Need help with V-FMT212R Transmitter and RDS on S3

[Robert Burton]

I just bought a Vast V-FMT212R transmitter with built in RDS. The software allows you to configure not only the RDS and where to pickup the .txt files...but to change compression, other things associated to the sound output, and a few other niceities. 

 

I have read several topics on this pdf on how to setup a EDM transmitter with RDS on LOR software & the RDS unit using the MiniRDS software. 

 

I understand that this will need to go through the Windows Command line on LOR3. I used that with my projectors last year.

 

I know that in the Vast software you can point to a .txt file in order to pick up the RDS tag.  I think there will be a .txt file and a .bat file involved with this. I just don't know what they need to say.

 

Can someone help me with this?

Thanks

Robert

[Robert Burton]

FINALLY.... It is spelled out for me! 

This worked;
http://www.doityourselfchristmas.com..._Vixen_2_x.pdf
You pretty much go through the instructions as you did at the beginning, but when it gets to Vixen instructions...stop there.
In LOR, (and you have to be running the advanced version) go to EDIT, then go down to Windows Command.
Type in the location of your .bat file...and your done.
Lots of choices to run the command file... I just run mine minimized and no focus to it.
Credit goes to this thread for cracking this for me; (Thanks!)
http://doityourselfchristmas.com/for...-you-doing-RDS

[PhilMassey]

This method also works and saves having to create all those txt and batch files, but you do have to have the metadata fields populated in the sequence info.

 

RDS Data From Light O Rama S3

1. Create the following  one line text file in Notepad or similar. Call it  RDS.CMD

                 ECHO %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 > "C:\rds\rds.txt"

 

2. Create a folder, c:\RDS and save RDS.CMD to it.

 

3. If your sequences do not have the song info in them you will need to enter it.

                  In sequence editor, EDIT/Sequence Info,  enter song info into Music Artist, Title and Album.

 

4. For each sequence enter the following Windows Command. The same line in every sequence.

                  C:\rds\rds.cmd %MEDIA_TITLE% By %MEDIA_ARTIST%

 

This will call the Title and Artist metadata from the Seq info and write it into C:\RDS\Rds.Txt  as Title By Artist.

 

Each Time a sequence starts it will send the new Metadata to RDS.txt.

Then It's just a question of pointing Your FM Transmitter program to C:\RDS\RDS.txt.

The RDS folder can any place you want it to be, I just used C: as an example, but obviously the paths above would need to all changed to whatever directory you are using.

I believe this technique only works with S3 and later. Earlier versions have to use the Batch and Text file method.

There Is a list of available metadata tags in the S3 Help file under Windows Command.

 

 

Phil Massey 08/17/2014

[Robert Burton]

Oh wow Phil that would be a LOT easier!

I will have to give that a try. I think Bob in another thread was trying to tell me that. I just didn't know what syntax to use with everything. It was completely Greek to me ;-)  This particular transmitter has the capability of doing just what you described so I know it should work.  Will report back though with results.

Thanks!

[Orville]

Thanks Phil.

 

 I'm thinking of getting an RDS capable transmitter in the future, so hope you don't mind, but I copied your info on my computer {with credit to you} for the instructions.  

 

Not sure how soon I'll need them, but that will sure make it a lot easier to set up than all those other files when I finally buy an RDS transmitter!

[PhilMassey]

You're quite welcome.

[dgrant]

Also, I discovered with the RDS.txt file, it must not be lower than one directory level otherwise the miniRDs software won't see it. Their software says it will, but in fact, it doesn't. I put mine in C:\LOR\rds.txt and it did not work when I used the rds.txt any any lower level directory such as C:\LOR\rds\rds.txt

[PhilMassey]

Not sure why that would happen but mine is on a mapped  networked drive many levels deep. Perhaps the map only counts as one level to the software. L:\RDS\RDS.txt . TiniRDS  here. 

[atver]

Phil, thank you for your simple instructions. I was able to link my LOR sequence audio data to RDS so it would now display on my radio.

[Robert Burton]

Fantastic Phil.

Even easier than before!!!!

Great little transmitter btw too.

[Landsailor]

FYI, be sure you're running version 1.2.268 of the control software for the radio. The one that was linked on Radiant's webpage was for the older version that would not read from a text file and didn't have the webserver login to the radio.

 

BTW, how much data can an RDS message contain? I messed around with adding our email address, but it occasionally gets chopped off if I haven't renamed "Trans Siberian Orchestra" to TSO in the Sequence file.

[viennaxmas]

FYI, be sure you're running version 1.2.268 of the control software for the radio. The one that was linked on Radiant's webpage was for the older version that would not read from a text file and didn't have the webserver login to the radio.

 

BTW, how much data can an RDS message contain? I messed around with adding our email address, but it occasionally gets chopped off if I haven't renamed "Trans Siberian Orchestra" to TSO in the Sequence file.

 

I'll try to break it down:

RDS has multiple different types of data packets. I guess the ones you are interested in are the PS (aka Program Service Name) and the RT (Radio Text). PS is originally intended to display the station name / call letters and per default is limited to 8 characters. Radio text was originally intended to provide additional, mostly static information like a stations URL, phone number or address. Most other fields are pretty interesting too but maybe not what you are referring to unless you want to use the TP/TA feature to automatically force car radios to switch to your station (provided the listener has Traffic Announcement enabled). I also think AF is maybe not used much Even though it would be interesting, you could get radios to automatically switch to the station of your neighbor down the street).

 

Back to the two interesting fields. PS is usually displayed directly in the radios display while the RT text requires either a button press or may show up later. In car radios, displaying the RT message is usually disabled while driving (which greatly sucks).

 

In order to compete with the abilities of MP3 players, broadcasters have figured out a way to abuse the capabilities of PS - they simply change the PS message in regular intervals. Most RDS encoders offer different speed settings and transfer modes (scroll by character, scroll by word or some mix of it). Most commercial RDS encoders limit the maximum number of characters used for such a message to 64 characters. Technically using this scrolling feature is a violation of the National Radio Standards Committee guidelines, but it is very widely used. So you are pretty much transmitting blocks of 8 characters.

 

RT is a bit of a different thing - it is technically limited to 64 characters. The use of this field is completely up the the station and can be title / artist, promotional or other information.

 

One additional item you have to look at are the technical standards for RDS transmission to understand what is going on. RDS is a very slow block  based protocol (called Groups). This does limit the capabilities on how fast you can display scrolling text on the PS field. RDS reception is also a bit volatile and not every RDS decoder does provide the same quality of receiving the data. Usually any change in PS in less than 10 seconds may end up for the receiver to miss packets. This all sure enough is depended on the RDS Injection Level, the RDS Phase and the overall peak deviation or your transmitter chain.  

 

There are a bunch of side techniques which allow transmitting more text, but they are not commonly used (except for TMC).

 

so much for the deep technical dive into RDS... in a nutshell: technically you are limited to 8 for PS and 64 for RT characters. With Scrolling PS you can fake more characters but most encoders limit that to 64 characters as well.

 

HD Radio however allows a whole lot more, but let's not go there ;-)

[Landsailor]

That's awesome! Thanks for taking the time to type that!

 

I had read somewhere that it was possible to automatically switch radios to your frequency. That would be pretty cool if tens of thousands of cars didn't travel right behind my house every day.