Ideas for Music Section (1 Viewer)

[jameson_uk]

Better multi-disc support - If you have an album that consists of multiple discs, MediaPortal will just add a 1 to the beginning of the CD1 track numbers, then a 2 to the CD2 track numbers etc. Can this be improved somehow? Like if you click on an album with "Enter"/"OK", you'd get a visual cue that this is a multi-disc album? I think that "101.Track title" looks too much like a "data list"

That's a really good point... Multi Disc is nowhere presented in a nice way

In the latest code (so will be in 1.2 beta) we have already removed the 101 etc tracks all together
What we have replaced it with is the disc# within the views. So now the defaults are things like
Album Artist Groups
Album Artist
Album
Disc#
Tracks

This however would be quite annoying for most albums only having one disc and still having to go through an extra level of view therefore what we have done is added some new logic that allows views to skip levels if there is only a single value. Therefore now if you browse an album with a single disc with the above view by default it will jump from album to tracks (as it does now) and you will not notice any difference except for tracks will have the correct number. If however you browse a multi-disc album when you select the album you will be presented with a choice of discs to look at and then under that you will only get the tracks on that disc.

It would look really cool if the two discs' contents where presented in two square fields side by side, and clicking right/left would take you directly from one disc to the next. The selected disc would be zoomed in so that you can view the track names better, perhaps some type of Film strip or Cover Flow animation? I can do a mockup picture later if this sounds interesting enough.

The layout and navigation is from a few controls that everything in mediaportal uses. We basically have lists and image lists (including film strip and coverflow) and everything uses the same controls so we can not change something for music as they are all used in TV, videos, tv series, moving pictures......)

The solution we have implemented works and was possible without changing masses of code.

 

[jameson_uk]

I'd also like support for audiobooks. The big thing to allow this would be the resume feature above, but I guess support for downloading appropriate cover art etc would be a bonus.

To be honest I don't know anything about audiobooks but scraping is certainly not going to happen as they can not be taken from the existing sources.

Btw, podcast support would be awesome....
But perhaps this is something that some other plugin could be used for

Indeed not something in music but could be done as an external plugin

* Jukebox / Party Mode would be great.
** Show a Now Playing Screen with nice Album / Fan / Viz Art und a single button "Request a Song" (or talk to the DJ ;-) )
** When requesting a song have a very simple user interface where you can look around for a song

I have been messing around with a simple jukebox plugin (outside of music) but all the party mode things like preventing skipping etc I am not going to implement as part of the main plugin.

views incorporating different filter criteria in one would be nice, but lets keep something for MP2 ...

What other filters do you want? (I think most of the tags taglib reads are already exposed and this will meet the needs to 98% of people). Have we missed any?

 

[Mike Lowrey]

To be honest I don't know anything about audiobooks b

The following features are important for audiobooks:
- REALLY GOOD Multi Disc support cause most Audiobooks habe more than 4 discs (what you've described about 1.2a sounds good!)
- the PlugIn have to remember the last position for each audiobook
- The View should be more like for movies, as artist or something like that isn't as important, like the unimportance of the director

 

[emphatic]

Very intriguing about the multi-disc related changes. I'm still gonna post my very quick & dirty mockup here (as I already spent a good 20 minutes making it ).

I didn't put much time into making sexy icons for what disc is currently shown, the layout looks very crammed etc. But I think you get the idea. I have no illusions of this making it's way into MP1 (without a new plugin), but I just wanted to put it out there. Hopefully, some young, ambitious coder get inspired.

Emph

 

[jameson_uk]

the PlugIn have to remember the last position for each audiobook

I take it you are talking across sessions so you could turn on MP listen to 20 mins of an audio book, watch some TV, come back the next day, listen to a CD and then go back to your audiobook and resume where you left off?

The View should be more like for movies, as artist or something like that isn't as important, like the unimportance of the director

How do you differentiate audiobooks from other audio files?

 

[Mike Lowrey]

I take it you are talking across sessions so you could turn on MP listen to 20 mins of an audio book, watch some TV, come back the next day, listen to a CD and then go back to your audiobook and resume where you left off?

Yes that's exactly what i mean!

How do you differentiate audiobooks from other audio files?

I currently use the genre Tag(e.g. Genre == "audiobook") to differentiate audiobooks, but it's not the best solution cause also audiobooks can have genres...

 

[jameson_uk]

How do you differentiate audiobooks from other audio files?

I currently use the genre Tag(e.g. Genre == "audiobook") to differentiate audiobooks, but it's not the best solution cause also audiobooks can have genres...

So there is no "official" way of telling what is an audiobook and what is a standard music file?

 

[Mike Lowrey]

Yes it seems so. The most common way is developed by apple. They use a special type of MP4 Container in which all titles are integrated, but it's a proprietary solution.
So i think we have to think about a better way

 

[jrichards52081]

I am so happy that this thread exists. I recently switched to MediaPortal from XBMC because I like the ease of the plugin installation and the ability to change the homescreen however I'd like. This was important to me. But I mostly listen to music and really do not like the music section. Most of the suggestions I see are about adding extra features. I don't find any of that necessary. I think the UI makes it hard to easily navigate. I will hope I can outline my problems clearly!

1. When entering the music section, I think 1 of 3 things should happen, as a user-selected option. A. Have a pop-up list of Playlists/Artist/Album/Genre, etc. so the user can choose which section to go to. B. Assign a standard section that music always jumps to (i.e. I would automatically jump to Genre always) or C. Have it always go to the last-used section.

2. I do not like how it is playlist focused. If I hit play on an album, then I want to play that album only. I do not want it to create a playlist with that album in it. It should jump straight to the now playing screen, then when the album is done playing go right back to the album list or previous page I was on. Same thing with hitting play on a genre or artist, etc. I mostly own albums and never create playlists on the go. If it already does this, what am I missing?

3. Shuffle!! Mediaportal physically shuffles the playlist when I hit shuffle. This should be something that can be turned on or off while keeping the list in the same order. An algorithm should just jump around the songs in that list without changing the listing order. Also, it should be a persistent on-screen option whenever I am listening to music. I'll often listen to a select genre, then when I get to the now playing screen I want to choose shuffle (maybe it is in the menu of the now playing screen on Blue3 and is just missing from StreamedMP skin?)

4. Speaking of on-screen controls, I'd love to always have on-screen play/pause, skip/back, shuffle/repeat buttons on screen. I won't always use them because the screen is usually off, but it's nice for visitors who don't know which buttons on the remote to use or can't find the hidden menu.

5. Enter and Play seem to have different functions on a song. I don't understand why. If it is an actionable item, it should do the standard action, which is play that song. Again, I'd prefer it immediately jump to the now playing screen (maybe enter plays just that song, and play would play that whole list? I am unsure on this point).

6. This is minor, and actually applies to all of MP, but I want the ability to remove the back arrows in lists. I have a button on my remote that says "BACK" and the arrows are visually ugly.

7. Another minor one that I know can be changed, but the default of grouping by letter should not be the default. It took me a lot of searching to figure out how to get rid of that.

8. As an extra feature, Smart Playlists (like iTunes Genius) would be pretty nice, if possible.

I am relatively new to MediaPortal and still figuring things out, so maybe some of this is already happening and I am not understanding things correctly, if so I am sorry!! I am using the StreamedMP skin also, so maybe it functions differently than the standard skin. But basically, I want it to work almost exactly like an iPod...nice and simple. There is a standard now playing screen that you jump to when playing a song/album/whatever with the ability to turn on and off shuffle. And an easy way to get back to the Now Playing screen from any other screen you are at.

I just re-read my long post and realized I never said thank-you to those who have made MediaPortal. It is a great program, and you've done a great job! Didn't want my first post to sound like I only had complaints.

 

[hwahrmann]

How do you differentiate audiobooks from other audio files?

I currently use the genre Tag(e.g. Genre == "audiobook") to differentiate audiobooks, but it's not the best solution cause also audiobooks can have genres...

So there is no "official" way of telling what is an audiobook and what is a standard music file?[/QUOTE]

Only thing i could think of is, that for songs > 10 minutes length, the Stop Time is saved, if there was a manual stop.
And that we either ask, "Do you want to continue" or have a flag saying "Continue were stopped".
With the second option we would not interfere with classical type of music,