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    Unepic Stoned High SID Collection
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      (C) 2016 XeNTaX Foundation
       By Mr.Mouse (Mike Zuurman)
		http://www.xentax.com 
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             Description
The USHSC is the YouTube incarnation of 
the High Voltage SID Collection and Stone
Oak Valley Authentic SID Collection.
Aiming to be the most complete channel 
and playlist of all the SID composers you 
never heard of. 
For the love of SID. 
For the love of SID's composers. 
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          Technical details
1. A tool was programmed in VB6 to auto-
mate everything, including all steps
listed hereafter. Yes. VB6. Tool: USHSC.
2. The information listed at the SOASC 
website was downloaded for the 51041 SID 
tunes and saved in a tab delimited text
file. 
3. The Commodore 64 Scene Database (CSDb)
lists detailed information for about 50K
SID tunes. This information was taken and
saved. Purpose: get info on which SID 
chip was used to compose a song. 
4. CSDb and SOASC information was then 
matched for about 40K tunes.
5. A randomization step was built, to 
shuffle the order of the 51041 tunes, as
they are listed in alphabetical order at
SOASC. 
6. USHSC can automatically download 
the data from steps (2, 3). Of note:
a wait function is necessary as both 
CSDb & SOASC don't like mass leeching and
will bar the IP for a while. 
7. USHSC can load & save the retrieved
data as separate files (CSDb, SOASC).
8. USHSC can be told to match the CSDb 
and SOASC tune information and this data
can be saved/loaded. 
9. USHSC can create and save a random-
ization list to shuffle all tunes later
in the process. This list can be loaded
later as well. 
10. USHSC will detect the max length of 
tune titles and composers to make sure 
the image for the video will not have 
text exceeding max text boundaries. 
11. Automation for video preparation is
done as follows.   
-command line batch files are created at
run-time by USHSC. 
-USHSC downloads the appropriate MP3 and
SID file from SOASC
-ffprobe is run to find the duration of 
the MP3 file and this information is fed
to ffmpeg later on. 
-before that, convert.exe (imagemagic) is
called to modify a prefab background .png 
file to represent the video image. the 
song information is printed at specified 
locations, and the edited background .png
is saved as a new file. 
-ffmpeg is called to create and encode a
new MKV file using the edited background
as image, and the MP3 for the music. 
For tunes longer than 16 seconds, a fade
out at the end of the tune lasting 7 
seconds will be implemented. Audio
encoding will retain maximum quality. 
-the new MKV file will then be uploaded
to YouTube using youtube-upload, a python
application, using the right credentials.
youtube-upload will be fed specific info
such as title, description, tags as the
video is uploaded, and make sure the 
playlist is also updated. 
Of note: some specific "chcp" fixing had
to be done in the batch files, to allow 
for accented characters to appear. 
Also, main.py needed to be changed, since
a bug in the original code failed to re-
code carriage returns in the video
description. 
-the command line batch files are run,
meanwhile USHSC will wait for their 
execution to be finished before going on. 
-Logging of USHSC operation is done at 
multiple levels, so to be able to track 
errors and keep track of current tunes. 
SID files are opened to get some info. 
USHSC allows the SIDs and MP3s to be
stored at custom locations. They, as 
well as specific batch file logs will
be stored in specific subfolders:
0, A-Z, based on the first character of 
the tune title. 
12. Photoshop was used to create the 
various images (background, website).
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The USHSC tool was programmed in VB6, 
Notepad++ was used to program commands to 
test batch files to run ffprobe, ffmpeg, 
convert and youtube-upload. 
OS: Windows 10.
First running version finished on the 4th
of May 2016. Upload completed on the 9th 
of July 2016. 
It took 66 days from first upload to 
finish. Effectively, there were 57 days 
of non-stop uploading, day and night.  
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           IMPORTANT LINKS
Unepic Stoned High SID Collection
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_qhjzQ5qfoRotF-3J1N2cw
		   
XeNTaX Foundation 
http://www.xentax.com 

XeNTaX at CSDb:
http://csdb.dk/group/?id=935

High Voltage SID Collection
http://www.hvsc.c64.org/

Stone Oakvalley Authentic SID Collection
http://www.6581-8580.com/index.php
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