As part of AllDay DJ 3 - I'm looking into ways of handling networked programming. My understanding of most setups is that a single machine will act as the "server" and the "clients" await control commands. Well, that would seem a reasonable enough model to me.
However, to implement this, I need some way of sending information from the command carts to the clients. (Yeah - command carts - you will be able to have a cart send a network command, play a user cart and wait for a hardware signal to continue - cool, eh?). Now, I could sit there creating my own message passing system then hope and pray I didn't screw it up.
A preferable alternative is to look at existing message passing APIs. There's two for Java that I'm lookin in to - RMI and XML-RPC. We used RMI for the class team project and I must say it worked. However, it's java specific (I'm looking at doing other little bits in other languages) and insanely "chatty". A few minutes with an RMI session and WireShark would put you off. :)
The other option is XML-RPC. So it's a bit more open (I can get language bindings for things other than Java) and less chatty (a godd thing I suppose). The only down side - who wants a streamlined XML-RPC server running on their playout box?
Ok - it's not that bad an idea on a secured network. Certainly going to be more secure than opening a port up and hoping the String / Tokenizer libraries do the job.
On another topic alltogether - does Myriad v3.5 have any way of mass importing and finding the track ends as well? It currently tops the tracks but at Radio West Fife, we've not yet found a way to tell it "the end of the track is the last point the volume is above x%". We've got a rather sizable stack of music to import into the system - we're looking to avoid doing things manually (ignoring jingles). I've been informed we've asked P-Squared, so I'll await results on that one.
Wednesday 27 May 2009
Saturday 23 May 2009
Exams
Finally, they're over. For the next wee while anyway. So that means I'm making the final preperations to go to Bath for the summer (yes, I'm being serious). I managed to land one of those internship things, so it's a working summer. Down side is I'm not going to be presenting while down there (or at least as far as I can tell). But then it's the old trade off of money vs. fun. :P
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