

I am thinking of doing that as...

The .talk files contain the spoken name of the directory or file in MP3 format. They are in regular MP3 format, if you have the software and patience you can put in a small spoken announcement and fade in a clip of the song, whatever you'd like.

Yes, I want an announcement (about 5 seconds) for all my songs...

Is this possible? Or should I go modify the theme instead?

Thanks!

[bascule]

I'm really struggling to understand your question.

Do you mean that you want to create and use literally 'one' file and for that one file to be voiced each time you select any file in the File Browser? If so, that will not work. .talk files only work for the file with the same name as the .talk file (and would be a bit pointless to hear the same announcement each time you up or down the track listing).

Or do you want your 'announcement' clip to be played during playback between each track? If so, then that is not how voice works at all. For that to work, you would need to create a standard .m3u playlist and insert an entry between each track that pointed to your 'announcement' clip.

Is this possible? Or should I go modify the theme instead?

Modifying the theme does not normally affect any voicing options, but you could create a configuration file to switch various voice options on or off.

* bascule somehow thinks he hasn't correctly double-guessed the OP's intentions...

[darkarn]

Do you mean that you want to create and use literally 'one' file and for that one file to be voiced each time you select any file in the File Browser? If so, that will not work. .talk files only work for the file with the same name as the .talk file (and would be a bit pointless to hear the same announcement each time you up or down the track listing).

Yep, you got me... Only one .talk annoucement clip to be played when I choose the song ie I pick a song, RockBox plays the .talk file, the song then start playing... Same goes for other songs in my player...

[GodEater]

Well then as bascule says - you're out of luck - that's not the way the .talk system works.

Incidentally, they're not .mp3 clips anymore either, they're speex.

Edit: Except on old HWCODEC based Archos units, where they're still MP3.

Happy now pixelma?

[darkarn]

Ah ok... Will modifying the theme help?

[GodEater]

No - the .talk system isn't tied into it - also as bascule says.

[darkarn]

*Sighs* Ok...

[Tron]

Or do you want your 'announcement' clip to be played during playback between each track? If so, then that is not how voice works at all.

A pity, really. I'd also like the song name (and artist) announced before the song plays, as I regularly listen to music on my motorbike and checking the display is rather out of the question.

Generating the spoken file name (or information taken from the id3-tag) is possible, rockbock can announce the name when one is browsing the file system. I'm not a rockbox developer, but to me it should mean only a small modification to add another option to the "voice setup" menu which controls wheter the .talk-file is played before every song or not.

I'd really love to see that function...

[ITMAN]

Or do you want your 'announcement' clip to be played during playback between each track? If so, then that is not how voice works at all.

A pity, really. I'd also like the song name (and artist) announced before the song plays, as I regularly listen to music on my motorbike and checking the display is rather out of the question.

Generating the spoken file name (or information taken from the id3-tag) is possible, rockbock can announce the name when one is browsing the file system. I'm not a rockbox developer, but to me it should mean only a small modification to add another option to the "voice setup" menu which controls whether the .talk-file is played before every song or not.

I'd really love to see that function...

I would really like to see something like this as well.  I ended up doing my own artist intros for each song in my playlist in my own voice by recording each artist name once, storing them in a subfolder of the root folder called INTROS...  And then making a program in visual basic to make an M3U playlist to insert the proper INTRO file to play before each song...

I can also place it after the song instead, which is then a test of if I can remember who sings each song without looking, since I know the announcement file will tell me anyway...

I agree that it would be a nice patch to be able to use .talk files for this purpose (if it is possible)...
In the most general case, I envision something like for each track, if a special "announcement" audio file is found, it will play that either as an INTRO or as information after the song plays...  There could be artist announcements, album announcements, and song announcements...  if all three existed, it could play the artist announcement, followed by the album announcement, and then finally the song announcement file...

If a custom recorded announcement file of a certain type did not exist for a particular song, there could hopefully be an option to use a .talk file for that announcement type if one existed...Or, as mentioned, possibly using text to speech with the ID3-Tag would have some potential.

My custom made artist Intros work OK, but I have to add new recordings for new artists that I add to my collection and redo the playlists each time, and shuffle is not an option, if I want voice intros working for my playlists (though programming random M3U playlists with the intros built in works).

I ride a Trikke and do rollerblading, both sports where I like the voice intro, instead of trying to look down at the player on my belt to see who the artist is for tracks, etc...

I think some dynamic announcement/intro feature like this in a future build would be great!...
The other problem with using playlists and manually putting in audio INTRO files to it, is that it quickly doubles the size of my playlist, which was already fairly large without being doubled...

Out of curiosity though, one thing I have not tried since Rockbox 2.4 was to try to actually programatically place the proper .talk files themself in the M3U playlist file as intros for each song track...  When I tried that back with version 2.4, I know it did not play the .talk file in that manner, so I resorted to recording Artist Announcement files myself for using as audible intros for each track...

ITMAN