Voice Play Problem

[john]

Hi,
I'm new to GMMP and was just trying out the voice control feature. The speech is correctly recognized each time but the result seems somewhat random... I've experienced the following when saying "Play X" or "Play X by Y":
- sometimes it finds X and starts the track playing
- once it found it and didn't start it playing, but brought up the GMMP screen with the searched for track cued up; going to google now and simply saying "Play" then started it playing ok
- a fair amount of the time nothing happens although it does switch the screen to GMMP

In every case the track I'm searching for is available in the database. I went into Settings-> Search & Now -> In Apps and unchecked Play Music and Play Movies & TV.
Running the latest release of GMMP on playstore, on a Nexus5 with the latest release of Marshmallow.
Suggestions appreciated!

[GoneMAD]

look at the in app error log and it will give you the error. GMMP relies on google now telling it what to play and it has to send a request that matches something in GMMPs database. Its not the greatest and will a lot of time pull artists / albums from outside sources that do not match whats in the database. In every case i've looked at so far, when the user sent me the error and their database.. the item that google now was telling it to search for was not found in the database when i browsed through it myself

GMMP 2.2 will have some improved searching (it'll take what google now sends and wildcard non letters/numbers) which should improve the results a little, but in the end its still up to google now to send something searchable

[john]

Thanks I will look at the logs (I'll assume they are easy to find) and see what they say. One thing that doesn't match what you said though was that on one occasion it did find the track, and displayed it, it just didn't start it playing... when I did a second "ok google play" it then started it...

[GoneMAD]

there was probably another internal error that prevent the playback from starting.

prefs -> General -> error log

or

gonemadmusicplayer.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-to-get-logcat-system-log-to-help.html

[brandall]

I'm the developer of a voice command application and a user has reported that your play from search feature isn't responding.

I've narrowed the issue down to an unstructured request, such as one detailed here: developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-common.html#PlaySearch

This intent will work correctly:

private void structuredMusicIntent() {

final String title = "Billie Jean";
final String artist = "Michael Jackson";
final String album = "Thriller";
final String query = "Billie Jean Michael Jackson";

final Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(MediaStore.INTENT_ACTION_MEDIA_PLAY_FROM_SEARCH);
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);

intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_FOCUS, "vnd.android.cursor.item/audio");

intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_ALBUM, album);
intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_ARTIST, artist);
intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_TITLE, title);
intent.putExtra(SearchManager.QUERY, query);

try {
startActivity(intent);
} catch (final ActivityNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (final Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

However, if I am unable to resolve the specifics of the track/album/artist etc prior to sending the intent and fall back to an unstructured request, the logcat for GoneMad shows various errors, depending on the combination I try:

private void unstructuredMusicIntent() {

final String query = "Billie Jean Michael Jackson";

final Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(MediaStore.INTENT_ACTION_MEDIA_PLAY_FROM_SEARCH);
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
intent.putExtra(SearchManager.QUERY, query);

// intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_FOCUS, "vnd.android.cursor.item/audio");
// intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_FOCUS, "vnd.android.cursor.item/*");

try {
startActivity(intent);
} catch (final ActivityNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (final Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

Music Streaming apps, such as Spotify, Google Play Music etc and local apps such as PowerAmp can handle these unstructured requests - I wondered if this is an error somewhere in your code, or it is as yet unsupported?

If it's the latter, I wonder if handling it gracefully, by placing the query in the search bar would be an interim option? At least then the user would be aware 'something' happened and it would also cover the event of requesting media that doesn't exist on the device.

Any questions, happy to help.

Cheers

Ben

[GoneMAD]

GMMP didnt add voice search until maybe this last year and by then the unstructured voice searches were deprecated so gmmp doesnt really do much with them other than send the string through the song title search portion (without looking at the code i dont remember exactly whats done.. it possibly might try the whole string as a song title, then the whole string as an artist, whole string as an album, etc and see if any of those return results). If your app isnt able to determine what the user was searching for, gmmp certainly wouldnt be able to determine the users intent

so to sum it up.. unstructured queries are not really supported since all of google's voice search apps (auto and assistant/now) send in a focus with their queries

[brandall]

Apr 12, 2017 12:58:11 GMT -5 GoneMAD said:

GMMP didnt add voice search until maybe this last year and by then the unstructured voice searches were deprecated so gmmp doesnt really do much with them other than send the string through the song title search portion (without looking at the code i dont remember exactly whats done.. it possibly might try the whole string as a song title, then the whole string as an artist, whole string as an album, etc and see if any of those return results). If your app isnt able to determine what the user was searching for, gmmp certainly wouldnt be able to determine the users intent

so to sum it up.. unstructured queries are not really supported since all of google's voice search apps (auto and assistant/now) send in a focus with their queries

Thanks for your response, fair enough.

It would be great if you supported the 'play some music' command, where the search query will be empty - meaning that you start the last playlist etc (detailed in the link above). Google Now responds to this.

Otherwise, perhaps on your todo list, if you think it would be useful, a search performed on the limited information you are given, so this would work:


private void trackArtistOrAlbumOnlyMusicIntent() {



       final String title = "Billie Jean";

       final String query = "Billie Jean";



       final Intent intent = new Intent();

       intent.setAction(MediaStore.INTENT_ACTION_MEDIA_PLAY_FROM_SEARCH);

       intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);



       intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_FOCUS, "vnd.android.cursor.item/*");



//        intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_ALBUM, album);

//        intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_ARTIST, artist);

       intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_MEDIA_TITLE, title);

       intent.putExtra(SearchManager.QUERY, query);



       startActivity(intent);



   }
The above intent could contain one or more of extra artist/album/title.

The current error is: E/MusicService: Unrecognized voice search: vnd.android.cursor.item/* null null Billie Jean

Thanks for your time.

Cheers

Ben

[GoneMAD]

gmmp does support that.. it will play a random song with an empty query.. however the "play music" voice command is something that google play music specifically defines.. does not work for 3rd party players (if i bring up the list of players it only shows play music and none of the other players i have installed)

vnd.android.cursor.item/* is used for an unstructured search and it will search for the track name using whatever is in the query like i mentioned before

I feel the options gmmp provides is more than enough for you to get it to work with your app. The error "E/MusicService: Unrecognized voice search: vnd.android.cursor.item/* null null Billie Jean" simply means it found no results when it searched its database for Billie Jean