Ideas for Music Section (1 Viewer)

[Nemulate]

Another +1 for jumping back to the previous screen if the music has finished on the 'now playing' screen! Excellent ideas coming in this thread guys, keep it going

 

[Dadeo]

Speaking of lazy, whatplugin is this?

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mediaportal-plugins-47/smartplaylists-1-1-1-a-44278/index4.html - been around for a few years but I don't know how active Fabien44's development is. It still works in MP 1.1.1 but I have not tried in 1.2.0 alpha yet.

Thanks for all the answers, I fully appreciate the issues and problems involved, I just wanted to give you my list in case you spot some way to include them.

 

[Mike Lowrey]

For example, audiobooks would be a great addition, but imo better as a plugin where it can be designed specifically for audiobooks and updated more frequently. Quick link to music and back if you like.

Well yes of course we can make a plugin for each feature(like the unix phrase "one task, one tool") but then we need a intuitive solution for the masses of plugins in the homescreen.

And i think the current way of the sub menu items don't really fit, because in most skins(yes may be skin related, may be because was the easiest way?) you don't see the submenus on starting MePo.

And how should they be organized? If Music and Audiobooks (as an example) are splittet, in which category will it fit?

 

[emphatic]

Not sure what you are asking for here. You can change the default sort in the view definition and you can also change the current sort method whilst browsing.

Sorry, I thought that my example was pretty clear. First the album list is sorted by artist, then that artists albums are sorted by year. So for example, all albums by ABBA are sorted by year, then after these are listed, you'll get all albums by Britney Spears sorted by year, then the following artist and so on.

 

[jameson_uk]

Not sure what you are asking for here. You can change the default sort in the view definition and you can also change the current sort method whilst browsing.

Sorry, I thought that my example was pretty clear. First the album list is sorted by artist, then that artists albums are sorted by year. So for example, all albums by ABBA are sorted by year, then after these are listed, you'll get all albums by Britney Spears sorted by year, then the following artist and so on.

Ahh so you are talking about secondary sorting. Everything is so embedded within the code that I don't think we can change the way sorting works as a user configurable option. I do believe there is a default secondary sort in the code so I will see what that is

 

[emphatic]

I do believe there is a default secondary sort in the code so I will see what that is

I've been wondering what it is, as it's kinda nonsensical IMHO. "By year" would make sense (for albums by one artist) but "By album title" would be better for compilations. If some kind of editor for the database (like the Video database) would be available, it would be great to have a "sort name" field like Moving Pictures has and users could handle it by themselves.

Or if you enter an artist view, then use a "sort by year" for that artist only, and not make it universal. Then in the "Albums" view, that sorting for each artist in the list will be used for each artist. Wow, this is really hard to explain when English isn't my first language.

Emph

 

[jameson_uk]

it would be great to have a "sort name" field like Moving Pictures has and users could handle it by themselves

The way music has been coded to cope with multi-value fields (eg. Genre, Artist, Album Artist etc) means that this is simply not possible without a rewrite.

Or if you enter an artist view, then use a "sort by year" for that artist only, and not make it universal. Then in the "Albums" view, that sorting for each artist in the list will be used for each artist.

Again not possible without some major work as sorts are defined at view level and this is so deep in the code it would be easier to start again and would be months worth of work...

Wow, this is really hard to explain when English isn't my first language.

Much better than my Swedish and I get what you are saying

 

[emphatic]

Ah, that is too bad about the "forced re-write" stuff. I thought the Music plugin was as open to fixes as the video section. Deda has put in a lot of work into making that one shine. It's not possible to adapt the video plugin to a new music plugin then? I'll keep on dreaming I guess.

Emph

 

[jameson_uk]

Ah, that is too bad about the "forced re-write" stuff. I thought the Music plugin was as open to fixes as the video section. Deda has put in a lot of work into making that one shine. It's not possible to adapt the video plugin to a new music plugin then? I'll keep on dreaming I guess.

Emph

Music section is just as open to fixes as video just a question of time. Deda spent months doing stuff with video section (and it is great now).

Also 1.2 beta is going to be coming soon and then we are going to be entering a period of code freeze so any updates no in by then will not get in. This is why I am trying to get as much of the easy stuff out the way now. If there is time we can come back to this and revisit some of the more complex stuff later

 

[jameson_uk]

Another +1 for jumping back to the previous screen if the music has finished on the 'now playing' screen! Excellent ideas coming in this thread guys, keep it going

Started looking into this and found something interesting... all the code in music now playing seems to be there to do this already but it is not happening... This might be far simpler than I thought as it looks like it should work and might just need a tiny tweak

Edit: Indeed this was actually a little bit of logic missing as the code to actually do this is already there. I have submitted a two line patch which should make this work again