Ideas for Music Section (3 Viewers)

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jameson_uk

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    A quick progress report

    In the code now (so these will definately be in 1.2 beta)

    • Disc# now available in music views
    • You are now able to re-order views inside config
    • The creation and manipulation of views is now a lot cleaner
    • There is now an option to skip view levels with only a single entry (very useful for disc#)
    • Far more properties exposed to skins in now playing screen
    • Multi disc albums will no longer have the disc number before the track number (so what shows as 101 now will go back to 01
    • Ability to jump to now-playing screen from anywhere inside MP
    • Abililty to open plugin with a parameter (means you can open up directly in view of your choice)
    • Fix now-playing code so that when playback ends MP will go back to previous screen
    • Ability to love/ban now-playing track on last.fm


    These are things that are still waiting to go in

    • All submitted patches now in code :)


    These are the things I definately want to look at still

    • Adding a new section to config for scraping artist/album info (and possibly artist thumbs)
    • Look at the whole enter/play confusion and try and improve this
    • Fix some of the labels (these are set in an odd way and are sometimes inconsistent)
    • See if it is possible to expose a few more properties in music browsing screens (genre, artist, album artist, album, track)
    • Add shuffle button to now-playing (and possibly as a global action)
    • Add the option to choose how you want date added populated (currently this is the day track is imported into database but I would like to add file created date and file modified date)


    Things that could get looked at if there is time

    • Get list of loved / banned tracks from last.fm and expose this to skin in now-playing screen
    • Add repeat toggle to now-playing screen
    • Have a look at some complex view stuff (this is pretty low down as whilst it would be pretty powerful you would need to be a dev really to know how to use it)
    • Importing tags from CUE files


    There are some things I do not intend to look at

    • Audiobooks (if the new disc# stuff helps great but as there is no official way of identifying them then IMHO there should be an AudioBook plugin)
    • Podcasts
    • DJ mode / Party features. Maybe one day but again this sounds like it would be better suited to a plugin
     

    emphatic

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    [*]Have a look at some complex view stuff (this is pretty low down as whilst it would be pretty powerful you would need to be a dev really to know how to use it)

    But even if this would be "hard to use", it would surely be great to get in the code before a feature freeze? I think many people at first see the "Music views" section in the Configuration and go -"I don't get it, never mind" then get irritated because the default views (grouping of artist, album etc) are confusing. I'd bet that if the default settings where setup according to https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/listen-music-99/guide-music-section-mediaportal-77404/ less people would have problems. Once you get past that initial discomfort, it's not so hard to setup the existing views and get an urge to further explore what can be done.

    If someone were to write an "advanced" music views guide with screen shots of the results etc, I bet many "non-dev" types would appreciate it.

    The list in your post looks great!
    Emph
     

    jrichards52081

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    No... you can have full screen visualization or now playing with info. I believe in full screen viz it will announce details when the track changes but not keep an overlay

    Thanks for the info. That is unfortunate. Having both a Now Playing screen and a Full Screen screen seems redundant to me. It would be nice if it was just one screen with different view options.

    Never noticed this but I tend to play albums. I will have a look but if it is not straight forward it won't get done.

    I have a feeling this won't be easy, but thanks for looking into it!

    Jump to music now playing
    you will be able to jump to music now playing when music is playing (from any screen within MP) with the "Z" key. You could map this action to a different remote button if you want

    This will be a great addition! How come this can't be a global command for all of MP since it is my understanding that only one thing can be playing at once? Is it possible for MP 2 or will it not work because of the plugin architecture?

    Enter will clear whatever is playing and start that track but will also queue up whatever was in the folder you pressed enter in to have that play nex
    t
    It does not do that for me, it just plays the track, which is correct imo.

    I have the same behavior as jameson. If I hit enter on track 1 of an album, it will play all the following tracks. If I hit play on track 1 of an album it will only play that track.

    7. Back icons - actually you can remove the '..' item from lists by using
    Code:
    <folderPrefix />
    <folderSuffix />
    on a listcontrol or adding it in references.xml - I turned them off in aMPed ages ago.

    Wow, I'll have to figure this out. Thank you!

    3. Enter/Play behaviour.
    My plan is here is to actually introduce a new mode (switchable). This would then make play and enter do the same thing. If nothing is playing they will start whatever is selected playing. If something is playing it will add the item to the current playlist (either at end or next depending on config option). This however is probably a massive amount of work and whilst it is my biggest issue with music (found a thread from me in 2008 about this here) I need to be very careful

    I would give my thumbs up to this behavior. I like the idea of making it switchable. I don't know about everyone else, but I don't usually build playlists, so I would set it so regardless of whether I hit enter or play it would just stop the current song and play the new one. Of course all this depends on whether it is possible.

    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.

    Jameson, I know you already addressed this, but I didn't fully understand some of what you wrote. I agree with Emphatics request here. The way iTunes does it is by having additional sort options. Instead of just "By Album," there is "By Album by Name" or "By Album by Year" or "By Album by Artist by Year" so it isn't an additional layer of sorting simply an additional view. I've never written a line of code in my life so I don't know if this is possible, but I'd like to see this option as well.

    It looks like you are making great progress here, and I see the changes that you have already made are going to be really helpful. Thanks!
     

    jameson_uk

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    Thanks for the info. That is unfortunate. Having both a Now Playing screen and a Full Screen screen seems redundant to me. It would be nice if it was just one screen with different view options.
    There is really a now playing screen and a full screen vizualisations screen. There is not really going to be a way to change this (although you can press red or X to jump between the two)

    This will be a great addition! How come this can't be a global command for all of MP since it is my understanding that only one thing can be playing at once? Is it possible for MP 2 or will it not work because of the plugin architecture?
    It will be a global action but will only work if music is paying. So if you are browsing EPG screen but music is playing it will work but if you are watching a video or TV it will do nothing
     

    el_gato

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    AW: Re: Ideas for Music Section

    Jump to music now playing you will be able to jump to music now playing when music is playing (from any screen within MP) with the "Z" key. You could map this action to a different remote button if you want
    This will be a great addition! How come this can't be a global command for all of MP since it is my understanding that only one thing can be playing at once? Is it possible for MP 2 or will it not work because of the plugin architecture?

    like that addition, too and i have to agree with jrichards52081 that this should be kind of a global command since we are used to jump to the actual playing movie in fullscreen via the red button already so it would be very nice to use the same button to jump to music now playing screen if it is a music mediafile playing... i don't use visualizations and these would open up if i press red button while a song is playing if i remember right? disliked that ever since. so i'd like to suggest a toggle option for mpconfig whether the red button should jump to now playing or show visualization... this adds more consistency to mp in my opinion if the red button sets focus on the playing media. visualization is just a gimmick for the music^^
     

    hwahrmann

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    Re: AW: Re: Ideas for Music Section

    Jump to music now playing you will be able to jump to music now playing when music is playing (from any screen within MP) with the "Z" key. You could map this action to a different remote button if you want
    This will be a great addition! How come this can't be a global command for all of MP since it is my understanding that only one thing can be playing at once? Is it possible for MP 2 or will it not work because of the plugin architecture?

    like that addition, too and i have to agree with jrichards52081 that this should be kind of a global command since we are used to jump to the actual playing movie in fullscreen via the red button already so it would be very nice to use the same button to jump to music now playing screen if it is a music mediafile playing... i don't use visualizations and these would open up if i press red button while a song is playing if i remember right? disliked that ever since. so i'd like to suggest a toggle option for mpconfig whether the red button should jump to now playing or show visualization... this adds more consistency to mp in my opinion if the red button sets focus on the playing media. visualization is just a gimmick for the music^^

    it IS a Global Command.
    But if no Music is playing, why should we invoke an empty Now Playing screen?

    And you are wrong with the Red Button.

    The Red Button on Remote Control, or "X" on the keyboard, is used to toggle between MP GUI and Fullscreen Visualisation.
    Now, when you DON'T have any Vis set, it doesn't show you a blank screen, but it invokes "Now Playing".
    So the functionality is already there.

    The "Z" button is there for people who use Visualisation. They use "Red" and "X" to toggle between GUI and Full Screen Vis and
    the "Z" is used to invoke Now Playing.

    I know that now we're immediately asked to have some round robin using "X" or Red Button, like GUI -> Vis -> Now Playing, but i don#t think that it can be easily done and we most probably won't do it.
     

    jameson_uk

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    Re: AW: Re: Ideas for Music Section

    he Red Button on Remote Control, or "X" on the keyboard, is used to toggle between MP GUI and Fullscreen Visualisation
    I have viz set to "none" and the use viz on now playing box unticked but pressing x whilst music is playing just takes me to a blank screen. I am fairly sure this changed in one of the 1.1 RCs
     

    jameson_uk

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    Was broken and fixed on 02.07.2010 in SVN 26047
    seems broken again for me anyway on latest SVN... I will check out those two revisions and see what has happened
     

    jameson_uk

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    Right ok started work on the enter/play conundrum....

    I will attempt to have two modes which you can flick between so keep that in mind but I don't want to colour your view too much and just want feedback on what you think should happen.

    Take into account that
    • You have multiple levels of views (and enter will only ever be used to go into folders)
    • You may have music playing at the time (should be stop and replace that, queue our song up next, queue our song up at the end of the current list?)
    • You may have TV or video playing. (Should that stop)
    • You may only multiple tracks in a view

    So ignore whatever I have said before just say what you think the buttons should do
     
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