Running a service

The rule for the morning

Press Start once. Use Input Mute between speaking segments. Press Stop only after the service is over.

The Start you use for the pre-service test is the Start for the service. Do not stop when the test finishes. Leave Yazyk running and muted until translation is needed.

This is the one habit that decides whether a service comes out whole. Every stop ends a run, and every start begins a new one that has to find the audio devices again. A morning broken into a dozen short runs loses the gaps between them, and those gaps are speech nobody hears.

Almost everything that looks like a reason to press Stop is not one. The sections below say what to do instead.

Before you open Yazyk

Yazyk reads the list of audio devices when it opens. Plug the interface in first, or it may not appear in the dropdown.

Some USB sound cards let only one program use the input at a time. Close or reconfigure anything else that has it open: streaming and video-mixing software, meeting software, recording software, and browser tabs that have been granted microphone access.

If you pick the wrong input, you do not have to stop. Change it in the dropdown while the run is going. Translation continues and nobody listening hears a gap. If the new device cannot be opened, Yazyk keeps the one it has and tells you, so trying another can never cost you a working feed.

Before the one Start

1. Open Yazyk. A window opens with the device choices, the meters, and the Start button.
2. Leave both device choices on System default unless a rehearsal on this computer proved that naming the devices explicitly works better.
3. Leave voice cloning off unless the feed is a clean board feed carrying only the speaker's microphone.
4. Decide about captions on a screen now, and set them up now or skip them for the whole morning. Do not stop mid-service to add them.

Cloning: on or off

On a clean board feed, turn it on. It listens to the first 20 seconds of speech to copy the voice, so the first 40 seconds or so come out in a stock voice and then switch. That switch is normal and is not a fault.

If the input is a room microphone or the main mix, leave cloning off. Room sound and music make a worse clone than the stock voice does.

If it sounds wrong once it switches, untick the box. The next sentence returns to the stock voice and the service keeps running. Turning cloning off cannot fail, and it does not need a restart.

Captions on a screen

Only set this up if the audio is already solid. Captions on a screen do not change what the room hears.

One address covers every common tool, because they all just read a web page.

1. Start the session, then open the Presentation tab. The screen address is there, under Captions on screen. It looks like http://192.168.1.20:8080/screen. It is not on the Listeners tab, and the address shown there is a different page.
2. In your video software, add a web or browser source and paste that address.
3. Set the source size to your output size, usually 1920 x 1080.
4. Leave the background transparent. Yazyk already serves it transparent, so captions sit over the picture with nothing behind them. Do not tick any custom background colour option.
5. Check it before the service by opening the same address in a browser tab. White text on a white page is normal there, and correct over video.

Give the computer a fixed address on the router. That address contains the computer's own network address. If the router hands out a different one later, the saved web source points at nothing and the screen goes blank with no error at all. A DHCP reservation takes five minutes for whoever manages the network and prevents a failure that is very hard to diagnose on a Sunday.

Whatever the session produces is what appears on screen: a captions-only session shows the spoken language, a translating session shows the translation. There is nothing to set here.

Start once, then test

Press Start once. That is now the service run. Do not stop when the test is done.

Check four things:

• Input. The level moves when someone talks.
• Receiver. Translated speech is audible and comfortable, not too loud.
• Phone. On the building's Wi-Fi, the listener page loads at the address Yazyk shows.
• Interface. It was plugged in before Yazyk opened.

Listener access is off on a new installation, and while it is off there is no address to test. Turn it on once, on the Listeners tab, and the page keeps the setting from then on. Until you do, the card there reads Turn listener access on to share a page instead of an address.

If all four pass, press Input Mute and leave the run open until the first speaking segment.

If the phone test fails, do not tell people that phones are a fallback this morning. The transmitter still works.

If Start reports no audio

If this happens just after a stop, the sound card most likely has not released the input yet. It is not a cable fault if the cable and the meter worked a moment ago.

1. Wait a few seconds.
2. Press Start once more.
3. If it still fails, close whatever else is holding the input, wait, and try once more.

Do not click Start repeatedly. Once it starts, go back to the one-Start rule.

During the service

There are two mute buttons and they do different jobs. Input Mute, beside the input device, is your pause: it stops new speech entering translation while the run and the sound card stay open. Output Mute, beside the output device, silences the receivers immediately.

Do not press Stop because it looks stuck. A lagging run can still recover on its own. If the input level is moving and there is no error message, wait.

Watch the status box rather than the scrolling log. Grey means not running, green means running, and red means something needs attention: read the message.

A red message is still not automatically a reason to stop.

If audio is still not working five minutes before the service, leave Yazyk on Input Mute and do not announce it to the room. A chain of stop-and-start attempts while people are arriving makes it worse, not better.

After the service

1. Press Stop, after the service is over. It takes two presses: the first turns the button into Press again to stop, and only the second one ends the run. Press it again promptly. If you wait, the button goes back to normal and the first press no longer counts.
2. Wait until the status turns grey, then close the window.
3. Save the log for your administrator.
4. Tell your administrator the run is finished, so any cloned voice can be cleaned up.

While it is fresh, write down the answers to these:

• Did every mute and unmute land in the right place?
• Was the receiver level comfortable at the back of the room?
• Did the phone page load during the pre-service test?
• Did the run ever appear stuck, recover, or play faster to catch up?
• What red message appeared, and what was happening at the time?

That short list is what turns one morning into a service that runs better next week.