Script to limit the play time of tracks

[bertkessels]

Hi,

I like to share a small script for limiting the playing time of tracks.
It installs itself as a tool with a dialog that asks the maximum play time in seconds. It checks the limit once each second. If the limit is reached, it just skips to the next track.

With this tool I no longer have to hide long tracks like "Kraftwerk - Autobahn" or "Tubular Bells" on my next party. Six minutes is a setting that works for these cases.
To switch it off again, just set the limit to 0.
It remembers your settings in the ini file.

Cheers,
Bert

[bertkessels]

Here's a new version of the Play Limit Tool.
It solves a problem with the initial settings in the ini file.
Should work fine now.
If you have any suggestions for improvements, please let me know.
Cheers,
Bert

[Guest]

Thank you very much, nice tool!

Regards,
Robert V.

[Guest]

Hoi Bert, bedankt voor het script.

Groeten Leon

[Guest]

Can you make it so we can specify a percent of the song as opposed to the seconds? Sometimes at parties, you want to get to the entire playlist, and seconds is good, but all songs have varying lengths.

Perhaps you can make it a variable so we can switch back and forth?

[SilverEagle]

Hi Guest,

Guest wrote:
> Can you make it so we can specify a percent of the
> song as opposed to the seconds?

It could be done, but I think there must be a misunderstanding somewhere: do you really mean you want the option to cut off each song at (for instance) 80% of its playing time? What would be the use of that?
(And if I ever wrote such a utility I would really like you to sign a clause I was not to be held responsible for any lynching of the party-host! )

> Sometimes at
> parties, you want to get to the entire playlist,
> and seconds is good, but all songs have varying
> lengths.

Maybe your answer is in the above, but to me it is lost in the grammer somewhere - I'm not a native English speaker so bear with me ...

SilverEagle

[Guest]

Thanks for responding.

The use of this sort of thing would be if you are hosting a party for a particular year of music, lets say it's an 80's party. There are many songs from the 1980's and you want to get to all of them. Most folks who go to parties like these hear a song that brings back memories. They don't care if the whole song is played, just the part that brings back that particular memory. What they want is to have as many songs played as possible in the 2hr or 3hr timeframe that the party lasts.

The best way I could think of doing this would be to play 75% or even 80% of the song so we get to all the songs. Most of the time, the beginning and middle of the song is the part that brings back the old-days, then, they're ready for the next song.

Does this make sense?

Thanks again - Dave Timony


SilverEagle wrote:
> Hi Guest,
>
> Guest wrote:
> > Can you make it so we can specify a percent of the
> > song as opposed to the seconds?
>
> It could be done, but I think there must be a
> misunderstanding somewhere: do you really mean
> you want the option to cut off each song at (for
> instance) 80% of its playing time? What would be
> the use of that?
> (And if I ever wrote such a utility I would really
> like you to sign a clause I was not to be held
> responsible for any lynching of the party-host!
> )
>
> > Sometimes at
> > parties, you want to get to the entire playlist,
> > and seconds is good, but all songs have varying
> > lengths.
>
> Maybe your answer is in the above, but to me it is
> lost in the grammer somewhere - I'm not a native
> English speaker so bear with me ...
>
> SilverEagle

[SilverEagle]

Guest wrote:
> ...
> Does this make sense?

Yes it does. What I presume is that this would be most (only?) useful if you prepare a playlist beforehand for the evening, not if you put the machine 'on the floor' for anyone to add songs.

If so I could image you telling the script: 'play the playlist as present in 3 hours and 15 minutes'. Is that what you had in mind? (Seems to me more userfriendly then doing the math yourself and having to put the resulting 80% back into the script again.)

Am I on the right track here?

SilverEagle

[Guest]

Yes, you are correct. It probably would not be as useful to do this if the machine was at a bar or a club (i.e. on the floor). Its definately more useful as a home jukebox.

I would like to learn how to write these types of things myself. I know C# and Java, is it difficult to use the Silverjuke API() to do this sort of thing?

-djt

[SilverEagle]

SJ scripting is in fact javascript, it's very similar to C# and Java, you can find all the SJ specific calls you need in the manual at http://www.silverjuke.net/sdk/, in the section about scripting.

You can use bertkessels' script as starting point, I'd suggest first just try to modify it so it aborts the song at a percentage instead of at a fixed time.

If you have that working you could parse the queue and let the user give an endtime for the party, and calculate how much of each remaining song you can still play. Ideally you'd add this to bertkessels' script so long songs like Tubular Bells (*) get aborted at either the fixed maximum length, or the percentage, whichever is lower. Note that this effects the calculation of the percentage as well...

Enjoy, and don't hesitate to ask any more questions,
SilverEagle
(*) Although maybe for Tubular Bells you should hardcode a special case where it gets skipped after 10 seconds or so...