CDTV-Player 2.31
Full documentation only in AmigaGuide format!
******************************* ** ** ** CDTV-Player 2.3 ** ** ** ** designed in April 1993 ** ** ** ** by Daniel Amor ** ** ** ******************************* I. Introduction Welcome to CDTV-Player 2.3 The idea for this program came up to me, as I was sitting in front of my CDTV and wanted to listen to some music and do some work at the same time. There is the possibility to press the play button while working on Workbench, but nothing else than the track number will be displayed. The other possibility to play Audio-CD's was to forget multitasking and use the built-in player-screen. I thought that this was quite lousy. In the German magazine 'AMIGA-DOS' I found a little program by Dr. Peter Kittel of Commodore - Germany in AMIGA-BASIC. This program looked more like a C-64 program with a lot of PEEKS and POKES. So I translated it into KICK-PASCAL (Lines in AmigaBasic vs Lines in Kick-Pascal = 200 vs 15) and designed a Workbench-Interface (September 1992). This program is FISH-WARE. Commodore may even include this program into the original CDTV-package or bundle it with every CD-ROM. If you use this program for commercial matters, please don't forget to mention my name. II. Features CDTV-Player 2.3 features quite a lot of new options. First of all I added preferences in order to keep the program user-friendly (this will be extended in future versions). Then I've programmed a routine that recognizes the CD if it's in the archive (thanks to Fr�d�ric Botton - Paris for his �Gimme_a_CD�-program and the idea). Then I've introduced a SHUFFLE function and an option to jump to seconds BACK and FORTH. In earlier version only owners of a CD-ROM-drive could use the program. Now everybody with an AMIGA has access to the archive in order to search for a song or just have a look at the program. I've included now an option called KARAOKE. If any lyrics are found in the archive they may be displayed on-screen. Now an AREXX-Port has been included in order to control the function of the CDTV from other programs. III. Gadgets Here's a short explanation of the gadgets. REW : Decreases track number. PLAY : Plays current track. FF : Increases track number. PAUSE : Pauses play. STOP : Stops play. FADE : Fades smoothly in/out. LIVE : Automatic fade in at the beginning of a track and automatic fade out a the end. SINGLE : Toggles between playing one song and the whole CD. REPEAT : Toggles between playing once or multiple times. BACK : Jumps two seconds back. SCAN : Scans into every song on the CD. FORTH : Jumps two seconds forth. SECRET : Future options. KARAOKE : Live on-screen Karaoke (See V. KARAOKE). SHUFFLE : Toggles between normal and shuffled play. PROGRAM : Choose an order of play of your own. PREFS : Access to internal preferences. (See VII. PREFERENCES) EDIT : Opens edit window (See IV. EDIT). DISPLAY : Toggles display-mode: 1. Track time played. 2. CD time played. 3. Remaining track time. 4. Remaining CD time. 5. No display (saves processing time). Modes 3&4 accessible only with SINGLE off. INFO : Displays information. On the right side of the window there is a proportional gadget for the volume. IV. Edit By pressing the EDIT-Gadget in the main window, another window will be opened and you'll get access to the archive. In earlier version you had to choose the CD you wanted to listen to from here. But this is done now automatically, so you can only have a look at the archive now. You can have a look at the songs by pressing the corresponding title. If CDTV-Player does not find the CD in the archive, you've got the possibility to add this CD to the archive, by pressing the ADD CD-Gadget. A new window will be opened and you've got the chance to enter the new CD. If you select a group beforehand then the group name will appear automatically in the group field. V. Karaoke When pressing the KARAOKE-Gadget in the main window, the program searches for the lyrics of the actual song. If found in the archive, they will be displayed on a seperate screen, while playing the song. At the moment there aren't any special effects, but I'm going to do this in the near future (all ideas are welcome). If you want to create own KARAOKE-songs, have a look at 'lyrics:depeche mode.mx' (the only complete one, since I'm too lazy to key in all lyrics). When a genlock is available, you may use it for KARAOKE. VI. Archive The archive is divided actually into two parts. The first part includes the group names and the CD titles, CD time, number of tracks (e.g. Brian Adams, Waking up the neighbours,74:54.38|15). In earlier version I omitted the fractions of the second and the number of tracks, but that was not very precise for finding the right CD in the archive and so I had to include them, too. Have a look at Lyrics/A-ZMusix in order to learn how to build own archives. The second part of the archive consists of the group-files with the track titles and the lyrics. IMPORTANT NOTICE: Although there is a standard for AUDIO-CDs, playtime for the same CD may vary from country to country. If you have a CD, which is in the archive, but isn't recognized then change the time which is being displayed in the ADD-CD window (normally it varies about a few seconds). I'll introduce a function, which allows to change the time in the file. VII. Preferences In this menu you may alter the internal preferences for some functions. On the left side there are two slider-gadgets. With the upper one you may choose the time for fading in & out at the beginning and the end of a track (1sec - 10sec). With the lower one you can choose the time for scanning into each track (5sec - 25sec). On the right there are two check boxes which are both related with the KARAOKE-Feature. Break enables you to quit the KARAOKE whenever you want (a close-gadget appears on-screen) and Time puts the playing time on the KARAOKE-Screen. This has been introduced to ease the input of new KARAOKE-Titles. Preferences are saved to s:CDTV.config. VIII. The future I'll include a function called COPY, which will simplify the COPY of CD's to a cassette. You'll just key in the exact amount of time you want to be copied and the program will select the songs in order to match your timing (or as close as possible). I'll try to use PARNET for my program in order to use e.g. an AMIGA 4000 for KARAOKE while playing from CDTV (i.e. more & faster effects). I'll try to extend the program in order to use it with SCSI-Drives (if anybody has any information on SCSI-Drives, please write). If somebody out there has some other suggestions, needs or useful information then please write to me. (See XIV. Address). IX. Source-Code & Updates You can get the source-code for free, if you write to me and send a disk. Suggestions and ideas are welcome. New groups for the archives are also welcome. CDTV-Player was written in KICK-PASCAL 2.12. You can get updates from me, you can download it from the AMINET, the FRAS, the better mailboxes and can get them of course from the Fish-Disks. X. Assigns Applies to OS 1.3 only! For the moment, you'll have to do one ASSIGN in order to be able to load the Archive (I'm sorry). For example, if you've got the directory CDTV-Player in DF1:, then ASSIGN Lyrics: DF1:CDTV-Player/Lyrics. I've included a script for this purpose. XI. Arexx Arexx has been introduced in order to gain control over CDTV-Player from other programs. Please refer to the examples on the disk. At the moment you can only start a track and stop it again. In future releases you'll get complete control over the program. XII. History of CDTV-Player Version 0.8 (12.09.92) Translation of the AMIGA-BASIC-Program by Dr. Peter Kittel into KICK-PASCAL. Plays songs from CLI/SHELL without Workbench Interface. Version 0.9 (14.09.92) Added Workbench Interface in order to play songs without a keyboard. Added features like PAUSE, SCAN, SINGLE, REPEAT, FADE, DISPLAY. Version 1.0� (18.09.92) Fish-Disk 759 First release with a lot of bugs in it (e.g. it didn't recognize if a CD was taken out of a drive or a floppy disk). Added an INFO-Window. Changed internal handling of 'cdtv.device'. Thought of a function called KARAOKE, but did not know how to do it. Version 1.2 (26.10.92) Redesigned Workbench Interface and added the KARAOKE window. This had nothing to do with KARAOKE, but you could choose the titles of a CD to be displayed while playing it. Removed all bugs concerning the disk-change problem. Version 1.3 (05.11.92) Added message for all people who don't own a 'cdtv.device'. Increased speed of overall program and reduced usage of processing time. Version 1.4 (26.11.92) Added some bugs while removing some others. Many internal changes (You can't 'see' a difference between 1.3 and 1.4, but 1.4 is more stable). Version 1.5 (25.12.92) Fish-Disk 805 Increased size of KARAOKE window, added some gadgets to it. Renewed the documentation and increased speed again. Removed all nasty bugs concerning the KARAOKE option. Version 1.5d (29.12.92) Removed a little bug in the info-requester that caused sometimes a crash. It's a pity, that I've sent the disk four days ago. Version 1.6 (11.01.93) Renamed KARAOKE as EDIT, since I haven't got the time to implement a real KARAOKE function for the moment. Increased speed of EDIT output due to change to dynamic structures (well, at least one thing I could use from university). Moved to AMIGA 4000 for designing code (more memory, more fun). Added SHUFFLE. Version 1.7f (25.01.93) Third official release of CDTV-Player. Now everybody with an AMIGA is able to get into the program and have a look at the gadgets and use the EDIT function in order to look for a certain song. Added a search function in order to find the actual CD in the archive and load it automatically. Added PREFS, BACK & FORTH. Version 1.7j (20.02.93) Added a PROGRAM function and now it's possible to key in your own CD's. Removed quite a lot of unnecessary code. Improved design of EDIT. Removed bugs in SHUFFLE & PROGRAM (internal the same procedure). Version 1.8 (22.02.93) Fish-Disk 849 Fourth official release of CDTV-Player. Included KARAOKE (very popular in Japan & Italy). Every text may be used for this option. Also included ADD CD, in order to key in new CD's. Version 1.9 (23.03.93) Added more preferences in order to toggle features of KARAOKE. Now Karaoke may be stopped at any time and it's possible to have a look at the playing time. Increased speed of KARAOKE-Screen-Output and removed some unnecessary code. Version 2.0 (04.04.93) Fish-Disk 868 Fifth official release of CDTV-Player. Now incorporates an AREXX-Port. This enables you to use the functions of CDTV-Player from other programs. Version 2.01 (23.04.93) Aaaargh. V2.0 did not work on machines where the arexx.library was not installed. Didn't notice until now, since I was using Arexx on my CDTV. Version 2.02 (13.06.93) Disabled AREXX, due to timing problems. Enhanced the ADDCD-Function. Version 2.03 (28.06.93) Enabled AREXX again, because all problems concerning it have been removed. Version 2.05 (13.07.93) Fish-Disk 894 Sixth official release. Removed BUG in ADDCD-Function. Now it saves without any problems (made a work-around for a compiler-bug). REW & FF are now ghosted if there is no higher or lower track. Version 2.06 (28.08.93) CDTV-Player used all processing time. Bug removed. Version 2.10 (29.08.93) Added new Info-Requester and removed a little bug with REW & FF. Enhanced ADDCD. Shows now selected group. Version 2.15 (30.08.93) Vastly improved ADDCD-Function. Exit without saving possible. Version 2.18 (01.09.93) Saves now PREFERENCES. Added WINDOWDEPTH to the INFO-REQUESTER. Version 2.20 (02.09.93) No ASSIGN is necessary for users with Workbench 2.0 or higher! Update of the docs. Version 2.25 (05.09.93) Topaz 8 is now being forced. Output speed increased. Version 2.30 (23.09.93) Program is partly fontsensitive and the rest of it is prepared to be. XIII. Credits (In alphabetical order) AUSTRALIA: Ross Delaforce AUSTRIA: Peter Uitz, Wien CANADA: Darren Ewaniuk, Alberta Nick MacDonald FINLAND: Tomi Blinnikka, Helsinki FRANCE: Fr�d�ric Botton, Paris GERMANY: Markus Bahr, Berlin Ioannis Chatziandreou, Bochum Hans-Christian Eckert, Berlin Marc Eisenach, Stadtallendorf Imke Gisch, Frankfurt Andreas Happel, Flensburg Peter Hellweg, Wetter Kai Hofmann, Bremen Dr. Peter Kittel, Frankfurt Thorsten Kratz, Erlangen Tom Kroener, Saarbr�cken-Dudweiler Gerhard Leibrock, Kirkel Oliver Peiker Alfred Prenner, F�rstenfeldbruck Uwe Ripl Hanns Holger Rutz, Zeven Stefan Schmidt, Wahnebergen Werner V�lker, Ebersbach Michael Zielinski, Hamburg GREECE: Dimitrios Charalampidis, Thessaloniki GREAT BRITAIN: Jason R. Hulance, Oxford Mark A. Smith, Hastings IRELAND: Wai Hung Liu, Dublin ITALY: Felice Murolo, Salerno Federico Villata, Rom LATVIA: Wlad Fomin, Riga Dostick, Riga NEW ZEALAND: Dave Hassall SWEDEN: Thomas Bengtsson Stefan Ohlin, Solleftea SLOWENIA: Jure Vrhovnik, Ljubljana USA: Fred Fish, Tempe D. Jarvis George Knighton, Fremont Thomas J. Moore Arthur T. Murray, Seattle Nhan Nguyen, Sophomore to be continued... (If you like my program, please let me know, then you'll be mentioned here) *************************************************************** ** ** ** You may write to me in ** ** Cesk�, Deutsch, English, Fran�ais, Italiano, Russkij. ** ** ** ** Snail Mail: Daniel Amor ** ** Ludwigstr. 124 ** ** 70197 Stuttgart ** ** Germany ** ** ** ** E-Mail: amor@student.uni-tuebingen.de ** ** FidoNet: 2:246/1416 (Amiga Universe) ** ** ** ***************************************************************