I've noticed this video before but never watched it because I presumed it was about the Radio DJ software, but I just watched all 35 minutes and it's not that at all. You can utilize this with anything, Salamandra, Zara, whatever.
This tutorial is for automating on-air weather reports for radio stations using AI it automatically finds, writes, records, uploads, and imports weather reports onto your computer, which you then simply schedule into your broadcast and it's all done with free online tools:
You need Make.com to create the automated workflow. ElevenLabs.com for AI voice generation. And you need your Google Drive and it's accessories too. The initial setup looks to be a little tedious but it's not complicated or hard, at least not with this guy showing you every last step, and you only have to do it one time. After that, set it and forget it, your weather reports will air.
You can even set it up to have a male report the weather in the morning and a female do it in the afternoons, you can also include a sponsor insert at certain times or whatever, and if you don't want to use AI voices you can incorporate your own voice, but then it won't be free anymore cause that added feature cost like $5 a month on ElevenLabs, but with the AI voices it's free and there's a lot of good voices to select from.
Anyway, this really looks like a very cool and free option for automated up to the minute weather reports which you can fully customize.
Wow.. Evidently he later posted an updated version of the above because he considered the first as "klunky". I just noticed otherwise I would had watched this one. Anyway he says: "I’ve completely redesigned my automated weather workflow. Now, AI is cranking out creative, personality-packed radio scripts!". I haven't actually watched this one yet, but in the beginning he implies this updated process is easier. This is really worth a look.
Not really AI, but basically Text to Speech (if you use their voices). Although I guess that is considered to be a branch of AI.
It's great this guy is making it easy to do this, but the base tools have been around for over 20 years. I was doing automated ferry lineup broadcasts on Artisan Radio when I started out on Bowen Island in 2006 (the information scraped from the BC Ferries website).
Mind you, voices have gotten better since that time.
In the same line, I get e-mails from Radio Guild, and they have a service that will generate news broadcasts from scripts. They'll even generate the scripts for you, based on your location. It is a pay ware service, but the company does target media professionals, likely LPFM's. They claim up to 95 voices are available.
Watched till 1/3rd the way through the video and waaaay to complicated for me.
Not really AI, but basically Text to Speech (if you use their voices). Although I guess that is considered to be a branch of AI.
It's great this guy is making it easy to do this, but the base tools have been around for over 20 years. ...
In the second video he incorporated ChatGpt into the mix so the ai plays more of a role then in the first one, and doing so simplified the scripting used in the first video, and it really did improve his weather presentations. As for the tools being around for years, you're right, I use to use similiar but never routed through the Internet nor for the station, but I recognized much of the methods is like using Excell or something.
Watched till 1/3rd the way through the video and waaaay to complicated for me.
Not complicated, just tedious, but you only have it set up once then it becomes a turn key operation from then on out. I think it's an excellent option. Don't let it intimidate you, it's not as complicated as it appears.
I watched the video. I could see using some of these tools (i.e., automated work flow) if you don't know the first thing about computer coding. But if you do, even with coding batch files, I believe that would be a better way to go.
The tools really force you into doing things their way, and are dependent on the functionality they provide. If you start with a blank slate and do your automation with either a batch file, or even a program (written in C, C++, or whatever), you can do whatever you want, however you want.
The AI stuff seems a bit superfluous. It's recommended that you try out prompts until you find an engine (and a prompt) that spits out what you want to hear. Seems a bit backwards to me, when, if you know what you're doing, and know what you want, you can just code in those things directly.
You can achieve 'randomness' and 'creativity' without AI. In fact, I would prefer that. With AI, unless you're monitoring it constantly, you never quite know what you're going to get. Letting it loose over the radio waves is taking a big chance.
When I did the ferry lineup stuff on Bowen Island, I wrote a C program, which scraped the BC ferries website for the raw data, and then formatted it however I wanted it, i.e., my way, not what another external program such as AI wanted.
And virtually anybody who can run a computer and get an automated radio station can learn how to create batch files. C programs, maybe not so much.
I actually found his prior video more interesting than his second "improved" ai enhanced method. But it really the same initial process involved in both and it's spelled out better in his first tutorial.
I think it's the easiest method I've ever seen presented to create automated weather reports (other than simply have Zara or whatever pull in the core tempature and humidity reading, which is better than no weathercast at all, but it would really be nice to automate a customized and more informative weather report, including forecast, rain winds, tides, whatever.
Like you said, if you know what your doing it's best to code it yourself, but I've never coded anything more complex than maybe in Dos or JavaScript and other simple scripting. I can follow the method presented in the video but I wouldn't have a clue about begining from scratch.
Why don't you code up something comparably capable as his method for weather reports if it's as simple and basic as you suggest?
I would if I was interested in weather reporting for the station. I want to keep my 'broadcasts' as generic as possible so that if I ever do decide to go to AM (and an RSS-210 transmitter), I look as little like a real radio station as possible (you know, that whole broadcasting vs non broadcasting thing here in Canada).
As I stated previously, i did do something for ferry lineups when on Bowen Island running under BETS-1, and I also did something for grabbing the public domain Voice of America newscasts just a few years ago (again, for BETS-1 and internet streaming). I think I talked about it here, but can't remember.
I have to admit, I'm definitely old school when it comes to these things. As I've said, if you aren't familiar or comfortable with coding, tools such as Make and the other ones this guy was using are probably the best way to go. High level tools, no matter what they are, are really the only way to go.
But I find it takes me more time to learn the tools, and more importantly, their restrictions, when given my software background, it's easier just to write a short program.
As an aside, I don't even like using IDE's (Interactive Development Environments), which is what most programmers use today. I use tools like Notepad or vi, and manually compile and make the end program using Windows libraries directly. The layers of code and libraries that IDE's put on top of the Windows libraries just add to the overall time to get up and running (you have to understand what they're doing, how to use them, and what they can't do). If I was developing software 24/7, then it would be worth it to put the time in. But for dabbling, it's not.
When I modified some open source software (JMPX) that generated RDS and Stereo signals from a mono audio source, it took me probably half an hour to an hour to actually make the changes to the code and test them. It took maybe a day total to familiarize myself with the code and its structure - not intimately, just enough to understand where to make the changes. It was open source, so by definition, it was not well documented, and you can't trust the little documentation there was.
It took multiple days to learn the IDE tools and what the provided 'higher level' libraries did. And then, just enough to make the changes I wanted.