Topic: Auto scrolling of lyrics possible? (Read 6726 times)

MrHaugen · « **on:** June 01, 2006, 08:57:00 am »

I'm trying to make my own beautifull track info plugin with lyrics.

The problem is that most of my lyrics and bios are taking to much space for my 1024 x 768 projector. Have to scroll manually, and that is not great with only a remote control.

I would like to make the text scroll down as the track plays. This could be something like show the middle of the lyrics when half through the song etc...
Prefferably in a smooth scrolling motion.

Can this be done?

KingSparta · « **Reply #1 on:** June 01, 2006, 11:59:12 am »

Well Yes And No

I was thinking about this for the past year Lets Say The Lyrics First Line Was 10 Seconds In. and you constructed manualy a data file for lyrics that a plug-in could read.

Something like

00:00:01 Beatles, The
00:00:02 Number One
00:00:03 A Hard Day's Night
00:00:10 It's been a hard day's night
00:00:13 And I've been workin' like a dog.
00:00:16 It's been a hard day's night.
00:00:20 I should be sleepin' like a log,

So when ever you want a line displayed it will scroll up one line other wise there will not be anyway to regulate the lyrics if you did not have a time line. But this could only be done in a plug-in and not in a template

Doof · « **Reply #2 on:** June 01, 2006, 12:33:06 pm »

Yeah, I was actually thinking it would be a neat feature to include in Lyrics Editor someday, but without some kind of plugin to display it (a visualization plugin would make the most sense and I haven't a clue how to even get started writing one), I'm not sure there's much of a point.

Actually, the display could probably be done in an interface plugin, but that's even less conveinent to access via remote than scrolling a track info template is.

I'm willing to tackle the lyric editing half of it if somebody else is willing to tackle the vis half.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #3 on:** June 01, 2006, 06:03:21 pm »

Ok. No easy solution I guess.

Quote from: KingSparta on June 01, 2006, 11:59:12 am

I was thinking about this for the past year Lets Say The Lyrics First Line Was 10 Seconds In. and you constructed manualy a data file for lyrics that a plug-in could read.

I think that would be incredible time consuming to do on 11000 tracks

If you guys could come up with some sort of plugin it would be great! Just an approximatly accurate scrolling would be good.

I'm thinking about reading number of lines in the lyrics. 25 lines would be 4%each line. Then scroll the lyrics 1 line every 4% of the track length. Would be good to get a delay in the beginning though. That's roughly what I was thinking, but I guess it have to be made with some kind of plugin anyway.

Just what my thoughts

KingSparta · « **Reply #4 on:** June 01, 2006, 06:10:24 pm »

Quote

I think that would be incredible time consuming to do on 11000 tracks

so you don't have the time then, if your young you might.

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #5 on:** June 02, 2006, 03:21:41 am »

EvilLyrics kind of allows you to do this with it's Karaoke mode,
but it's far from brilliant. It also has the problem that the
interface does not allow the resyncing of songs,
so my plugin cannot do that at the moment.

Maybe if enough people lobbied Marek in the
EvilLyric forums he may add it!

MrHaugen · « **Reply #6 on:** June 02, 2006, 09:30:40 am »

I consider my self pretty young. But I do not want to spend the rest of my spare time timing my lyrics...

As to using Evil lyrics, It's far from brilliant yes. And it would require you to have EL running and showing together with MC, would it not? Don't really like the idea.

Are there no HTML geeks here that can give me a code sample to show the fist half of the lines in the lyrics tag, and then the next half, on a fixed time interval or something? Even if I have to export all the lyrics to txt files I will do it. There have to be ONE easy way to do this. Even if it is far from perfect.

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #7 on:** June 02, 2006, 11:25:46 am »

Quote from: MrHaugen on June 02, 2006, 09:30:40 am

I consider my self pretty young. But I do not want to spend the rest of my spare time timing my lyrics...

As to using Evil lyrics, It's far from brilliant yes. And it would require you to have EL running and showing together with MC, would it not? Don't really like the idea.

EvilLyrics is very light on resources, and you can tell it to minimize to system tray if you look
in the options. It's quite nice just being able to pop it up immediatley to review the lyrics...
Fraid I never got on with HTML
Marra might be able to help you. He's had some luck with getting Javascript to do some interesting things.

KingSparta · « **Reply #8 on:** June 02, 2006, 11:30:08 am »

it will never work.

the lyrics need to be timed.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #9 on:** June 02, 2006, 01:04:28 pm »

Quote from: KingSparta on June 02, 2006, 11:30:08 am

it will never work.

the lyrics need to be timed.

Guess I'll have to make a trackinfo plugin with huge scroll buttons so I can easily hit them with my remote then.

Is there any way to auto-time the lyrics? In the tag it self or in a txt-file with lyrics? If there is a possibility, it might give a easy solution. At least if the duration of the track could be considered in the process.

A long shot...

KingSparta · « **Reply #10 on:** June 02, 2006, 01:09:33 pm »

Quote

Is there any way to auto-time the lyrics? In the tag it self or in a txt-file with lyrics?

No, and when you do this you may run out of room in MC's lyrics field since it will only hold so many bytes of info.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #11 on:** June 02, 2006, 02:42:41 pm »

Darn. Back to my "big browse button track info plugin".

Thanks for the input guys!

Doof · « **Reply #12 on:** June 02, 2006, 03:00:52 pm »

I'm not sure what kind of information is attainable by a Track Info template.

I know that an interface plugin could do what you want, just split the lyrics in half, display the first half, then when the playing position > file duration, display the second half. You could even split it into thirds or quarters, if you wanted.

But like I said, navigating to an interface plugin with your remote is probably harder than scrolling a track info template up and down.

But maybe a standalone .exe that can access MC? Something you could start up and kill with a remote button?

The best way would be to write an actual visualiztion plugin that could do it.

c1c9k72 · « **Reply #13 on:** June 02, 2006, 04:43:47 pm »

Quote from: KingSparta on June 02, 2006, 11:30:08 am

it will never work.

the lyrics need to be timed.

Agreed. In the latest implimentation of ID3 (v4?), there appears to be an upgrade to the Lyrics specifications called Lyrics3. The information on it can be found here.

http://www.id3.org/lyrics3200.html

This seems to be the beginning of what you want, though I'm not sure how MC11 responds, if at all, to Lyrics3.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #14 on:** June 02, 2006, 07:02:52 pm »

Sorry for mixing up. I don't intend to make a plugin at all. That's beyond my capabilities.
Just sticking with some html track info templates and editing them i guess.
Need something to go with the playing now screen.

If this could be done with a visualization I don't know. It don't see the logic.

Quote from: c1c9k72 on June 02, 2006, 04:43:47 pm

In the latest implimentation of ID3 (v4?), there appears to be an upgrade to the Lyrics specifications called Lyrics3.

As for the lyrics3 v2. I would really welcome it. But on the other hand it might be harder for people to wright lyrics and submitting them due to the far more complex system, with the timings and all. I would personaly never wright many of them...

Quote from: Doof on June 02, 2006, 03:00:52 pm

I know that an interface plugin could do what you want, just split the lyrics in half, display the first half, then when the playing position > file duration, display the second half. You could even split it into thirds or quarters, if you wanted.

Sounds neat. Not an expert on plugins. So, would it work like a popup or would it remain in the half screen of the playing now? Don't understand why it would be so much trouble if it do...

iCamp · « **Reply #15 on:** June 02, 2006, 07:04:34 pm »

If it's impossible how do other media players do it? There are plug-ins available for Media Monkey, iTunes, and Winamp which all scroll lyrics in time with the song. I've played with them in the past but don't remember the specific details surrounding them. I wonder if they only worked with lyrics in their database (which may have been pre-timed).

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #16 on:** June 03, 2006, 04:32:57 am »

Quote from: iCamp on June 02, 2006, 07:04:34 pm

If it's impossible how do other media players do it? There are plug-ins available for Media Monkey, iTunes, and Winamp which all scroll lyrics in time with the song. I've played with them in the past but don't remember the specific details surrounding them. I wonder if they only worked with lyrics in their database (which may have been pre-timed).

It's not impossible, EvilLyrics has it time synced too, the question is where the data can come from...
It can't magically do it without the timing data. Maybe someone could find out where Media Monkey
get there data from. EvilLyrics has an option to save the data in LRC Format what ever that is...
so I'm guessing theres some standard for doing this. You could have it non time synced,
scrolling up the screen using HTML or whatever so that it takes the length of the song and works
out an average scroll rate to get to the end, it might look a bit funny tho..
Going down the timing route I think the extra timing data would be best saved in an extra
tag field...

MrHaugen · « **Reply #17 on:** June 03, 2006, 08:41:30 am »

Quote from: Mr ChriZ on June 03, 2006, 04:32:57 am

You could have it non time synced, scrolling up the screen using HTML or whatever so that it takes the length of the song and works
out an average scroll rate to get to the end, it might look a bit funny tho..

That's excactly what I hoped to achieve. Do you or anyone else know how the code for something like this would look like?? An example would be great!

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #18 on:** June 03, 2006, 08:52:03 am »

Oops sorry made a mistake there.
HTML on it's own isn't enough if you want it to work out the average time.
You'd need to use something like php/asp?/javascript embedded in the HTML.
I don't know any of these languages sufficiently well to know
how easy it is to scroll with them. HTML has marquee's which will scroll text left to right, and it would appear up and down
http://www.hypergurl.com/marquee.html

These are the things the trackinfo would need to do...
1. Obtain the track length from MC as a string
2. Convert that string into an integer (Seconds)
3. Obtain the current resoloution...
4. Obtain the Lyrics as a string
5. Work out how many lines the lyrics consist of...
6. Do some maths to work out how fast the text should be going in order to
scroll correctly... (How well this works depends on the precision of the scroll
which you are using)
7. Display the lyrics...

Again you'd have problems where the scrolling not synced with MC
so if you changed track position the scroll would probably loop.

Alternatively for your purposes just having it scrolling slowly on a loop may be
enough? (In which case the HTML will do it, just use it from the site above)

KingSparta · « **Reply #19 on:** June 03, 2006, 09:26:05 am »

that still will not work

so if they played music with no lyrics for 30 seconds lets say the lyrics will be shown at the wrong moment

your theory would be correct if lyrics was constant throughout the complete song and if the tempo was maintained.

so your method has flaws

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #20 on:** June 03, 2006, 09:32:26 am »

Quote from: KingSparta on June 03, 2006, 09:26:05 am

that still will not work

so if they played music with no lyrics for 30 seconds lets say the lyrics will be shown at the wrong moment

your theory would be correct if lyrics was constant throughout the complete song and if the tempo was maintained.

so your method has flaws

It does exactly what it says on the tin.
It's not synced. So yes if the lyrics are not started with the Song then
the scrolling will be behind. I don't think MrHaugen is looking for high presision here tho.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #21 on:** June 03, 2006, 09:57:34 am »

Right. High presicion is not needed. Would like the right lines to be on the screen most of the times thouh.

I tried with this:

<marquee bgcolor="white" scrollamount="0" direction="up" loop="false" width="100%"> TRACKINFO_INSERT_LYRICS</marquee>

As you say It starts right away, and most songs have a instrumental only in the beginning. That is the problem. If I have a high enough text box I might get lucky and the lyrics start before the text dissappears in the top. No good solution.
Another problem with this is that even the bottom speed (1) of the marquee code is still to fast for some texts.

Is there no way to pause this for a fixed number of seconds?
I found this page wich could help with that:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex2/crosstick.htm
But I think that it would require several "messages" to work. I guess the lyrics is considered as one "message"?

Quote from: Mr ChriZ on June 03, 2006, 08:52:03 am

These are the things the trackinfo would need to do...
1. Obtain the track length from MC as a string
2. Convert that string into an integer (Seconds)
3. Obtain the current resoloution...
4. Obtain the Lyrics as a string
5. Work out how many lines the lyrics consist of...
6. Do some maths to work out how fast the text should be going in order to
scroll correctly... (How well this works depends on the precision of the scroll
which you are using)
7. Display the lyrics...

This list seems to be a good solution. I'll get on it when I have my code expert friend around. To long time since I'we done this sort of things.
Thanks again guys!

ONE other thing KingSparta. Where are your BIOS finder plugin? Can't find it on your site

KingSparta · « **Reply #22 on:** June 03, 2006, 11:16:13 am »

Quote

ONE other thing KingSparta. Where are your BIOS finder plugin? Can't find it on your site

i know someday maybe i will play with it, i did not like the way it was saving data.

A-Ge0 · « **Reply #23 on:** September 24, 2006, 05:05:22 am »

an idea is to have the lyrics in subtitles (movie subtitles) file format, for compatibility with other programs. (srt for example). The plugin should read the time stamp and scroll the window accordingly. An other feature of the plugin should be to create the srt file by listening to the music and clicking at the right time the senetence is spoken and the time stamp would be automatically inserted.

benn600 · « **Reply #24 on:** October 30, 2006, 09:13:51 pm »

I would love this feature. I know how to program somewhat in C, Java, and Perl. I'm still just starting a beginner in some ways, though. Can someone give me a broad overview of the steps involved in writing a plugin and then I can ask for clarification in certain steps and I might just try to tackle a plugin myself. I'd love a plugin like this!

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Auto scrolling of lyrics possible? (Read 6726 times)