Centova Technologies Forum

Centova Cast v3 => Feature requests => Topic started by: DJFire_CFR on August 17, 2012, 06:01:04 pm

Title: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on August 17, 2012, 06:01:04 pm
Well since we have got to the v3 Beta.  Got it installed today and checked it out...  Wooo talk about sexay.. Love the new layout..  so many new features too.. its great...

But one thing I did noticed that it is lacking is the ability to "view" a list of songs setup in the media...  The request widget is pretty nice.. But seems to dull and lacks a few things.

One of things is being able to see what is available for the listeners to request.. (kind of how like Sam BC is setup, It pulls the songlist info from the database, and displays it on a page viewable by anyone visiting the specific page setup with request buttons beside the song)

If Centova was able to do something like this, it would make the request widget ALOT better than that weird little request form..

if someone goes to that form, to request a song... Sure they might have a song in mind they want to hear, but that song might not exist in the playlist.. But they don't know that, because theres no possible way for them to view it.

Other than that simple issue.. I think v3 looks pretty great as it sits now.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: Centova - Steve B. on August 17, 2012, 07:24:31 pm
This is intentional.  First, many (arguably most) stations don't want visitors to have a canonical list of all of the music they have in their database.  Lots of reasons for this, ranging from privacy to copyright to keeping nonstandard tracks (interviews, soundbytes, etc.) unavailable for request.

Second, from a technical perspective, displaying the entire contents of the media library in a single list would be impractical.  Even ignoring the substantial bandwidth requirements of doing so repeatedly for every visitor, it would be slow as hell and would bog down less elegantly-designed browsers (no names shall be mentioned :) ).

Might consider implementing an optional (admin-configured) autocomplete feature at some point in the future, but a browseable list is probably not on the horizon.

Lastly, feature requests should be posted in the feature request forum. :)  Thanks.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on August 17, 2012, 07:35:58 pm
It wasnt really a "feature" request though.. it was more of a general statement about the requests setup for v3...  But I could see how that could be mistaken, as the way I put it...

On another note.. The Sam BC request feature does create the list and displays it on the site with barely any bandwidth usage even with 50+ people looking at the list...

However, the database that is created by Sam BC is "usually" on ones own computer using mysql.. So I guess that would be one of the differences in the bandwidth issue you are referring to.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: Centova - Steve B. on August 22, 2012, 01:21:21 pm
On another note.. The Sam BC request feature does create the list and displays it on the site with barely any bandwidth usage even with 50+ people looking at the list...
Well, that's interesting.  OK, let's look at this logically then.

I did a quick check of my own media library and saw an average track title length of 16 characters, an average album name of 20 characters, and an average artist name of 13 characters.  That's 49 characters of raw data per track, on average.

Add in about another 50 characters or so for JSON overhead for a string like
{ artist: "", album: "", track: "" }

Now you're at 100 characters per track.

It's not at all unreasonable for a station to have well in excess of 10,000 tracks.  In my own personal library alone, I have over 18,000.  I've seen production users with multiple tens, and even hundreds of thousands of tracks.

So taking a modest scenario, multiply 100 characters by 10,000 tracks, and you get 1,000,000 characters, or 1MB of data.  That's one megabyte of data to feed the track list to the browser ONCE.

Now, assuming all browsers can even cope with that much data in a single selectbox (hint: not all of them can) you have to also consider that this is loaded every time someone hits the start page.  Many clients use the start page as the de-facto go-to page for their stream, instead of using it as the example it's intended to be.  So you may end up getting dozens of hits per minute downloading this 1MB of data.

Obviously that will be mitigated somewhat by gzip compression, but you're still looking at 200KB or so per request, plus taxing the browser in trying to parse 1MB of data and stuff it into a selectbox on every page load.

That, in a nutshell, is why I don't see this as viable for the bulk of our clients unless it's implemented via an autocomplete solution of somesuch, which allows us to whittle down the result set before trying to feed the data to the browser.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: dj-tisho on April 07, 2013, 11:25:17 am
I think I fount a solution for this issue, but not completed yet... and need some help.

The idea:
Using jQuery automation ( http://jqueryui.com/autocomplete ) I've made simple html form that included and requests form from Centova 3. For now, my songs from our radio is included in the html as text. I don't know how to get them from outside playlist.txt for example.
So, when you typed in first input field word, the script will show the entire song with artist and title, and when you click on the song, second jQuery script must auto-insert both artist and title of the song in the second and third input fields below. And they can be hidden as well.
Basically this is my idea, but I don't have necessary skills in jQuery to complete It :(
Any help is welcome !

Link of the decoded request form: http://goo.gl/c4Sz7
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on April 07, 2013, 04:22:55 pm
Are you manually inputting the file names in there though?

So when you type in a word (say "jingle"), its pulling from whats listed on the html file?


I have thought of a way to do it... but it involves pulling info from the database for each client/user...

Using php/mysql to create the list, and to be able to request the song... (sort of like how SAM BC works for the requests).

Maybe if the 2 could be mixed together...  the autocomplete and the php/mysql setup of the list of songs...  That could be something better...

As some playlists are "quite large" in size, and that would take hours to manually put all those in the list.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: dj-tisho on April 10, 2013, 12:40:41 am
Steve B.,
 is it possible to use somehow playlist.txt file from media library for database for requests ?
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on June 10, 2013, 08:22:38 pm
I actually got this working.. To where it will display the Songs from the database table "tracks" using the accountid  and displaying the pathname (which is the row for the name of the songs)...

Still working on a few other things.. but so far its working.

Thats about the only area I can find that will display the "Artist - Song"   As the other tables only show the Artist name...    But it shows it as the actual files name

(example: artist-song.mp3)  I cant seem to find any table that shows just the Artist - Song name.. So thats where im stuck at, Unless you dont mind it showing  the file extension... lol  And if the file isnt named "correctly" it will display that..

(example:  05 - song.mp3)
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on June 10, 2013, 10:01:55 pm
Im sure theres an easier way... I just can't think of it atm...

But I setup the file and connection info on the server where centova cast is... and then on another server to display the information, I used PHP code file_get_contents and placed the URL to the file on the Centova Cast server... Which works perfectly...

For some reason, I just cant get it to connect to the database using a different server, so in using file_get_contents, Its basically a direct link.  =\
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on June 11, 2013, 11:46:27 am
Its not a pretty setup, as I was just testing stuff out...

But here is what I got it to do,  This is my Unsigned Artist stream.. I toss'd in the request box just to test some things out (requests are set to 10 mins)  But .. yeah..

http://crossfire-radio.com/test/playlist/index.php

Theres 2 files a connection file, and the display file, which gives the results above.  And as you can see, it shows any Folders you have setup  (like for me, I have a promos folder, so it shows  promos/promofile.mp3)  No way out of that, unless  Centova would add something to the database or change something, I would suppose..  But otherwise, it displays "all" music files and folders you have.

If you have "1000's" of files in there, Im sure you could setup the "coding" to display so much and create other pages with more of the songs.. "split them up" basically.  So its not showing 10,000 songs on 1 page, which would take the page a little bit to load up.  I don't have a ton of music from unsigned artists, So its quick to display.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on June 24, 2013, 08:43:53 pm
well, finally got it all worked out... Just need to set up a few things, and I can put up a demo page.

The Previous link does not work anymore at this time, till I can get a new page setup.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on June 29, 2013, 04:14:42 pm
Well, I finally got it to do, what I wanted it to do...

http://crossfire-radio.com/test/playlist/playlist_display2.php
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on July 01, 2013, 10:45:24 pm
Made some changes and several edits, and now have this:

http://crossfire-radio.com/test/playlist/test2/playlist_display.php
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on July 28, 2013, 10:10:46 am
http://www.crossfire-radio.com/requests2.php 

My setup for the requests using Centova Cast's Auto DJ.

First couple pages of songs are unorganized at the moment, but I gotta fix the ID3 tags it seems, and im unable to do that through Centova, so I have to go through the songs on my PC, edit them, and reupload them to fix it.

But otherwise... Thats pretty much my final draft
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: dj-tisho on July 29, 2013, 12:37:54 am
http://www.crossfire-radio.com/requests2.php 

Hi, and thanks for your work. I have few qustions...
How you generate the playlist on the bottom of your page ?
And how listeners requests songs? They must put proper song name in the form ?
And finally - can you provide for us your code to test it with our radios please ?

Regards,
DJ-Tisho
info (at) OnlineDJRadio.com
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on July 30, 2013, 07:39:33 pm
The playlist is generated using php / mysql to pull the information from the centova cast database for a set user account.

So the only way this can be done currently, is you would need to be the admin and have root access to the database information.  Unless later down the line centova decides to mix this in with centova, then it would be available for all users...  Until then, only root admin with database access is able to set this up.

The listeners can request the songs by typing in the Artist and Song information provided by the playlist,  The request for is the normal Centova Cast request form (the request form created by centova developers)  That is not my code, that is Centovas code.

My code is the part that pulls up the user accounts playlist from their auto DJ.


Because of the work involved and the coding I went through, I can not provide the code free of charge.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: dj-tisho on July 31, 2013, 12:11:15 am
Then, we will hope Centova devs to implement features in requests, like this:
http://goo.gl/c4Sz7
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on July 31, 2013, 05:25:30 pm
Yeah, im pretty sure there are dozens of different ways to implement the playlist.

With the autocomplete, You can only view what you input into the box with whatever artist, etc, you enter.


And with my way, it lets you view it all in a different manner.   And there are many other ways to bring up the playlist.   Im not sure if the autocomplete you have to enter in all your music manually or not.  I am assuming you do since its using an HTML file extension, With the other way ( the one I use), it automatically pulls the information from the database from the set user account.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: dj-tisho on July 31, 2013, 11:19:44 pm
But I don't want listeners to view ALL my songs in playlist.
Autocomplete is good, when they search specific song.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on August 01, 2013, 07:15:51 am
Yeah, so I guess it would be based on user preference on how one would want it listed.

It is possible to block out certain items too.  If you browse through my playlist, I have a folder that is for promos (or station IDs).  In which I have that blocked so its not viewable by the listeners or whomever is requesting.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: ruffino on September 10, 2013, 03:36:49 pm
But I don't want listeners to view ALL my songs in playlist.
Autocomplete is good, when they search specific song.

i agree, i would like a autocomplete feature.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: sistematico on January 23, 2014, 03:06:29 pm
Sorry for necro-posting.

+1
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: TheHosting4You on January 24, 2014, 11:08:44 am
Hello

I'd like to see in v3, this feature because many of my clients are now working with Sam and decided to migrate to Centova with autodj.
I hope this can be made​​, I would also like to inverse meditating for
So what music in autodj state and the number of requests (eg top 10) and when it is then rotated

M.v.g.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: DJFire_CFR on January 24, 2014, 06:08:46 pm
I'll see if I can add in an autocomplete search for the playlist... Been a bit busy lately with some stuff, but I'll take a look and see if I can come up with something.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: ruffino on January 28, 2014, 01:30:41 pm
I'll see if I can add in an autocomplete search for the playlist... Been a bit busy lately with some stuff, but I'll take a look and see if I can come up with something.

Let me know what you find. This would be a good feature and I'm sure would be included in a future release if you implemented it.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: TheHosting4You on February 07, 2014, 03:18:38 am
Hello
I would like to come with you. Matter in contact
To my customers here also ask and there is also an admin at so you can see what song is called demand and by whom

M.v.g.
Title: Re: The requests
Post by: Dj Jeroen on February 07, 2014, 05:43:31 am
Hello everyone ,

I am owner of an internet radio station and we have recently added the future for requesting while the auto dj is playing.
It is all working fine but i am missing important futures here.

The things i am missing are the following :
- It is not possible to overwatch the frequency how often the request server is used in the auto dj.
  Because this is missing i cannot see if this expansion is giving us any benefit.

- It is also not possible to give a track a delay time after it has been requested.
  So if i wanna be funny i can request the same track for multiple times and it also will be played every time.
I would like to have the possibillity to add a time manager so that the same track never will be played within the hour.

Hoping centova will pick this up.