A simple Ballroom Dance media player written in Python and based on libvlc: https://wiki.videolan.org/python_bindings. The Python bindings API documentation is at https://www.olivieraubert.net/vlc/python-ctypes/doc/.
Tested on Ubuntu 18.04, 14.04 and 64-bit Windows 7, 8.1, 10 with 64-bit versions of Python 2.7.15 and Python 3.8.2. For Windows with Python 3.8+, the location of the libvlc.dll file must be specified. See the comment near the top of the play_music.py script.
If using Ubuntu, install vlc using 'sudo apt install vlc'. Then
install python-vlc using 'pip install python-vlc'. For Python 3 you
may need to use pip3. FIGlet is used for dance banners;
install pyfiglet using pip install pyfiglet'. Mutagen is used to determine the length of musical selections. Install it using pip install mutagen`.
If using Windows, install the 64-bit version of VLC from https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ and the latest 64-bit Python 3 release from https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/. Do a custom installation, for all users and make sure Python is added to your path during installation. Then open a Command Prompt window and enter:
pip install python-vlc pyfiglet windows-curses keyboard mutagen(If "pip" isn't found, log out or restart Windows so that the
Python binaries are added to your environment variables.) The program can then be ran from the command line by executing "python play_music.py" in the directory containing the file 'play_music.py'. It is also clickable from the GUI.
The player assumes the following music organization:
$HOME/Music/ ├── ChaCha ├── Foxtrot ├── Jive ├── LineDance ├── PasoDoble ├── QuickStep ├── Rumba ├── Samba ├── Tango ├── VienneseWaltz ├── Waltz └── WCS
The musical selections are assumed to be at the correct tempo and to be of appropriate length. The volume of the musical selections should be normalized.
The music player is controlled using the keyboard. Respond to the prompts by selecting the appropriate key from the keyboard followed by the Enter key. Once the music is playing, you can pause the music by pressing the spacebar. The music can be resumed by pressing the spacebar again. To skip to the next selection press 'n'. To return to the beginning of the current selection press 'b'.
WINDOWS BUG FIX: (seen in Windows 8.1, Windows 10)
It appears that libvlc has a bug related to changing between daylight standard time and daylight saving time. After both the spring and fall time change, libvlc complains that the plugin cache is stale. The error message begins with "main libvlc error: stale plugins cache: modified c:". After many warnings BallroomMusicPlay will continue. VLC provides an executable to update the plugin cache timestamps. To run it, execute "resolve-stale-plugins.bat" from this repository as a Windows Administrator. (Right-click on the batch file and select Run As Administrator).
TODO: Implement GUI