Rockbox Technical Forums

Support and General Use => User Interface and Voice => Topic started by: wesderby on June 14, 2007, 12:13:41 PM

Title: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: wesderby on June 14, 2007, 12:13:41 PM
Hello.

Okay, I'm having some speech issues with the current version of Rockbox...In the menus, I can't find via speech the option to enable .talk files for my directories and files...This has been a problem since I installed a June 10 update. Right now, I'm running one from today, just after 12:00 AM. Under the Voice Settings, the onl options I have are Voice Menus, Voice Directories, and Voice Files.  Under the Voice Files and Voice Directories menues, the only options I hear are "Off", "Spell", or "Number"...I've checked all the other menues in Settings, and can't find the option to enable my .Talk files there either.

Any ideas?  Are there updated voice files simply not posted to the Rockbox site yet that I need to find/download?

Also, I get nothing, not even numbers or spellings, when I try to use the Database instead of the File view.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: pixelma on June 14, 2007, 01:32:25 PM
The option to use .talk files was recently moved to an own setting, you should have these 2 new entries in the "voice" submenu: "Use Directory .talk Clips" and "Use File .talk Clips" which you can set to "on" additionally to what you specify in "Voice Directories" or "Voice Filenames". When you enable the .talk clip settings, rockbox will use these clips for filenames and directories as this has priority over the other voice options. If such a clip is missing for a file or directory it doesn't automatically fall back to numbers (as before) but will use what you have set in "Voice Directories" and "Voice Filenames" i.e. off, numbers, spell.

You can find some more information in the manual which was adjusted to reflect the new menu entries, Voice paragraph (online version) (http://download.rockbox.org/manual/rockbox-ipodvideo/rockbox-buildch7.html#x10-1190007.9) for your player.

Pitily I have no idea why voice wouldn't work for you in the database because it does for me. Since you seem to have used .talk clips before, I don't think you used iTunes to put music on your player. I would check all voice settings again, maybe reset them and start new in case something is wrong with the settings file. Hope you can work it out.
Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: wesderby on June 14, 2007, 02:03:52 PM
The option to use .talk files was recently moved to an own setting, you should have these 2 new entries in the "voice" submenu: "Use Directory .talk Clips" and "Use File .talk Clips" which you can set to "on" additionally to what you specify in "Voice Directories" or "Voice Filenames". When you enable the .talk clip settings, rockbox will use these clips for filenames and directories as this has priority over the other voice options. If such a clip is missing for a file or directory it doesn't automatically fall back to numbers (as before) but will use what you have set in "Voice Directories" and "Voice Filenames" i.e. off, numbers, spell.

You can find some more information in the manual which was adjusted to reflect the new menu entries, Voice paragraph (online version) (http://download.rockbox.org/manual/rockbox-ipodvideo/rockbox-buildch7.html#x10-1190007.9) for your player.

Pitily I have no idea why voice wouldn't work for you in the database because it does for me. Since you seem to have used .talk clips before, I don't think you used iTunes to put music on your player. I would check all voice settings again, maybe reset them and start new in case something is wrong with the settings file. Hope you can work it out.

Right...I know about the two extra menu options; unfortunately, when I scroll through, these two don't appear to be there, or at least aren't spoken.  I'll have to see if I can track down a sighted person to take a look at my screen to see if something's messed up.
If it helps, the voice files I'm using were added, I believe, on March 7 of 2007.

No, I've never used the iTunes program to add music to the player...Just the standard Windows Explorer.  Thanks for the tips though; I'll see what I can accomplish once I find a pair of eyes to work with me for a couple minutes.

Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: pixelma on June 14, 2007, 02:38:27 PM
Right...I know about the two extra menu options; unfortunately, when I scroll through, these two don't appear to be there, or at least aren't spoken.
Yes, unfortunately with the current system the new options make a new voice file necessary and there are no new enough voice files posted in the wiki. The newest I can find on http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/VoiceFiles are from 6th and 7th of april.

Edit: Would it help if I describe where you can find the setting? Because if you enter these, "on" and "off" are the only possibilities and should be spoken even though the settings name is not.

Edit 2: Sorry, I meant "yes" and "no".
Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: wesderby on June 14, 2007, 11:58:13 PM
Right...I know about the two extra menu options; unfortunately, when I scroll through, these two don't appear to be there, or at least aren't spoken.
Yes, unfortunately with the current system the new options make a new voice file necessary and there are no new enough voice files posted in the wiki. The newest I can find on http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/VoiceFiles are from 6th and 7th of april.

Edit: Would it help if I describe where you can find the setting? Because if you enter these, "on" and "off" are the only possibilities and should be spoken even though the settings name is not.

Edit 2: Sorry, I meant "yes" and "no".
Describing might be worth a try, though when I use my scroll wheel, I don't hear any silent spots after "Voice Directories" or "Voice Files" before it goes back to "Voice Menues".
I found some new voice files dated earlier this week at http://tbrn.net/rockbox/, a site that had been sent to me a few months back by someone from this forum, and I believe that's where the March and April voice files came from.  As soon as I update my copy of PowerArchiver, or find something free that will unzip .7Z files, I plan to unzip these and see if there's something in these newer files that will work...Unless, of course, someone else knows how to add these files to the Wiki.

Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: ryran on June 15, 2007, 12:34:15 AM
The 7z format is open-source.. you can get the 7-zip program for windows here (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z447.exe), from 7-zip.org. It of course does zip and rar 'n whatnot at least as well as the most popular archivers.

That really was just an fyi though.. since I had a minute, I went ahead and extracted those and updated the wiki page. Hope they work right and it was okay that I did that--if there are any problems, we can always revert the wiki.
Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: Llorean on June 15, 2007, 12:39:34 AM
Well, the most important question is what is the licensing on those files? Are they legally redistributable, and did you have permission to distribute them?
Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: wesderby on June 15, 2007, 12:45:17 AM
I unzipped them using PowerArchiver (after the trial, I'll likely download the 7-Zip program instead), and they show the "missing" menu items...However, still no speech on the "Database".  When I select "Database", I hear silence. If I scroll the wheel again, it says "Database", but if I select this, it just takes me back to the main menu.

As far as I know, I've initialized the database.  I selected "Initialize", but it didn't give me any verbal clues that it was doing anything, nor was there a "yes" or "no" option spoken, so I can only assume it worked.
If anyone has a clue as to what I might be doing wrong, I'd appreciate it...I don't mind using the file browse since I've set my file and directory system up pretty well, but sometimes the Database would be a better way to browse a collection as large as mine.
 don't know who develops those voice files at this tbrn.net, but they do a great job of keeping up to date...Unfortunately, I didn't see a way to keep up-to-date on when new files are added there, so I've added it to my favorites and plan to check it with every upgrade.

Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: pixelma on June 15, 2007, 05:32:04 AM
It really sounds like your database wasn't initialized successfully, otherwise you would get "artist", "album artist" voiced - even if it's not in your voice file it will at least be spelled if that is enabled.

Initializing the database can take a while depending on the size of your music collection but doesn't give spoken feedback of when it's done. But during the process the harddrive has to spin all the time, so you should be able to either feel it in your hands or hear when the drive stops if you hold it close to your ear. After the drive stops it will need a reboot to be able to use the database and the first bootup afterwards will take a bit longer than usual.

You can easily access the database settings when you hold "select" longer on the "Database" option in the main menu. The settings screen will appear as if it was a context menu and you can choose "Initialize now". After you'll hopefully got it working, I'd recommend to also set the database to "Load to RAM" (browsing it will be faster) and to "Auto Update" which will detect changes to your files. The latter will also need "dircache" though to work properly and quickly.
Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: wesderby on June 18, 2007, 12:53:07 PM
It really sounds like your database wasn't initialized successfully, otherwise you would get "artist", "album artist" voiced - even if it's not in your voice file it will at least be spelled if that is enabled.

Initializing the database can take a while depending on the size of your music collection but doesn't give spoken feedback of when it's done. But during the process the harddrive has to spin all the time, so you should be able to either feel it in your hands or hear when the drive stops if you hold it close to your ear. After the drive stops it will need a reboot to be able to use the database and the first bootup afterwards will take a bit longer than usual.

You can easily access the database settings when you hold "select" longer on the "Database" option in the main menu. The settings screen will appear as if it was a context menu and you can choose "Initialize now". After you'll hopefully got it working, I'd recommend to also set the database to "Load to RAM" (browsing it will be faster) and to "Auto Update" which will detect changes to your files. The latter will also need "dircache" though to work properly and quickly.

Great...Thanks.  I'll give this a try; I probably just didn't wait long enough for it to finish initializing.
Title: Re: Speech Problems with 5Th Gen Ipod (30 GB)
Post by: te on December 26, 2007, 02:02:03 PM
I have the exact same problem, and reinitializing did not help. It is very annoying not being able tohear the menu items under database