* Pro Digital Player * ----------------- v 5.1 Chris Mulready (c) Copyright 1995 Hello and welcome to Pro Digital Player for the Amiga. In brief, the P.D.P. is a front_end Digital player to be taken seriously! which will allow you to play any digital recording from you Amiga`s Hard Disk, and will perform just like a real a CD Player. Pro_Digital_player will also allow you to play samples that have been recorded with any Mono sampler in true Stereo!. This must not! be confused with simulated stereo, which this is Not! Although Mono samples are! only played in simulated! stereo. Pro_digital_player will help you to use your MONO! sampler to record real stereo! samples. I have spent quite some time on rewriting and improving the player Before deciding to release it, and is packed with many features and commands, so please read the Instruction carefully, This is not just your ordinary sample player. Pro Digital Player has been optimised! to its fullist! to make use of it, as easy and as automated as possible. Points to remember are:- Optimising also includes:- Pro Digital Player leaves NO! Gaps between playing individual samples. That is to say.. when one tune ends, the next one is played directly afterwards without any delay. If you find there is a delay between samples, this will be down to the recording itself! and not! Pro Digital Player. Problem:- Either there is some silence at the beginning of the next sample or Trailing silences at the end of the previous sample, or Both! Solution:- One solution would be to take some lessons in digital recording and then try record your sample again. :-)) Of course I have not named this Pro! Digital Player for nothing! I have made available a function to Optimise your samples and to get rid of those badly! recorded Intro`s and endings in your recording. ;-) When used to its fullist!, Pro_Digital_Player will be, I think, a much more viable way to transport and play digital recordings, Why go to to the market and spend a few hundred bucks on a bog standard Digital player like the Sony Mini Disc. When you already have an AMIGA! which is quite capable of doing the same job, and some! And with Pro Digital Player you can retrieve your Digital recordings quite easily. And unless the Mini Disc drops to a reasonable price, like say... 50.00 quid! I dont think I`ll be rushing out to swap my Amiga for one! :-)) I could go on about all the goodies!! that Pro Digital Player has, but.. Your going to have to read all the Instructions carefully if you want to get the Most out of it. Playback speeds are at the moment upto about 18k per second, if you wish to use higher speeds you Must! Increase the BUFFER size like so.. Speed x 4 x 6= new buffer Size (Chip Mem Only!) This formula is used as a guide line for calculating new buffer sizes, although you may get away with using smaller buffers, but this will increase the amount of disk access and slow down you hard drive if you are trying to multi task. If you are realy stuck! with small buffers, you will have to limit yourself to lower playback speeds. Gaps and delays may also appear if you try to use very small BUFFERs, with fast playback speeds because your HardDrive maybe too slow to cope with them. So if you have enough memory to spare you can change the Buffer by using TOOL TYPE: BUFFER=[Buffer Size] inside Pro_Digital_Player.info IMPORTANT!! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO RENAME or MOVE Pro_Digital_Player.info from it`s Main Directory. Since Pro_Digital_Player Expects to Find the File named as: Pro_Digital_Player.info Any May not Function!! Without it!!!! Using Higher speed without increasing the buffer size may have unpredictable results If however you have set a default buffer larger than available memory, a requester will appear to ask if you wish to have Pro Digital Player reconfigure the buffer using the RESERVE value set in the .info file as TOOL TYPE: RESERVE=[size] This value indicates to Pro Digital Player, how much chip mem you want to hold back from the available RAM for system use, so Pro Digital Player will not Grab all Chip Mem. It will then calculate the Max buffer size minus the reserve value. If you click YES it will go a head and re-adjust the buffer size. If you click No, you will exit Pro Digital Player, where you can now change the Default buffer size manually using the TOOL TYPE, BUFFER=[] Before starting up again. »»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» Pro_Digital_Player Instructions Getting straight into to it now, First thing to do is load the Pro Digital Player by either a click of an Icon or through CLI, by typing... 1> dh0:c/execute Pro_digital_player:Pro_digital_player A few moments later and you should be presented with the Main screen which looks very much like your regular CD Player. Click your mouse and you will now be presented with a file selector, from which you can now select several samples you wish to play. when you select your 1st sample, another file selector appears from which you now must select the speed that you wish your sample to be played. If your prefered speed does not show up in the list, dont worry you can type in your desired speed, then hit return you will now switch back to the main file selector to choose yet another sample, if however, you do not want to load any other samples, just click OK and you will be returned to the main screen, where you will now hear your samples being played in Gloriouse MONO! (but dont dispare!) help is at hand, (more on this in a mommemt, but first! look at the lower part of the CD player and you will see 2 buttons marked FILTER( toggles Filter on/off) REPEAT(Repeats the current track) MEGA MIX As mentioned earlier, Pro_Digital_player leaves no gaps between playing each recording Not only does this increase your listen pleasure it also means you can do some interesting things with Pro Digital Player. Say you had imported a very large Sample from say 3 floppies and had just copied them on to your hard disk, and had not joined them as of yet! you can now select those 3 parts and they will be played in a continuous Loop,(and No Gaps!) This leads us to the ability to make your own re-mix`s. Since you could chop up a very large! sample into smaller ones (Limited to Approx above 99k each maybe smaller) So you can then play them in any order you wish! and create a very! long re-mix, without consuming much memory, since you can call these sample parts as Many times as you wish in any order from the hard disk without going low on memory! The 2 buttons just above play, allow you to scan backward and forward through your current selections. When you have found the title you wish to listen to, click the PLAY button, If Pro_digital_Player has registered you clicking PLAY, an indicator will light up be side the displayed title and a few moments later, your new selection will be played. WHO LOVES MONO!? (Use a Headphone Set for best results!) There is a function built in to play your Mono Samples in Stereo pan Mode!? ( MONO-Wide) to you, or Simulated Stereo!. Select the M key on your keyboard, and if you look at the main display just above FILTER, you will see (-) this is mono-wide if you hit it again you will see ((-)) this is mono-Wider, and once again (((-))) this is Mono-Widest!! The effect will not be instant, so here`s the demo! While the current track is playing Select M until you see - instead of (((-))), now click on the CD Tray (Centre) and select one of your favourite samples. once loaded, you will be hearing it in MONO! now select (-) by pressing Mon you keyboard, when you see (-) appear, with your mouse click what appears to be the Play button on the CD and your current sample will be repeated but this time in Stereo Pan(1), you can repeat this upto 3 times before going back to mono!(yuch!). I find that 1 and 2 are fine for regular music, whereas 3 is best suited to Instrumentals,Soundtracks and Classical music. LOADING OTHER SELECTIONS: As you can see, making other selections is made by clicking the centre of the CD tray. When the file selector appears you can now make other selections by clicking the file of your choice. PARENT Clicking Parent will bring you backwards through the Directory tree OK Clicking OK Loads in your new selection for playing, However if you click OK without making any selections, you will be returned to the main screen and the last selection loaded will be repeated. CANCEL Clicking Cancel at any time during selection of new files will forget all your new selections, and will now play your previous Selections that where playing before you called up the file selector. This also applies if you where to click OK without making any selections. VOLUMES:/Assigns: To view any other Volume`s or Assigns you may have mounted, just click the right mouse key, and all Volumes: and Assigns: will be displayed in the file selector. COMMANDS and ADVANCED FEATURES: As explained earlier if a required speed does not appear in the file selector, you can just type in an alternative speed. However you can also add other speeds to the list like so.. Exit Pro_Digital_Player. Load up your favourite TEXT editor (1>ed will do), once load up do not type anything, Not even a RETURN. Now from the SAVE menu select SAVE AS, you should be presented with a file selector (in most cases), into this type the name of your file. The name of your file will be the same as the speed you wish to add to your list. EXAMPLE FILENAME: 34000 Once you have typed this in at the file requester, just hit RETURN and this will now be saved out as 34000, or whatever speed you typed. For this speed to show up in your list, you must insure that you have saved this file to: Pro_Digital_Player:DATA/SPEED/ This is inside the SPEED(Drawer) which is inside the DATA(Drawer) contained inside the main Pro_Digital_Player(Drawer). Whenever you run Pro_Digital_Player, your new speed will show up for your to select. LINKING SEVERAL SAMPLES BY SELECTING JUST ONE! If you have Several Samples you always play in sequence, like say a VERY LARGE!! sample chopped into 20 parts! :-) which are played at the same speed in strict! sequence. It can be very time consuming to select all 20 samples one at a time and to select the same sample speed 20 times as well. With this in mind I have made available yet another function to overcome this hastle. Rename all 20 samples and give them the same Name, but add a 2 digit number to the end of the name like so... mysample01 mysample02 mysample03 mysample04...... Mysample11 Mysample12 And so on.. Once you have done this, next time you select a sample named say.. Dance01 Then select the speed you wish to play it at, all samples Dance01 Dance02.. and above will be loaded automatically and played at the same speed in sequence. Saving you all the bother! of doing it manually! IMPORTANT! Only rename samples that are broken into several parts and are part of each other, or you may get unpredictable results! SCRIPT FILES: A script file will allow you to use a combination of the above, in a quick and easy manner. You can give a script any name you wish, so long as it has .script at the end of its name. EXAMPLE NAME: MySamples.script EXAMPLE SCRIPT: -p dh0:samples| -n enya.iff| -s 25000| -p dh0:samples| -n quantumleap01| -s 21000| -p dh0:samples| -n quantumleap02| -s 21000| -p dh0:samples| -n raiders.iff| -s 9500| -p dh0:samples| -n Safari.iff| -s 21000| # This is an example of a script file which can be used to play several samples in sequence. You must! include the | bar after each entry! -p =Path -n = -s =SampleSpeed -o =Offset(Stereo) -e =EndSampleMarker -c Chop # =End of Script Do not include the / sign when writing PATH as this is added later. Example:- -p dh0:samples| -n mysample| -s 25000| Pro_Digital_Player will now look for file name DH0:Samples/mysample Dont forget! the spaces after each command sign, -p -n -s Correct -p dh0:samples| Wrong!! -pdh0:samples| SCRIPT LOAD: You can load a script file from the main file Selector, simply select a script file instead of a sample, and the script is automatically loaded. You will then be presented again with the main file selector, and if everything went ok, it should say something like... SCRIPT OK! You can now either select ok to end or continue selecting other samples/scripts. At the top of the file selector. If an ERROR! has occurred you will see.. SCRIPT ERROR! ERROR IN SCRIP! Which means either you did not enter one of the commands correctly one of these:- -n -p -e -c -s OR: The script did not have an end of script marker which is: # (See example script above) All commands above should be self explanatory except -o -e -c commands (-o Command) The -o command sets the offset value of the sample so that the sample will start playing from. (Mono Samples Only!) Say you enter -o 23000, your sample will now be played starting from 23000 bytes into your sample instead of 00001 which is the beginning of your sample. Up-Date:- Important! Since Optimising Pro Digital Player the -o Offset command is now used to offset the 2nd Channel Only of a stereo Sample, although it will still work fine on Mono Samples as an Offset command, there is now however a universal Offset command -c Chop. -c Chop command when used for either Stereo or Mono Samples will Offset the entire Sample by whatever value -c is given. It does the same job on Mono samples as the -o command But is used to Offset an entire Stereo sample too, which -o does not!. The -c command was included because I needed to be able to offset the Left or Right channel of a stereo sample, and since I ended up using the -o command twice, 1st for offsetting an entire Mono sample, then To offset one channel only! on a stereo sample, I found I needed another command to Offset an entire Stereo Sample. So I came up with the -c command, which is now used to offset both stereo and mono samples, with the -o command for offsetting a single channel of a stereo sample. (-e Command) This is like the above command except it marks the cut off point in your sample. the value given is deducted from the total length of the sample. So if your sample was 23000 bytes long, and you enter -e 3000. your sample will end at 20000. Both -o -c -e commands must be place in your script before the -p command. (-l Command) This command simply loops your sample, the value given indicates how manytimes the sample will Loop. -l 4 Loop 4 times. This can be use in conjunction with the -o -e commands the loop sections of any sample. Again, this must be placed at the beginning of your script, as with -o -c -e. There is also one more script command -m (MONO Select) This command is optional and is place at the end of a script just before # end of file marker like so.. -o 23000| -e 3000| -c 2500| -p dh0:samples| -n mysample| -s 21000| -l 4|<---- Loop 4 times -m 3|<---- Using stereo pan(3) (((-))) #<-------- dont forget end of file marker the -m command can be given a value of 1 to 3 (stereo pan (1) (2) (3)). If this command is not found in your script then your Mono samples will be automatically played in default mode (MONO) NOTE: Please note that -o -c -e -m -l are all Optional commands and are not included in a script if you do not wish to use them. Whereas, you MUST! include -p -n -s # these commands. Another advantage of using a script file to play sequences samples, is that your samples no longer have to be named with the trailing 01 02 03 04 ... They can be named any thing you wish, because a script is followed in strict order, the 01 02 03 ... is not needed. If you have a favourite script which you always load when you run Pro_Digital_player. This can be automatically loaded for you, by renaming it, Default.Script And then placing it in the Scripts(Drawer) inside the Pro_Digital_Player: Directory. Pro_Digital_Player will always look for this script everytime it is run. USING YOUR MONO SAMPLER TO PLAY STEREO! Being the generous person I am, I have included a function to allow you to play true! Stereo samples recorded with a MONO Sampler. To do this, you will need to record from both the Left and the right channels of your HiFi CD or Walkman as a separate Sample. Give both samples the same name but include the letters .l and .r in the sample name like so.. Maddona.l Madonna.r When you have done this, to load these samples into Pro_Digital_Player, you will only have to select one of the samples. either Sample.l or Sample.r, The other sample is automatically selected and loaded for you. When you first load these samples and hear them being played. It is likely they will not play in sync with one another. This is not a problem for Pro_Digital_Player to sort out. CLEANING UP DIGITAL RECORDINGS: (Headphones recommended!) While your new! Stereo sample is being played, Click the right mouse key, a control panel will appear. There is a large play icon, below that there is 2 other icons. There are also 3 offset zones for entering your offset values and an area for changing playback speeds. NOTE: Any new values entered will have no effect unless you hit the Large Play Icon on the panel. Hitting this repeatedly very fast! will help you to find your offsets, (explained later) (Ensure you have set a reasonable size buffer for best result! or EDIT PANEL maybe un-usable) EXIT: Quits the control panel without saving an changes SAVE: Will save all changes and Exit the control panel Offset: Entering a value here will offset the entire sample by what ever value you enter(Used to find absolute! beginning of recording.) Chan.L: »S« A value here will offset one channel L or R in a stereo recording. a posative value offsets the Left channel, where as a negative value will offset the right channel. End: Whatever value is entered here will be deducted from the total length of the recording, so shortening the sample and creating a new end point in the recording, so it ends sooner.(Used to get rid of empty space at end of recording) You should by now hear a few seconds of the beginning and a couple of seconds from the end of your sample being played repeatedly. This takes a bit of getting used to I know. First thing to do is to get your new stereo samples L and R to start playing Simultaniously! (Use Headphones For best results!) ________ While your sample is being played click inside Chan.L:|________| »S« on the control panel, and enter a value of say 1000, and hit return. Now click the large play icon on the control panel, as you do, listen carefully to the beginning of the recording, Increase or decrease the value and click play until you find that both L and R channels start playing at the same time. If entering a posative value makes things worse, then enter a negative value instead. Posative values upto 50000 Negative values to -50000 When you have set these to your desired taste you are now ready to find the absolute beginning of your recording. FIND BEGINNING OF RECORDING: ________ Click inside the Offset:|________| part of the panel and enter a value of say 1000 or above. Now very quickly click the play icon repeatedly. If it takes more than a millisecond for you recording to start playing, increase this value until you find your recording plays the instant! you release the mouse key. If you find you are loosing part of the recording the decrease the value until you find the Absolute! Beginning. When you have done this, all that is left is to find the Absolute! end. FINDING END OF RECORDING: Now change your attention toward the time gap between the recording ending and when it loops back to the beginning, you are now trying to reduce this gap.to an absolute! minimum. _________ Enter a value in the End:|_________| part of the panel, start with 1000 and click the play Icon once again. Increase or decrease this value and click play Until you find the gap between the end and the loop to the beginning is at its absolute! minimum. You are now ready to save all changes to your Amiga`s Hard drive. SPEED CHANGE: Just Click inside the Speed: area and enter a new speed, then hit Return. SAVING CHANGES To save all your hard work just click SAVE on the panel and this will be save to a file with the same name as your sample, but with .Script added to the end of the file name, like so.. Sample name: Mysample.l Filename : Mysample.l.Script You will now hear your recording played back with the changes you`ve just made. If a file of the same name already exists, you will be alerted! by a requester which you either click OK to go ahead and overwrite the existing file, or enter a new name in the space provided, then hit RETURN. IMPORTANT! Only enter the name of the file, do not include .script or PATH, this is already done for you, when you hit RETURN. EDITING MONO RECORDING Editing a mono recording is done in the same way as Stereo recordings except you do not use the Chan.l: »S« part of the panel, because your only interested in editing the beginning and the ending of the recording. Info:- Using the -o Offset command in a script for stereo samples Only offsets The second sample, Sample.r. As explained earlier. For those of you who dont quite now how to capture the left and right channels of a sample with your Mono/Stereo Sampler. Follow these steps:- To capture Your Stereo Sample. (1) Plug any mono sampler into your amiga. (2) Make or buy an audio lead with a stereo jack plug to plug into your HiFi CD or Walkman headphone socket. On the other end of the lead should be two separate Left and right plugs of suitable type to plug into your Mono sampler (Example Audio Lead) Left =|------------\ >------------|== (this end into Headphone socket) Right =|------------/ ^ | Stereo Jack Plug (3) Plug the Stereo jack into your CD HiFi or Walkman. (4) plug the Left channel into your mono sampler (5) Using Suitable software record your sample to your hard Drive. name it Sample.l (6) Repeat steps 4 and 5 with the Right channel of your lead. Name this sample.r Now you can load these samples into Pro_Digital_Player and it will Play them in true Stereo! Clean up your samples!! To ensure you get the best! possible performance from Pro Digital player You Must! clean up your Digital recordings, by getting rid of long quite beginnings and endings. When you have made a collection of clean scripts you can now have them played by Pro Digital Player at its best! ( And no Gaps!) just like the Professionals! ;-)) TIMER(Display) When Pro_digital_player is first run you will be presented with a timer in the main display. Default is: Remaining time: If you Click your mouse inside the timer, it will change to Elapsed Time: Click once again, System Time After that you will be returned to Remaining Time. SWITCHING BETWEEN WORKBENCH AND PRO_DIGITAL_PLAYER: (2.0+ Only!) Hit the TAB key to see the Workbench, a small window will appear, close this window to get back to Pro_Digital_Player. (1.3 or less will CRASH!) If after hitting TAB you find you have a blank screen instead of Workbench, try pressing L-Amiga-m to see the Workbench. QUIT: Click On/Off button on the CD Player. MORE INFORMATION: TOOL TYPES: DEFAULT=[Full path and file name] Name of Default Script/Recording FILTER ON (filter always on) FILTER OFF (Filter always off) CLOCK=1 (Elapsed time) (=2 SystemTime) (=0 Remaining Time) MONO=0 (Mono wide off) 1=pan(1) 2=pan(2) 3=Pan(3) BUFFER=[size] =Maximum PlaySpeed(bytes Per Second) x 4 x 6=[Buffer Size] Example: Speed=20000 x 4 x 6=480000 BUFFER=[480000] RESERVE=[size] Set how much Chip Mem the Amiga will keep for the system. when running low on chip. Since all Amiga`s from the A500+ up come as standard with Chip Mem, Pro Digital Player will try to grab all available Chip Mem if the default buffer is set larger than the Available CHIP_RAM. Leaving you no free RAM for other tasks, so it is wise to keep a reserved amount of Chip for the system. CLI: You can also call Pro_digital_player to play samples or Scripts direct from CLI like so. FORMAT:- 1> Pro_Digital_Player:data/Player PATH:SAMPLENAME/Scriptname Examples:- 1> Pro_Digital_player:data/player dh0:samples/Mysample -s23000 (Play sample at speed of 23000, you must include -s) default speed 15000 1> Pro_Digital_Player:data/player dh0:samples/Mysample.l (Play a Stereo sample (Pro_digital_player will look for script)) When calling stereo samples from CLI always call Sample.l not .r 1> Pro_Digital_player:data/player dh0:Scripts/Mysamples.script (play from a script file.) Suggestions Comments Donations/Contributions welcomed. :-)) Contact Address: Christopher Mulready 88 Patrick Pearse Tower Ballymun Dublin 9 Republic of Ireland. Ph +353-1-8429248