sound/tracks - Department of Computational Perception

On this page you will find the binary version of the Java implementation of sound/tracks and instructions on how to use it.

Contents:

About
System Requirements
Download
Usage
Q&As
Copyright

About

sound/tracks is software written and distributed by Peter Knees and Tim Pohle, Department of Computational Perception, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.

System Requirements

Supported operating systems:

Windows XP or Vista
Linux (should work if you can get Video4Linux to work with your Webcam and JMF)
Mac OS X only works with pre-recorded videos (i.e., live sonification from a Webcam is not possible due to the lack of JMF video capturing capabilities). See Usage section on how to do that.

Optionally you may consider to add José San Pedro Wandelmer's FOBS - FFMpeg JMF Bindings to your classpath to (drastically) increase the number of JMF supported video codecs. (Props to José for this! Keep up the good work!)
To hear the generated sounds under Mac OS X and Linux, you may need to perform additional steps (see Q&As).

Download

soundtracks.jar (40KB)

Usage

sound/tracks can be started with the following command:

    java -jar soundtracks.jar

Optional parameters:

    java -jar soundtracks.jar [OPTION] [MEDIA_LOCATOR_URL]
    java -jar soundtracks.jar -about

where OPTION is one or more of the following parameters

    -left|-right            indicate movement direction of the train; if not specified user will be prompted
    -promptmidi               display list of available MIDI devices to select output device
    -yuvinput                 indicate that the camera delivers YUV encoded frames (try this if Java refuses to work with your Webcam)
   -savescoredir PATH    PATH where segments of the generated Score Images will be stored (if not given, Score Images won't be saved)

MEDIA_LOCATOR_URL is a path to the video source (according to JMF's MediaLocator URL format). If not specified, sound/tracks will list all registered video capture devices and ask which to use. If no registered devices are found, it may be necessary to specify the path to the Webcam. Under Windows this path is vfw://0 for the first device (high probability that's the desired one), vfw://1 for the second, etc. Under Linux, the format is v4l://0. Alternatively, also paths to video files that contain a prerecorded train journey can serve as input. In this case, the format is file://path_to_video_file.

-about display information and copyright and exit

Q&As

The following hints are just guidelines to get things running. There are probably much niftier solutions to these problems. However, these seem to work somehow and may help you (in case you don't know what to do anyway).

How to hear the generated MIDI sound under Linux?

Assuming you don't have a hardware MIDI device that will do the synthesis for you, you will need to provide a virtual MIDI port (try something like modprobe snd_virmidi) that you have to select as output via the -promptmidi option. That MIDI port should then be connected to a synthesiser (e.g., by using a combination of JACK and Rosegarden).

How to hear the generated MIDI sound under Mac OS X (>10.4.8)?

To access Mac OS X's CoreMIDI system from Java, the mmj library is the solution. Adding the contained jar file to your classpath will give you additional MIDI port options under Java. Select one of those via sound/tracks' -promptmidi option and open, e.g., GarageBand for MIDI synthesis.

Department of Computational Perception
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
© 2007-2008. All Rights Reserved

Use at own risk.

sound/tracks uses a modified version of FrameAccess.java by Sun Microsystems, Inc., hence the following copyright notice:

FrameAccess.java 1.5 01/03/13
Copyright (c) 1999-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Sun grants you ("Licensee") a non-exclusive, royalty free, license to use, modify and redistribute this software in source and binary code form,
provided that i) this copyright notice and license appear on all copies of the software; and ii) Licensee does not utilize the software in a manner which is disparaging to Sun.
This software is provided "AS IS," without a warranty of any kind. ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE HEREBY EXCLUDED. SUN AND ITS LICENSORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES SUFFERED BY LICENSEE AS A RESULT OF USING, MODIFYING OR DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE OR ITS DERIVATIVES. IN NO EVENT WILL SUN OR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOST REVENUE, PROFIT OR DATA, OR FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, HOWEVER CAUSED AND REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE SOFTWARE, EVEN IF SUN HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
This software is not designed or intended for use in on-line control of aircraft, air traffic, aircraft navigation or aircraft communications; or in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility. Licensee represents and warrants that it will not use or redistribute the Software for such purposes.

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