Scribe

Scribe is a software system for visual displays of dance information during a harkada.

Scribe provides web pages that describe what's going on: the name, choreographer, year, and music credits of the current dance (including a photo of the choreographer when available), plus the names of dances recently played or upcoming. Information is available in English or Hebrew, or the display can alternate between languages at any selected rate. Different URLs provide various combinations of this information.

Since Scribe's information is on standard web pages at standard URLs it can be used in several flexible ways. Many sessions have a large monitor visible to the entire hall; the web page is simply projected on this monitor. Since the web pages can be accessed from any computer, many monitors can be used simultaneously, each providing different information. Some dancers simply watch a page on their phone, for example if they want to see different information (or if the monitor is too small to see!).

For Zoom sessions, the Scribe display can be placed in a pane by use of a virtual webcam. Scribe also automates placing dance information in Zoom captions, and partially automates placing dance information in Zoom chat. In Zoom chat, Scribe also provides interesting information about dances, e.g. appropriate links to HoraWiki or other sites.

Of course, to show the information about the current dance, Scribe must know what dance is currently playing! There are three ways to tell Scribe what's being danced:

• By a human, via a webpage. A person known as the "scribe" listens to the harkada and sends in the title of the next dance each time it changes, using a webpage that has a dropdown list for picking dances.

• Via an app. For some DJ programs there is an associated Scribe app called "autoscribe" that runs on the same computer as the DJ software. Autoscribe monitors what's playing and automatically sends the current dance to Scribe. Autoscribe can also see what dances are in the upcoming playlist; in that case dancers can see what dances will be played next. Autoscribers exist for AMPS on Windows and for Megaseg and iTunes on the Mac. There is also an autoscriber that reads from a local file when the harkada's playlist is known in advance.

• Via music recognition. An autoscriber can get the audio feed of the harkada and recognize dances by the music. This autoscriber is still under development.

Scribe automatically remembers what dances have been played and can always display that information.

Every part of the Scribe system is 100% free and available to anyone who wants it. Contact the developer, Larry Denenberg, to get set up. If you're using AMPS on Windows, complete instructions are available online here.

Complete technical details of the Scribe system will be added to this page in the future. Meantime, you can always ask anything you'd like to know.