A new Plugin for the Music-Part! Is it possible? (1 Viewer)

[antonehenry]

I would also like a plugin much similar to TVSeries and Motion Pictures....

In fact, these should be incorporated as default in MP2 or something. They're better than the defaults.

 

[Luke Roberts]

This thread made me have a real good look at the "My Music" part of MP. MP is fine when it comes to simply selecting an album (databased or in folder view) and playing it. However, I get tired of listening to complete albums, and would like MP to help me with intelligent playlists and make my, my girlfriend's and my guests music experience even better.

First it might be important to note that I use iTunes for my MP3 music library (and to sync my iPod). I have all albums and compilations neatly organised in Itunes, id3 tags in perfect order, and all mp3 files have album art stored in the id3 tags. Finally all files are stored by iTunes using ARTIST > ALBUM filing on my home server and in MP i have my music views configured the way i want them. So far so good, but....

1: Intelligent playlists.
As mentioned before in this thread, I too would love to see improvements to on the fly creation of intelligent and USER FRIENDLY playlists. Kind of like the iTunes Genius feature. I realise the iTunes Genious feature depends on a HUGE database, managed by Apple. However, MP can use audioscrobbler/live.fm.

I have seen that in "My Music", once you start a playlist, MP will add songs using audioscrobbler/live.fm when the scobble option is selected (on). Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems to not be able to maje up it's mind which song to select from my 7000 track database, sometimes it seems to only select tracks from 3 albums when there are much more albums that should fit the SCROBBLE > SIMULAR badge... To sum it up, it is not obvious what is going on. I don't feel like I have control.

2: Album Art
All my MP3 files have album art, added using iTunes. Sometimes iTunes won't have the artwork, but Google Images search is your friend then (copy and paste image into ID3 tag in iTunes). Naturally I frequently update my MP music database in the MP config tool. Unfortunatly MP seems to randomly use the artwork. Sometimes it will use album art from the MP3 ID3 tags to create a folder icon, sometimes it wont. Somtimes it won't display album art that is in the ID3tag. It would be nice if this was sorted out.

3: A usefull screen saver (NOW PLAYING)
When playing music it would be nice if MP would automaticly show the NOW PLAYING screen after a certain time of non activity from me. The NOW PLAYING screen shows nice info about the current playing track and also shows what track is next.

4. 5.1 (or 7.1) upmixing of music
The BASS player has the option 5.1 upmixing in the MP config. However, this does not work when you hook up your HTPC to your amp with an optical cable. It would be nice if it was possible to add a filter like AC3FILTER in the music section, so I that music played will be upmixed by AC3FILTER, for instance using the front AND back L/R speakers. This option should NOT affect any other audio, like audiostreams from TV or video files (I don't like upmixed audio for TV).

5. Better inegration with photo slideshows (maybe slighly of topic).
It is nice to listen to music when viewing photo slideshows and vice versa. However the control of next/previous song, next/previous photo and pausing audio and or photo is VERY confusing to me during a slide show. It would be nice if one could skip back and forth between the photo controls and music controls during a slideshow

6. WAF (Woman Acceptance factor)
Sombody else on this forum introduced this term to me, and boy did he hit the nail on the head! MP's MY MUSIC has a low WAF at the moment. As mentionned at the top of this post I want EVERYBODY in my house to feel comfortable using MP. So far my girlfriend has pretty well accepted MP's TV and VIDEO functions and uses these (THANK YOU!) all the time. Unfortunatly this is not the case for MP's MY MUSIC.

7. The above could be done with a plugin.. RATHER NOT
Yes, some functions could be done with a plugin. However this would split music functions over the plugin and over MY MUYSIC, which would over complicate things, unless the plugin would seemlesly fit into MY MUSIC and add functions.



Finally, I hope I have contributed useful ideas for the MUSIC part of MP. It would be great to see improvements in the MUSIC part of MP. THANKS again to all developers! MP has taken a huge roll in our home's MultiMedia experience. I can't think of any project that works as well as the complete MP + TV server combo. THANKS THANKS THANKS!

Regards,

Luke

 

[PussyWagon]

Hey... that was a huge contribution!

But damn it was good! The three first notes was a hit in the head regarding what I would like to have improved in MY MUSIC... And the other features was bonus ideas that also was very good ideas!
Ofcourse it would be better to have all this features integrated to MP but i dont think this would be real before MP 2.0. And until then a Plugin for this would have been nice. And if somebody is able to manage a really good plugin, this must be possible to integrate with MP in a later time isnt it?

I really hope someone (hopefully from MP crew) is reading this thread and hopefully integrates these features in the future.
Until then I really hope someone (am I repeating myself? ) (hopefully someone that it good in coding.. ) could help us out and doing a plugin like this as it would have made MP EVEN BETTER than it is today!

And actually, the MUSIC section is the only thing I dont really like with MP today.. (ok, the picture section could have been improved... but as Media Center Movies/TV and Music is (for me) the most important thing to be really good).

 

[RandyKC]

A couple of things off the top of my head that I would like to see.

1) Ability to show a Review of the Artist. I used to use an MP3 player that did this (can't remember the name at this time) and I enjoyed reading information about the artist while listening to the album.

2) An easy way to download and view lyrics. Also be able to automatically get the lyrics to the next song when it plays without having to re-navigate to a View Lyrics link.

 

[hjalleballe]

I'm trying to find a good music plugin myself, doesnt seem to be any.

In the music part off MP:

- Navigating views are not very good
- Making playlists is awfull
- Theres no auto download of metadata (info and covers and so on)

Correct me if im wrong on these points.

Im using MP-Tvseries and Moving pictures as well, and if I could have something similar for music, with a practical playlist organiser, with some nice screensaver mode, and with some good views (like "wall" view in XBMC) i would be very happy.

Any devs up for it

(Sorry for poor english)

 

[divinius]

i'd love to see some improvements for the music section too!
the main reason i started using MP is for music, but i hardly use it, because the UI is too non-comfortable.

i've got a remote and a wireless keyboard, and i'd love to be able to search my music (i've got a lot of music so a decent search function isn't luxury) just like it works in itunes, just type and see all the results directly on screen

i don't like it that when i want to search, i have to press shift first, but thats not a real problem

i do have Global Search, but it's still crappy, when i type for example "pink" (for pink floyd) it doesn't show all the results containing "pink" but it still shows the whole list of (4000+) artists and selects the first artist containing pink

the problem with this is, if there's an artist containing pink starting with for instance an a, you still have got to scroll all the way down to see pink floyd


maybe i'm doing something wrong, but right now i just don't like it at all

 

[GAMe]

Great Idea!

Hi Community,

I am 100% behind this idea, over the past few months I have gone from MP to Vista Media Center to Windows 7 Media Center and now back to MP 1.0. The only thing I have found which lets MP down compared to its Microsoft counterparts is that the Music and Pictures sections of Media Center were alot easier and alot more fluid. A good example of this is to have a simple "play all" button which enables the user to play all tracks in the database and then the easy ability to view your favourite pictures or all your pictures, or even visualizations without having to leave the music menu. Im sure many of you will have also looked at VMC and W7MC and will know where im coming from. I loved Moving Pictures and thought it was a massive step forward for MP as the perfect HTPC solution, if the same could be applied to the GUI for Music this would be amazing and throw MP far far far ahead of the competition (Not that it isnt ahead already ;-) ). So to all you amazing MP Devs out there please pick up the reigns and get involved in the music section. Although I am not a coder I do do alot of work with Photoshop, Web Dev and General Windows Network Infrastructures so If any of my skills could be used, even just for bug testing then I would be happy to throw myself into the ring.

Thanks

GAMe

 

[kiwijunglist]

What I would like to see is a skin for wmp11 that makes it look more like mediaportal

 

[Henkie Flits]

Since my TVSeries and Movies are perfectly handled by MyTVSeries and MovingPictures I moved on and tried to setup my music collection. However on this part MediaPortal is far behind when you are accustomed to wonderful plugin as mentioned above. I think it would be great to revisited the whole music part of MediaPortal and make it up to match with for example Moving Pictures.

 

[2BitSculptor]

I think the only thing that is really lacking (there were some good suggestions) is better integration of the database in MP with the Tags from the music files. Right now the only way you can display album, track and artist information is to play the track or go to the Music Info screen. I like the way that db info is ready for display in Moving Pictures, TV-Series, and even MyVideos.

Thats the way I think MyMusic in MP should work, with all the DB fields available to the skinner when the album or track is focused... not just when playing, and having the info available in the NowPlaying screen would be cool. I think some skins have the MyLyrics button on the NowPlaying screen, maybe buttons/toggles to display an Album or Artist info overlay would be nice too.

Just some thoughts.

Chuck