[CS-FSLUG] Church Software Project

[Clinton Evans]

The automatic scripts generate a single file of the complete service. That 
file is all that is available, immediately after the service. I then take the 
file home and edit it into blocks. We provide, as standard, a full-service 
recording and a reading + sermon recording, for older services.

I have been looking at some schemes for distinguishing music and speech, to 
automate the process.  I would also help with sound processing. Our sanctuary 
has all the acoustic finesse of a municipal swimming pool. At the moment, I 
band-limit the audio to mitigate some of the problems. 

It would be good to filter the music rather less aggressively and preserve 
more of its dynamics.  As another problem for later, I hope to replace the 
band-limiting with notch filters to remove some of the more troublesome 
normal-modes of the room. However, these projects are on the back burner 
until I get the database and burning code working satisfactorily.

I chose ZODB mainly because it looked useful for a lot of other things I do 
and, hence, worth learning. I am a physicist by trade and most of my 
programming is numerical in nature. I am an amateur at database problems and 
straying well out of my area of expertise.

The merit of an object database is it can store more-or-less anything that 
lives in your program -- it is not confined to tables like a relational 
database.  With a lot of my code, I am scattering around lots of small files 
and I hope an object database will help me tidy them up. Later in this 
project, too, I expect to store things, for example trees, that don't fit 
well in tables.

A draw-back is file-size. I doubt if ZODB would scale well to a really big 
problem.  However, the audio files will always be orders-of-magnitude larger 
than the database so it is not an issue for this project

So far, I have found ZODB pretty robust. However, you might get a better 
estimate from someone who has used ZODB as the back-end of a large web site. 
www.zope.org would be a good place to start looking.

Clinton



On August 7, 2005 11:18 pm, Robert W. wrote:
> On 08/07/2005 01:08:57 PM, Clinton Evans wrote:
> > I volunteer for our library which, traditionally, has distributed the
> > tapes. Being a Presbyterian Church, we NEVER challenge tradition so
> > we wanted to produce CDs in the library, too.
>
> I've also been looking at CD recording systems for our church. Oddly
> enough, we're also Presbyterian. Though our limitations are cost rather
> than tradition.
>
> > The system that has materialized, so far, works as follows:
> >
> > 1)	The person who operates the sound system captures the
> > 	service audio on his OSX Mac laptop.
> >
> > 2)	After the service, he runs a shell script which pipes the data
> > 	to a Linux machine in the library. This machine captures
> > 	the raw file and also produces a processed file, suitable for
> > 	immediate burning. Optionally, it burns a couple of CDs of
> > 	that service, automatically.
> >
> > 3)	We keep past services on disk and burn copies, while people
> > 	wait, after the service.
>
> Are the CD's one long service (like a tape)? Or is it divided into
> tracks? That was one of the things I've looked for and not found:
> putting different parts of the service in different tracks. First, it's
> easier to skip the music and jump to the sermon. Secondly, then I can
> extract special music and save it off for later playback.
>
> I slapped out a Perl script that, hopefully, creates a new sound file
> when I hit a key. Then I can burn a CD with one track per file. That's
> the plan, anyway. I still have to test it out...
>
> > Steps (1) and (2) are so tightly coupled to the operation of our
> > Church that the options for using them elsewhere are pretty limited.
> > However, item (3) may provide opportunity for a little
> > cross-pollination.
>
> I would be interested in what you learn about that database. I haven't
> thought that far ahead yet. I saw Don's reply about Asaph, and will
> keep that in mind.

-- 
Clinton