AppleScript or OSC to play next, previous or specific slice in current playing song.

[nizer]

Working with building a ZOOM/QLab platform for a dance school. Love the Syphon Virtual Webcam integration.

I was hoping to use AppleScript or OSC to play next, previous or specific slice in the current playing song.

The song would change all the time, but would contain various slices, I was hoping to use a cart cuelist trigger from a Qlab Remote APP on a iPad with <Pause>,<Next>,<Previous>,<Play>.

Any guidance would be helpful.

[Rich Walsh]

This was really fiddly – partly because I'm a bit rusty after 9 months of stagnation, but also because the "action elapsed" property (still, after years) returns unexpected values if working with rates ≠ 1. I can't figure out the pattern at all – you'd think these two things would evaluate the same but they mostly don't:

log (action elapsed of selectedCue) - (pre wait of selectedCue)

log (percent action elapsed of selectedCue) * (duration of selectedCue) * (rate of selectedCue)

You get different answers if the cue is playing, previewing, loaded to time or clicked in the waveform… I really don't understand it! The second form seems to most consistently report something closest to what I need for the loadActionAt method no matter how you abuse the cue – so I've used that.

Based on an existing "Nudge selected cue(s) forward (without changing their running state)" routine, this _should_ skip through slices in the same way:

-- ###BETA: UNTESTED###

-- Only works properly when run as a separate process!

-- NB: the OSC command will NOT WORK if the workspace has a Passcode

set userMode to item 1 of {"start of previous slice", "start of next slice"} -- Choose direction for skipping

tell application id "com.figure53.QLab.4" to tell front workspace

repeat with eachCue in (selected as list)

try -- Skip over cues that don't take slices

set sliceMarkers to slice markers of eachCue

if sliceMarkers is {} then error -- Abort if no slices

if running of eachCue is true then

pause eachCue

set startFlag to true

else

set startFlag to false

end if

set currentTime to (percent action elapsed of eachCue) * (duration of eachCue) * (rate of eachCue)

-- ###FIXME### As of 4.6.6, "action elapsed" reports differently between clicking in waveform and loading to time when rate ≠ 1

-- Testing revealed rounding errors of the order of 1.0E-12 when comparing times so they are truncated to milliseconds for comparison

set roundedCurrent to my roundToNearest(currentTime, 1.0E-3)

set sliceMarkers to slice markers of eachCue

set sliceTimes to {0}

repeat with eachMarker in sliceMarkers

set end of sliceTimes to time of eachMarker

end repeat

set end of sliceTimes to duration of eachCue

set countSliceTimes to count sliceTimes

repeat with i from 1 to countSliceTimes

if (my roundToNearest(item i of sliceTimes, 1.0E-3)) - roundedCurrent > 0 then

exit repeat -- We have found the next slice start

end if

end repeat

if userMode is "start of previous slice" then

if i ≤ 2 then -- Wrap around if in the first slice

set loadTime to item -2 of sliceTimes

else

set loadTime to item (i - 2) of sliceTimes

end if

else

if i is countSliceTimes then -- Wrap around if in the last slice

set loadTime to 0

else

set loadTime to item i of sliceTimes

end if

end if

set eachID to uniqueID of eachCue

tell me to do shell script "echo '/cue_id/" & eachID & "/loadActionAt " & loadTime & "' | nc -u -w 0 localhost 53535"

if startFlag is true then

start eachCue

end if

end try

end repeat

end tell

-- Subroutines

(* === NUMBER WRANGLING === *)

on roundToNearest(theNumber, toNearest) -- [Shared subroutine]

return (round (theNumber / toNearest) rounding as taught in school) * toNearest

end roundToNearest

I have only partially tested it and expect it to still fail in some situations that I haven't tried…

Building on that, this will allow to you to choose a slice from the selected cue:

-- ###BETA: UNTESTED###

-- Only works properly when run as a separate process!

-- NB: the OSC command will NOT WORK if the workspace has a Passcode

-- ###FIXME### The times displayed in the dialog are as shown in the waveform, not in the Action column (ie: confusing if rate ≠ 1)

-- Declarations

global dialogTitle

set dialogTitle to "Choose a slice"

-- Main routine

tell application id "com.figure53.QLab.4" to tell front workspace

try -- This protects against no selection (can't get last item of (selected as list))

set selectedCue to last item of (selected as list)

set sliceMarkers to slice markers of selectedCue -- This will throw an error if the cue doesn't take slices

if sliceMarkers is {} then error -- Abort if no slices

if running of selectedCue is true then

pause selectedCue

set startFlag to true

else

set startFlag to false

end if

set currentTime to (percent action elapsed of selectedCue) * (duration of selectedCue) * (rate of selectedCue)

-- ###FIXME### As of 4.6.6, "action elapsed" reports differently between clicking in waveform and loading to time when rate ≠ 1

-- Testing revealed rounding errors of the order of 1.0E-12 when comparing times so they are truncated to milliseconds for comparison

set roundedCurrent to my roundToNearest(currentTime, 1.0E-3)

set sliceMarkers to slice markers of selectedCue

set sliceTimes to {0}

repeat with eachMarker in sliceMarkers

set end of sliceTimes to time of eachMarker

end repeat

set countSliceTimes to count sliceTimes

set readableTimes to {}

repeat with eachTime in sliceTimes

set end of readableTimes to my makeHHMMSSsss(eachTime)

end repeat

repeat with i from 1 to countSliceTimes

if (my roundToNearest(item i of sliceTimes, 1.0E-3)) - roundedCurrent > 0 then

exit repeat -- We have found the next slice start

end if

end repeat

set loadTimeReadable to my pickFromListCustomDefault(readableTimes, "Choose which slice to jump to:", i - 1)

repeat with i from 1 to countSliceTimes

if item i of readableTimes is loadTimeReadable then

set loadTime to item i of sliceTimes

exit repeat

end if

end repeat

set eachID to uniqueID of selectedCue

tell me to do shell script "echo '/cue_id/" & eachID & "/loadActionAt " & loadTime & "' | nc -u -w 0 localhost 53535"

if startFlag is true then

start selectedCue

end if

end try

end tell

-- Subroutines

(* === INPUT === *)

on pickFromListCustomDefault(theChoice, thePrompt, theDefault) -- [Shared subroutine]

tell application id "com.figure53.QLab.4"

choose from list theChoice with prompt thePrompt with title dialogTitle default items item theDefault of theChoice

if result is not false then

return item 1 of result

else

error number -128

end if

end tell

end pickFromListCustomDefault

(* === TIME === *)

on makeHHMMSSsss(howLong) -- [Shared subroutine]

set howManyHours to howLong div 3600

if howManyHours is 0 then

set hourString to ""

else

set hourString to my padNumber(howManyHours, 2) & ":"

end if

set howManyMinutes to (howLong mod 3600) div 60

set minuteString to my padNumber(howManyMinutes, 2)

set howManySeconds to howLong mod 60 div 1

set secondString to my padNumber(howManySeconds, 2)

set howManyFractionalSeconds to howLong mod 1

set howManyRoundedSeconds to round 1000 * howManyFractionalSeconds rounding as taught in school

set fractionString to my padNumber(howManyRoundedSeconds, 3)

return hourString & minuteString & ":" & secondString & "." & fractionString

end makeHHMMSSsss

(* === NUMBER WRANGLING === *)

on roundToNearest(theNumber, toNearest) -- [Shared subroutine]

return (round (theNumber / toNearest) rounding as taught in school) * toNearest

end roundToNearest

(* === TEXT WRANGLING === *)

on padNumber(theNumber, minimumDigits) -- [Shared subroutine]

set paddedNumber to theNumber as text

repeat while (count paddedNumber) < minimumDigits

set paddedNumber to "0" & paddedNumber

end repeat

return paddedNumber

end padNumber

You'll have to do your own work to change these from working on selections to "last item of active cues whose q type is "Audio"" – or something like that…

Rich

[Mark Nizer]

WOW. This is above and beyond my expectations. Works great. I will explore them more closely. Thank you sooo much.

The "log (action elapsed of selectedCue) - (pre wait of selectedCue)

log (percent action elapsed of selectedCue) * (duration of selectedCue) * (rate of selectedCue)"

What does that do? Where do I put it to see the result. Again, thank you so much for your help. 

PS: I have been rusting away too. I have my first gig in 5 months in February!!!!!!!!!

Active Media Group

State of the Art Internet and Multimedia

Mark Neisser

ni...@active-media.com

--
Contact support anytime: sup...@figure53.com
Follow QLab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/QLabApp
User Group Code of Conduct: https://qlab.app/code-of-conduct/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "QLab" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qlab/OThBIhapJhg/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to qlab+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/CAB80DD5-BBE5-4046-A175-7B7B1A913C83%40mac.com.

[Rich Walsh]

On 9 Jan 2021, at 15:51, Mark Nizer <freeun...@gmail.com> wrote:

WOW. This is above and beyond my expectations. Works great. I will explore them more closely. Thank you sooo much.

The "log (action elapsed of selectedCue) - (pre wait of selectedCue)

log (percent action elapsed of selectedCue) * (duration of selectedCue) * (rate of selectedCue)"

What does that do? Where do I put it to see the result. Again, thank you so much for your help. 

You'd run it in Script Editor, wrapped up in enough code to get a selectedCue. I've built the attached workspace to demonstrate the issue more clearly – it's been around for years…

Incidentally, if you want the slice tools I posted previously to work on "current audio cue" you'd use this form to specify which cues to process (replace the appropriate line(s)):

set selectedCue to last item of (cues whose running is true and q type is "Audio")

Rich