Ideas for Music Section (4 Viewers)

[jameson_uk]

Re: AW: Re: Ideas for Music Section

when you talk about the available data, does this include only infos which are available when media is already playing like #Play.Current.Track or is there also some data available for the current selected item? there is already the #Selecteditem tag but this shows the whole filename (06. 30 Seconds to Mars - Savior in one row in this example here). i would like to have the artist and track seperated like #Selecteditem.Artist or sth like that to be more flexible in skin creation. specifically i think about the coverflow view as shown in the attached pic with 2 rows, one with selected song and one with selected songs artist...

i just started playing around with all this skinning, so pls be patient if i missed these tags if they already exist...

I don't think much exists when browsing the collection. We have added all the new properties to now playing track
(see 0003148: Expose all MusicTag values artist/album info values as properties in now playing - MediaPortal Bugtracker for a full list of new properties)

I am not sure about adding these details to browsing the collection as when you scroll down through 100 albums it would have to update each time and this could cause lag. I will check what properties are exposed (I am guessing just #selecteditem)

 

[jameson_uk]

Re: AW: Re: Ideas for Music Section

when you talk about the available data, does this include only infos which are available when media is already playing like #Play.Current.Track or is there also some data available for the current selected item? there is already the #Selecteditem tag but this shows the whole filename (06. 30 Seconds to Mars - Savior in one row in this example here). i would like to have the artist and track seperated like #Selecteditem.Artist or sth like that to be more flexible in skin creation. specifically i think about the coverflow view as shown in the attached pic with 2 rows, one with selected song and one with selected songs artist...

i just started playing around with all this skinning, so pls be patient if i missed these tags if they already exist...

I don't think much exists when browsing the collection. We have added all the new properties to now playing track
(see 0003148: Expose all MusicTag values artist/album info values as properties in now playing - MediaPortal Bugtracker for a full list of new properties)

I am not sure about adding these details to browsing the collection as when you scroll down through 100 albums it would have to update each time and this could cause lag. I will check what properties are exposed (I am guessing just #selecteditem which is set to the same thing you see in the listview)

The other thing to consider is that not all the data will be exposed in different views. eg. when browsing genres the only thing that would exist would be genre, when browsing albums you have far more data. This is fine except that you only have one skin file which could limit how useful this is ??

eg. in your example we could add a #selected.track.name or something but it is the same file to browse albums and the same skin control so if it was set to #selected.track.name this would not show anything when browsing albums

 

[jrichards52081]

I'm a sucker for lively discussion! Hope my boss doesn't catch me doing this at work

If I can get the patch it it basically allows you to launch music straight into any view. What I am proposing is a new plugin that you would actually launch from the home menu instead of music. This will simply give you a list of views and clicking on any of them will open up the view in music. There is a shortcut to get back to the home screen (the green button on the MCE remote) and from there it would be one click to open up this plugin again

Sounds great. I didn't understand what you meant by "new plugin" at first, but I get it now. That could be nice. I've been looking for a shortcut to the home screen. I don't have an MCE remote, I'll have to find if I can do this with a keyboard (I use WinLIRC to mimic keypresses with my remote).

I think it is too much effort to implement what you wanted for shuffle to not re-order the playlist. I will look at adding shuffle to the now playing screen but this will re-order the playlist

Sounds good!

exactly my thoughts. shuffle on/off, repeat one/all/off should be global switches, accessible from every music screen (not only the now playing screen). their state should be saved between sessions. assigning remote buttons to these functions is a very good idea - maybe like the subtitle or language switcher in the video section? imho this tweak would improve the music section a lot.

Even better! I really think both of your comments are great input/insight blubserl!

I have submitted a patch that will allow you to jump to now playing from anywhere within MP. Also if you want to jump to now playing from any screen within the music section this is possible if the skin adds a button to do that. If you want this you need to ask the skinners (this can be done already)

That patch sounds like a perfect addition to MP! I might need to experiment with more skins. The one you are using looks like it might be more up my alley than StreamedMP. I don't care too much for fanart, but I liked the homescreen editor.

I was unsure about this but as pointed out when video ends it jumps back to list so this is different to music, so this me kind of warm to it

Just curious. What was the reason for your hesitation?


A couple other questions:

1. Can the Now Playing screen have a full-screen visualization in the background with the album art/song info/track time/etc. in an overlay? I haven't gotten a screen like that yet but can't tell if it is an MP technical reason, or I just need a different skin.

2. If the play button is pushed on an upper level category, can the music be played in the order that was selected in Configuration for the browsing? I don't know how to word it. But let's say I have my views set to go Genre->Artist->Album. If I hit play in Genre, it would play starting with the artist beginning with an A, then their albums in order, and so on throughout the alphabet. If I hit play in Artist, then it would play that artists albums in order. Right now it automatically plays in order by Track Name alphabetically.

Once again, keep up the good work, and thanks for your focus on the Music section...it doesn't seem to get as much love as TV and Movies!

 

[jameson_uk]

what you meant by "new plugin" at first, but I get it now. That could be nice. I've been looking for a shortcut to the home screen. I don't have an MCE remote, I'll have to find if I can do this with a keyboard (I use WinLIRC to mimic keypresses with my remote).

In config there is a keyboard shortcut page which lists most the keyboard shortcuts. To get home the keyboard shortcut is "H"

1. Can the Now Playing screen have a full-screen visualization in the background with the album art/song info/track time/etc. in an overlay? I haven't gotten a screen like that yet but can't tell if it is an MP technical reason, or I just need a different skin.

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

2. If the play button is pushed on an upper level category, can the music be played in the order that was selected in Configuration for the browsing? I don't know how to word it. But let's say I have my views set to go Genre->Artist->Album. If I hit play in Genre, it would play starting with the artist beginning with an A, then their albums in order, and so on throughout the alphabet. If I hit play in Artist, then it would play that artists albums in order. Right now it automatically plays in order by Track Name alphabetically.

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.

Once again, keep up the good work, and thanks for your focus on the Music section...it doesn't seem to get as much love as TV and Movies!

Movies and love? It has been massively enhanced for 1.2
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...eo-database-section-my-movies-get-life-84643/

 

[emphatic]

How about adding a condition to the remote section for "Music Is Playing" in addition to "TV is running" and "Media is playing"? This would let a user map a remote button to jump to Music Now Playing from any screen with just one button press. Also, adding an action called "Shuffle playlist" to the remote section would let users shuffle the currently playing list without having to first go to the playlist screen and then showing the context menu.

Emph

 

[jameson_uk]

How about adding a condition to the remote section for "Music Is Playing" in addition to "TV is running" and "Media is playing"? This would let a user map a remote button to jump to Music Now Playing from any screen with just one button press. Also, adding an action called "Shuffle playlist" to the remote section would let users shuffle the currently playing list without having to first go to the playlist screen and then showing the context menu.

Emph

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...-server-etc-325/jump-music-now-playing-89212/
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

 

[emphatic]

Suggestion: Implement multiple sorting alternatives for views. For example, if you have a compilation albums series and the "album artist" is tagged as "Various Artists" and also setup the album view in MediaPortal to sort by "album artist" it would be nice to have an additional sorting logic but lower in the "sorting hierarchy", or the different volumes in the compilation series won't appear in the released order.

Actual result (taken from my current "Albums" list)

Sorted only by "album artist":
Alias Season 3 soundtrack
Alias Season 1 soundtrack
Alias Season 2 soundtrack
Alias Season 4 soundtrack
Kill Bill Volume 2 Original Soundtrack
Alias Season 5 soundtrack

This is something that has bothered me for quite sometime (since I got all of my music meticulously tagged to appear as intended in MediaPortal).

After my suggestion we'd get:

Sorted by "album artist" then also sorted by year released

Alias Season 1 soundtrack
Alias Season 2 soundtrack
Alias Season 3 soundtrack
Alias Season 4 soundtrack
Alias Season 5 soundtrack
Kill Bill Volume 2 Original Soundtrack

Of course, the year released might not be optimal if you want to browse an artist's albums by name instead of chronologically.
Emph

 

[Dadeo]

HUGE thanks jameson_uk for this thread and all your initiative for the Music Section.

First, I am very happy to see so much user involvement in our development, so kudos to you for that. I would love to see more of it and a much more active and better use of our Improvement Suggestions forum. It would be nice to have some polling of features to give you an idea which are the most desired by the most users. I am not sure how to do that in a way that gives access to all users, but we could start with a Blog to ask users to vote, and a thread with a poll, or add a poll here and point users to it. The Poll could include ONLY the suggestions you feel are possible. There is no point asking people to vote on things you can't do.

Second, thank you for saying no when appropriate. As much as I love the creativity and many of the genius ideas posted here, I do not want you to throw everything into the Music Section. IMO the core features of MP should be what the majority of users want/need. We have a tendency to add so many complex and advanced features to MP that it makes it very difficult for new users. Music Views are already arguably one of the most difficult things to figure out for new users. The great thing about MP is that it is so extendible - that's why we have so many plugins! If we try to make music do everything for everyone it will become totally unusable.

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.

Wish List

OK, my wish list of the features proposed:

1. Expose at least some properties to mymusicgenres.xml (id=504). This is the same idea as el gato proposed:

i would like to have the artist and track separated like #Selecteditem.Artist or sth like that to be more flexible in skin creation

You are correct jameson_uk only #selecteditem is exposed. I think mainly because you can define the data format of your display using Music Sort. That's an awesome feature imo and one very few users seem to know about since it is under Music Sort. I would not wish to change that but I definitely want #artist #album and #track exposed to the skin in mymusicgenres.xml. The problem is as you said - all views are in one xml. Although the #view property is exposed the #selection (or view level) (made in the first column of Music Views) is not. If it was, as a skinner I could easily display #genre when the selection is #genre, etc. Or, as el gato requested, I could display #aritst #album and #track separately whenever the selection is Track (which is I think always the final View level). I could skin these nicely instead of the very long #selecteditem. Then a user could define #selected Item to only display the Track # and name when sorted by Track and we would have a much nicer Track view imo. Also if the view level was exposed I would add it to the display of the View -i.e. 'Music/Genres/Artists/Albums/Tracks' or a nicer format so you always know where you are in the hierarchy.

2. My second request is image/thumbs management. Currently we have:

• Folder.jpgs in the artist/album folders
• Covers and artist images - which are from Amazon when you use Lookup artist / album info
• Covers and artist images from Last.fm if you use Audioscrobbler to download them all
• Covers and artist images from Last.fm if you enable Audioscrobbler it will grab them in Now Playing.
• Covers from id3 tags

AFAIK all these end up stored in the Thumbs\Music folders and end up overwriting each other. What's the point scraping from 3 or 4 sources if we don't preserve the images? So yea, I want multiple images or at least a way to select them. You can select images in the Lookkup dialog, but I think only the ones from Amazon.

3. Enter/Play behaviour. Yes it took me a while to figure it out, but it is consistent within MP - Enter opens a folder or level, and plays a file. Play adds to playlist and performs the action you select in jump on Play Now in Config. I am not sure what you mean by:

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 next

It does not do that for me, it just plays the track, which is correct imo.

My problem is when I want to create a playlist. There are no intuitive keys left to use! Enter plays the track, play adds to playlist, but also plays it. I need a key to just add to playlist! Yes I can program Queue Item on my remote to some key I never remember, but I have to add it to each Music View separately since the windows are defined as Music Artitst, Music Albums, Music Genres, etc Give me a remote button to Queue item for all music views (i.e. same as Add to Playlist) and I will be happy.

4. Smart Playlists - well there is a plugin already and it works pretty well. It could offer better skin support so skinners could make it nicer, all it needs is someone to enhance it a bit. I often use Audioscrobbler to auto create playlists - it usually offers me better playllists than I would create on my own. Or I just periodically save my Recently added tracks to a playlist. I'm too lazy to do anything more. But I would if it were easier!

5. Search - yes there is a Global Search plugin. If installed then Search in Music automatically uses it. It works well, but the skin properties are atrocious and there is almost no way to make it more usable or look good. Someone please fix this important plugin! What I would love is if it could also let me search by tags so I don't have to type with my remote!

6. Topbar

The topbar should really be accessible with the remote but is not within music.

Actually it is accessible in Blue3 by going to the Menu and pressing up arrow. However, this is a 'pita' for remote users who prefer to scroll the menus top to bottom so some skins change that navigation. What we really need is an action for topbar so it can be assigned to a remote button or keyboard shortcut. Then we no longer need to figure out how to get there, it is always accessible by a single key press.

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.

OK my brain is tired now. But great work and really exciting to see Music get a supercharge for MP 1.2.0!!!

 

[jameson_uk]

Suggestion: Implement multiple sorting alternatives for views. For example, if you have a compilation albums series and the "album artist" is tagged as "Various Artists" and also setup the album view in MediaPortal to sort by "album artist" it would be nice to have an additional sorting logic but lower in the "sorting hierarchy", or the different volumes in the compilation series won't appear in the released order.

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.

 

[jameson_uk]

1. Expose at least some properties to mymusicgenres.xml (id=504)

Will have a look at this. Possibly artist, albumartist, album and genre would not have a big impact on performance.
As for the view levels being exposed I did submit a patch as you know (https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...aportal-tv-server-etc-325/music-labels-83172/) but I think we got sidetracked into expanding that to cover videos as well.

2. My second request is image/thumbs management

It really annoys me that my thumbs (all in ID3 for albums and carefully selected for artist) can get overwritten by the last.fm plugin but also it annoys me that if I turn off auto retrieval of thumbs that I have no thumbs in last.fm will have a quick look through this (although I think this is all so deep rooted within the core code that it might be too difficult to change without risking breaking something)

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

4. Smart Playlists

Speaking of lazy, what plugin is this?

5. Search

I find the views normally enough to search for what I am looking for and I rarely use the global search plugin. If I still have any time left I will have a look at this

6. Topbar

I agree but we will see as discussions in team area seem to not think so...

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

Thanks did not know that. Will have a play with this (but as for MP default they will stay)