Ketech Cellia Drummond and Only Woman announcements publicly availible?

[virgintrain1]

Such amazing news, now all we need is those brilliant people that created that spreadsheet for the ScotRail announcements!

 

[stadler]

I'll do it anyway for the announcement site

Thank you. Much appreciated.

Such amazing news, now all we need is those brilliant people that created that spreadsheet for the ScotRail announcements!

It will take weeks and weeks to label them all. Unless we have a huge amount of people helping. With the Scotrail files there were only just over 1,000 files. With these there are almost 30,000 files. It is an enormous task.

 

[MrJeeves]

Edit - and for anyone playing along at home, this is the requisite hideous command line:

find -iname "*.SEG" -exec bash -c "dd if=\""\{\}"\" of=/dev/stdout bs=1 skip=48 status=none | sox -t raw -b 8 -r 16000 -e a-law -X - output/\""\{\}"\".wav" \;

I also had luck with the slightly shorter:

find -iname "*.SEG" -exec bash -c "tail -c +48 '{}' | sox -t raw -b 8 -r 16000 -e a-law -X - '{}.wav'" \;

There's a few oddities in the dataset...

For example, a German announcement (well very many starting from 9100 to 9112):
View attachment 9104.SEG.mp3

From my German-speaking friend:

07-12 are all one audio file - saying ‘For safety reasons the train station must be closed. Please leave the station as quickly as possible at the next available exit. Please take your luggage with you.'

I assume this would be used for an airport/international station, e.g. Gatwick.

 

[stadler]

I also had luck with the slightly shorter:

find -iname "*.SEG" -exec bash -c "tail -c +48 '{}' | sox -t raw -b 8 -r 16000 -e a-law -X - '{}.wav'" \;

There's a few oddities in the dataset...

For example, a German announcement (well very many starting from 9100 to 9112):
View attachment 142755

From my German-speaking friend:



I assume this would be used for an airport/international station, e.g. Gatwick.

Also remember that Ketech provide the Eurostar station announcements too. So i reckon the German announcements are for London St Pancras and Ebbsfleet and Ashford in case German services ever start. There are a bunch of French announcements in there too. I think the Dutch announcements are probably somewhere in there too.

I also found some interesting announcements for places along railway lines that do not even have stations planned to be built. For example so far i found "Merrow" and "Shere" in the files.

I have only just started going through them so there must be so many other interesting ones. I look forward to seeing what else i can find.

 

[MrJeeves]

All up on GitHub now:

https://github.com/Rail-Announcements/ketech-llpa-announcements

 

[willt156]

This is great news. I assumed most of these would be lost forever, great that the 2 best (in my personal opinion) announcers have been preserved!

 

[urbophile]

The "Only Woman" lady is the voice that was previously used at, Brighton, East Croydon, Gatwick Airport, London Victoria, and all Virgin Trains managed stations from around 2012 up until around 2018 when she was very unfortunately removed. She was called "Only Woman" because when she was first installed they accidentally set up the system wrong so that she said "only" at the end of every announcement even if the train was calling at multiple stations. Nobody knows who she is. We have been unable to find out her real name. Personally she was my favourite voiceover artist. I loved her announcements. She sounded great.

Also for anyone who has not heard her before here is an example of an "Only Woman" voiced announcement attached below.

but she didn't say 'only'!

 

[greaterwest]

but she didn't say 'only'!

Originally she ended all of her announcements with "Only", even if the calling pattern had several stops. For example, she would originally say "Calling at: Lockerbie, Motherwell and Glasgow Central only!"

There was a later change to the VT Amey system that removed this.

 

[MrJeeves]

I'm currently writing out a script to go along with the file IDs.

The IDs are the same across all voices, so it's far less work than it initially seemed, but still about 10k files worth to go through...

The IDs are the same across all voices,

No. No they are not. Most of them match, but not all.

 

[bramling]

Such amazing news, now all we need is those brilliant people that created that spreadsheet for the ScotRail announcements!

This is great work, it’s certainly evocative that these two voices can be preserved for posterity.

One quick question - is anyone able to have a go at the *.pcc file that TFL have provided for the Piccadilly Line Julie Berry 73 stock announcements?

 

[stadler]

This is great work, it’s certainly evocative that these two voices can be preserved for posterity.

One quick question - is anyone able to have a go at the *.pcc file that TFL have provided for the Piccadilly Line Julie Berry 73 stock announcements?

Yes the .pcc files for the Piccadilly Line 1973 Stock are the other ones that have been causing an issue for ages.

For anyone who does not have them here are the .pcc files:

LU Piccadilly Line Announcements 2019

MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.

www.mediafire.com

The zip folder just contains one file called copyfile.pcc but it is impossible to open the file.

On some softwares (such as freefileviewer which i had used) it will show what looks to be the individual sound files within the .pcc file. I am not really an expert at this but i am guessing these are all of the sound files showing the bytes. This is a few examples of what it shows:









But actually accessing and playing the sound files is impossible. This seems to be a more complicating issue than the .seg files as at least with the .seg files we had access to each file but we just could not play them. But with these we can not even access the individual sound files.

Interestingly these .pcc files are also provided by Ketech just like the .seg files so it seems that Ketech like using unusual file formats.

At least we have the .seg files sorted now and have access to the Celia Drummond and Phil Sayer files which is amazing but hopefully somebody will know how to access these .pcc files too.

 

[jonny5532]

I tried running the Male1 segments through voice recognition (Whisper base.en) in the hope that the result might save some time.

I'm not sure it has, but the results are hilarious. Highlights include:

167: The Red Funnel Fairy Service, too
412: Happily Bridge
413: our broath
484: Broccoli wins
495: button on trend
523: Clap 'em
560: Dumb freeze
583: Exodus and David's
595: Games bra
680: In the key thing
1034: Biflete and new whore
1039: Chit Chista
1054: M's worth?
1085: Have a Food West

and so on!

(attached is actually a CSV but the forum won't let me upload it as that).

 

[Jimini]

I tried running the Male1 segments through voice recognition (Whisper base.en) in the hope that the result might save some time.

I'm not sure it has, but the results are hilarious. Highlights include:

167: The Red Funnel Fairy Service, too
412: Happily Bridge
413: our broath
484: Broccoli wins
495: button on trend
523: Clap 'em
560: Dumb freeze
583: Exodus and David's
595: Games bra
680: In the key thing
1034: Biflete and new whore
1039: Chit Chista
1054: M's worth?
1085: Have a Food West

and so on!

(attached is actually a CSV but the forum won't let me upload it as that).

Brilliant

 

[stadler]

I tried running the Male1 segments through voice recognition (Whisper base.en) in the hope that the result might save some time.

I'm not sure it has, but the results are hilarious. Highlights include:

167: The Red Funnel Fairy Service, too
412: Happily Bridge
413: our broath
484: Broccoli wins
495: button on trend
523: Clap 'em
560: Dumb freeze
583: Exodus and David's
595: Games bra
680: In the key thing
1034: Biflete and new whore
1039: Chit Chista
1054: M's worth?
1085: Have a Food West

and so on!

(attached is actually a CSV but the forum won't let me upload it as that).

Hahaha. Lol. There are some funny errors on that. I think most voice recognition software is only really designed to recognise ordinary words rather than place names. We have lots of places names with difficult pronunciations in the UK so that makes it a bit difficult.

Is there any chance you have a similar document for the "female1" folder (or even for the "default" and "female2" and "male3" versions) too? Although there are lots of mistakes with the "male1" station names it is still very useful so if you do hold a "female1" version that would be very helpful?

 

[bramling]

Yes the .pcc files for the Piccadilly Line 1973 Stock are the other ones that have been causing an issue for ages.

For anyone who does not have them here are the .pcc files:

LU Piccadilly Line Announcements 2019

MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.

www.mediafire.com

The zip folder just contains one file called copyfile.pcc but it is impossible to open the file.

On some softwares (such as freefileviewer which i had used) it will show what looks to be the individual sound files within the .pcc file. I am not really an expert at this but i am guessing these are all of the sound files showing the bytes. This is a few examples of what it shows:

View attachment 142777

View attachment 142778

View attachment 142779

View attachment 142780

But actually accessing and playing the sound files is impossible. This seems to be a more complicating issue than the .seg files as at least with the .seg files we had access to each file but we just could not play them. But with these we can not even access the individual sound files.

Interestingly these .pcc files are also provided by Ketech just like the .seg files so it seems that Ketech like using unusual file formats.

At least we have the .seg files sorted now and have access to the Celia Drummond and Phil Sayer files which is amazing but hopefully somebody will know how to access these .pcc files too.

Fingers crossed then that someone has the relevant knowledge.

 

[michaelh123]

I tried running the Male1 segments through voice recognition (Whisper base.en) in the hope that the result might save some time.

I'm not sure it has, but the results are hilarious. Highlights include:

167: The Red Funnel Fairy Service, too
412: Happily Bridge
413: our broath
484: Broccoli wins
495: button on trend
523: Clap 'em
560: Dumb freeze
583: Exodus and David's
595: Games bra
680: In the key thing
1034: Biflete and new whore
1039: Chit Chista
1054: M's worth?
1085: Have a Food West

and so on!

(attached is actually a CSV but the forum won't let me upload it as that).

It get's most of the station names right, could you try that with the Celia files maybe? Is it quite quick to do?

Never heard this before, I stitched together a few files.

 

[MrJeeves]

could you try that with the Celia files maybe

Most of the files have the same contents for all voices

 

[jonny5532]

OK, here's a badly auto-transcribed Female1 too. Some highlights:

478: Bristol Temple Meats
505: You can't count it
555: Dor just to south
566: Feeling Broadway
736: Lost with you
750: Market Hi-Brah
6459: Glundal sins in Crosby
6909: One Bruh!
8009: "Thank you, Bridge"
8025: folks don't harbor
8068: Hot library
8157: Korean lari
8185: Physically
8802: "Well, I'm green"
9084: "Pen wouldn't date, right?"
9312: London he threw airport
12083: "So Cook, Bye Boss!"
12105: Hi-Brian is LinkedIn

 

[stadler]

OK, here's a badly auto-transcribed Female1 too. Some highlights:

478: Bristol Temple Meats
505: You can't count it
555: Dor just to south
566: Feeling Broadway
736: Lost with you
750: Market Hi-Brah
6459: Glundal sins in Crosby
6909: One Bruh!
8009: "Thank you, Bridge"
8025: folks don't harbor
8068: Hot library
8157: Korean lari
8185: Physically
8802: "Well, I'm green"
9084: "Pen wouldn't date, right?"
9312: London he threw airport
12083: "So Cook, Bye Boss!"
12105: Hi-Brian is LinkedIn

Thank you for doing the "female1" folder too. That is much appreciated. Some more hilarious transcribed recordings! I guess the software does not recognise British accents that well!

 

[willt156]

OK, here's a badly auto-transcribed Female1 too. Some highlights:

478: Bristol Temple Meats
505: You can't count it
555: Dor just to south
566: Feeling Broadway
736: Lost with you
750: Market Hi-Brah
6459: Glundal sins in Crosby
6909: One Bruh!
8009: "Thank you, Bridge"
8025: folks don't harbor
8068: Hot library
8157: Korean lari
8185: Physically
8802: "Well, I'm green"
9084: "Pen wouldn't date, right?"
9312: London he threw airport
12083: "So Cook, Bye Boss!"
12105: Hi-Brian is LinkedIn

Thanks for this.

 

[jonny5532]

This is great work, it’s certainly evocative that these two voices can be preserved for posterity.

One quick question - is anyone able to have a go at the *.pcc file that TFL have provided for the Piccadilly Line Julie Berry 73 stock announcements?

I've been having a go, but the format is very strange. The best I have managed so far as attached. It sounds terrible, but I think that's a voice in there somewhere - which suggests it is some kind of PCM format, but possibly with more elaborate voice coding techniques (ADPCM/LPC/CELP) which I have yet to figure out.

 

[bramling]

I've been having a go, but the format is very strange. The best I have managed so far as attached. It sounds terrible, but I think that's a voice in there somewhere - which suggests it is some kind of PCM format, but possibly with more elaborate voice coding techniques (ADPCM/LPC/CELP) which I have yet to figure out.

That definitely sounds like Julie Berry in there to me. Certainly some kudos for anyone who manages to crack this one, as it’s been an ongoing saga for some years now!

 

[MrJeeves]

I had worked out a couple of things about it, such as having metadata/transcriptions and pointers to audio sections, but not much else.

@jonny5532 is likely our audio guru here :P

 

[stadler]

I've been having a go, but the format is very strange. The best I have managed so far as attached. It sounds terrible, but I think that's a voice in there somewhere - which suggests it is some kind of PCM format, but possibly with more elaborate voice coding techniques (ADPCM/LPC/CELP) which I have yet to figure out.

Thank you. That is definitely Julie Berry that you can hear. It is extremely poor quality so you can not make out what she is saying but it is definitely her. That is the closest that we have gotten so far to accessing them so this is certainly a good start.

If it helps at all this is what TFL have said when they were asked how they accessed the files:

"The announcements are stored on a PCMCIA flash memory card that fits into the old Whiteley’s Electronics equipment. We can read these cards using an Omni Drive USB device, but only a .PCC file can be retrieved from the card. This .PCC file is created by a DABS Editor. From this we can view and play the announcements."

I am not sure if that is any help with figuring out any more about how to access these sound files.

Thank you for looking in to this. You have managed to get some sound out of it so that is by far the closest that we have got.

 

[Whiggism]

Has anybody the found recording of phil sayers security announcement. the one about “luggage and lost items may be removed and destroyed”

 

[stadler]

Has anybody the found recording of phil sayers security announcement. the one about “luggage and lost items may be removed and destroyed”

I think these are the sound files that you are after:

59.seg - please do not leave cases or parcels
60.seg - unattended anywhere on the station
61.seg - any unattended articles are likely to be removed
62.seg - without warning
4306.seg - thank you

So it is broken up in to a few different sound files.

 

[jamieh27]

How did you manage to play the .seg files without the program?

 

[MrJeeves]

How did you manage to play the .seg files without the program?

We've managed to convert them all to wav and MP3: https://github.com/Rail-Announcements/ketech-llpa-announcements

 

[londonbridge]

When arriving into Victoria, after Julie says “please remember to take all your personal belongings with you when you leave the train”, the announcement used to continue with “and please do not leave unattended items of luggage in the train or on the station”….this second part is no longer played, anyone know when (or why) it was removed?

 

[MrJeeves]

When arriving into Victoria, after Julie says “please remember to take all your personal belongings with you when you leave the train”, the announcement used to continue with “and please do not leave unattended items of luggage in the train or on the station”….this second part is no longer played, anyone know when (or why) it was removed?

I only recall hearing the latter part when arriving into Gatwick, personally.