Ideas for Music Section (6 Viewers)

[Dadeo]

7. Back icons - actually you can remove the '..' item from lists by using

<folderPrefix />
<folderSuffix />

on a listcontrol or adding it in references.xml - I turned them off in aMPed ages ago.

How does this actually work then? I have tried adding these to the listview controls and they don't seem to make a difference. Looking at the code the ".." listitems seem to be added regardless of any switch so confused as to how this works

My mistake DUH - the folderprefix/foldersuffix remove the ugly square brackets. Sorry for misleading you!

I should have read the wiki first

I never see the ".." item because I always use database views. It is the easiest solution.

 

[jameson_uk]

I never see the ".." item because I always use database views. It is the easiest solution.

but they are added in database views too

 

[jrichards52081]

I think that's all I can think of. You already added a quick jump to Now Playing didn't you?

Even now red/X should jump to now-playing if no vizualisations are selected. I have added a new shortcut to now-playing but I am now thinking that X should possibly always jump to now-playing and the new Z shortcut should jump to full screen viz

I'm reading through a bunch of replies after a quick vacation and see some great discussion. Glad the Music section is getting some love!

I just wanted to say to you that I like this idea. I think it cleans things up a lot. Also, I like a lot of wonkyd's suggestions, but feel that a lot of them were brought up and addressed earlier in the thread as well. Just want to keep you from revisiting things over and over.

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

My 2 cents (pence?):

Mode 1: Identical function on song.
- 'Enter' would drill down into the folders until a song was encountered. If 'enter' was pushed while a song was highlighted, anything currently playing would stop, Music would go to Now Playing (if selected in config) and any song after that in the folder would continue to play as well.
- 'Play,' would stop anything currently playing and, when pressed on a folder, would play the contents of that folder in order and immediately jump to Now Playing. If pressed on a song, it would play that song and any song after it in the folder and jump to Now Playing

Mode 2: Playlist mode, similar to current mode.
- 'Enter' would drill down into folders until a song was encountered. If pressed while a song was highlighted, it would stop what was currently playing, and play the selected song, plus everything following that in the folder. It would switch to Now Playing when doing so.
- 'Play' would not stop the current song from playing. The song or folder of songs (whichever is highlighted when the button is pressed) would be added to the current playlist. It would do so according to the settings in MP config whether it is added as next song or at the end of playlist.

One thing I might change about the above is that the "Switch to Now Playing" setting currently in the config could be 2 settings. So you could check or uncheck it for both the Enter and Play buttons according to your taste.

Don't mean to spam the thread, but I didn't see a lot of replies to the Enter/Play question and wasn't sure if my response above was lost in the shuffle.

 

[jameson_uk]

Don't mean to spam the thread, but I didn't see a lot of replies to the Enter/Play question and wasn't sure if my response above was lost in the shuffle.

I have been working on this today. We have something we are testing internally which I think is very intuitive and will let you know how successful this is once we get somewhere

 

[zOnk.oNe]

Hello. The most important issue for me is: Handling large amounts of mp3's.
It would be awesome if MP wouldn't take 20 minutes to load a playlist (1000's of music files long). It seems like once the database (folders) were scanned in config, there's be a database created and then MP would be able to react very quickly to commands, but this doesn't seem to be the case. At least, in my experience. (*whereas say, Winamp loads very large lists quickly)

*Also: About ID3 tags: Prevent MP from editing any data associated with files. My files are pristine and need to keep them that way

Looking forward to seeing what comes out with the new release. Thanks for the effort everyone.

peace

 

[jameson_uk]

Hello. The most important issue for me is: Handling large amounts of mp3's.
It would be awesome if MP wouldn't take 20 minutes to load a playlist (1000's of music files long). It seems like once the database (folders) were scanned in config, there's be a database created and then MP would be able to react very quickly to commands, but this doesn't seem to be the case. At least, in my experience. (*whereas say, Winamp loads very large lists quickly)

*Also: About ID3 tags: Prevent MP from editing any data associated with files. My files are pristine and need to keep them that way

Looking forward to seeing what comes out with the new release. Thanks for the effort everyone.

peace

First off MP wont touch your tags.

Second I take it you have scanned your files and imported them into the database? And you are creating playlist from database views not shares view?

 

[zOnk.oNe]

1) Awesome. Good to know

2) Yes. Scanned files and imported them to the database...but, I've never messed with creating playlists from within MP due to the speed. I've used .m3u's created outside and added to playlist directory. Is it worth recreating playlists from within MP?

Thx for response/suggestions

 

[jameson_uk]

Thx for response/suggestions

Will look at this later. What actually is it that takes the time? Is it loading a pre-defined playlist, adding files to a playlist or say selecting play on a genre to play everything that is taking the time?

 

[jameson_uk]

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
• 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)
• Properties now exposed to skin in music browsing screens
• New fields added to database (Comment, FileType, Codec, BitRateMode, BPM, Bitrate, Channels, SampleRate) and exposed as properties

Things that are in progress (all kind of linked and quite messy)

• Tidy up of the existing code
• 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)
• Add shuffle button to now-playing (and possibly as a global action)

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)

Things are starting to get a little more quiet here.... please keep the ideas flowing. Is there anything not on this list that I said I would look at?

 

[1stdead]

Jukebox mode and on-fly search like in moving pictures using remote. Last one is really needed!