MPBlue PPC client release 0.0.4 (1 Viewer)

[MrSensitive]

It's been a while. Very good job MrSensitive!

I tested the latest version on my PPC2003 and it worked very well (I assumbe that only MyMusic button should work by now.). And GUI looks very promising. As this starts to fly, hope to see more programmers here too helping you out.

thanks!

ps. even changed the ip -address of my htpc

hehe, sorry that saving settings is still not possible..

 

[ZetaVu]

Ok, still playing with the xml file, figured out how to add pages and popups, so I'm gonna spend some time this weekend making some basic navigations and setting up some pages for future use. WHat I'm thinking of is a page to display lyrics if we can actually display that. Another page would be for a list of selected songs.

Now with both of these, like shuffle, I am in need of guidance, from anyone who is in the know. I see how the now playing data comes, #Play.Current.Title for song title, question is how would I call the titles of other songs in the play que? (tried #Play.Next.Title, worth a shot)

How would I call lyrics or album art for the current selection? I have tried to dig through all the MP info I can and cannot find a list of the nominclature. If I had that, I could try to populate a selected songs list, maybe 10 per page, where you could select the song and immediately jump to it. Basically, is there a list or instructions anywhere that could tell me how things are labelled in MP?

Ok, now some issues I found. When I built a new database in rc3, if I select unknown under an artist, I play ALL the songs that have album as unknown, not just that artist. I checked my old database that I sent you, and that works fine with or without indexing. Not quite sure why that happened.

Also, I cannot select an artist name and play all songs by that artist, it lets me select the artist but does nothing when I select play.

I also started playing with looking at other databases. I have a recipe database that I thought would be cool to access. However, I can get as far as making the screen for it, I assume the actual searching of fields is done by your program. Let me know if there's anything editable I can do to setup other databases or if you have to (main reason being my lack of programing ability) If the fields of databases could be defined in xml files, then users at my low level could edit how their databases function. That would also let users make their own personalized skins and orientations for the plugin just by xml editting, which would be cool.

 

[MrSensitive]

ZetaVu,

you are very enthousiastic..

but I'm afraid that all the things you want need to be written..
this will take some time..
I would rather focus on getting music to work flawlessly
then I think I will do a switch to compact framework 2.0
the the skinning engine can be adopted to use the new features of compact framework 2.0 (landscape etc..)
after that, more non music related features can be implemented.
(girder or other automation tools integration, other MP area's..etc)

 

[ZetaVu]

Ok, here's something really weird. If I create my music database using rc2 (3-02 cvs build) then artists with unknown albums get treated separately, both in MP and MPblue. In other words, if I select unknown under an artist in the library, it plays songs from that artist with no album in the id3. On the negative side, if I have an album with multiple artists, then under album view I get an entree for that album for each artist (both MP and MPblue) Worse, unknown has multiple entries, one for each artist that has unknown albums.

Now, if I create or update my music library with rc3, then I do not get multiple entries on the albums or the unknown, however, if I select unknown under ANY ARTIST, it starts playing ALL THE UNKNOWNS in MPblue. It looks like there was a fix for the multiple album/multiple unknown bug with RC3, but it screwed up the unknown album entry in MPBlue. Everything works fine in MP itself, select unknown under an artist and you only get the items for that artist. MPblue seems to have the error. Can anything be done to fix this?

 

[ZetaVu]

Couple more observations. First, when visualizations are full screen, now playing information does not update. It does update fine when I have another window or program open and in focus.

Also, tried the latest cvs (3-25) to see if that fixes the database issue (where unknown albums under any artist has ALL songs (regardless of artist) where album is unknown, only in mpblue). Anyway, the controls in mpblue still work, but play, skip, etc do not. Uninstalled the cvs and I'm back to rc3 original. I am keeping a copy of rc2 to generate databases until the unknown album issue can be repaired, I'd rather have 400 unknown albums I can ignore than not be able to select songs by artist

It would also really be cool to just be able to select artist and play, having it play all albums, that doesn't work at this time.

 

[MrSensitive]

something must have changed in the database in RC3, will check this...

the CVS version you tried probably has a new core.dll and databases.dll, i have to recompile against those to get it to work.
due to difficult maintenance I would only like to support the RC3 version..
(unless they make changes that force me to upgrade to a new CVS)

when visualizations are full screen, now playing information does not update. It does update fine when I have another window or program open and in focus.

strange, will check this when nowplaying is working again..

It would also really be cool to just be able to select artist and play, having it play all albums, that doesn't work at this time.

Done..

And Thanks To EgonSpenglerUK, it is now possible to save settings.

I'm still struggling a bit with the new nowplaying interface..
I'm using UDP Multicasting to get the data to the pocketPC (or any UDP client for that matter) and it turns out that when the PPC is connect via ActiveSync, UDP packets are blocked..

hard to debug..

 

[ZetaVu]

The big annoyance is how RC3 handles unknown album in the music database (or rather how mpblue handles it in databases created with rc3). If I select any artist, and select unknown album under that artist, it plays all songs by any artist that have unknown as album. Is this fixable?

By the way, are you posting the updated files?

 

[MrSensitive]

The big annoyance is how RC3 handles unknown album in the music database (or rather how mpblue handles it in databases created with rc3). If I select any artist, and select unknown album under that artist, it plays all songs by any artist that have unknown as album. Is this fixable?

By the way, are you posting the updated files?

I'm sure it is fixable..
I probably need to modify some queries to select songs on albumID AND artistID..

I'm not posting every update, it requires a lot of work to set up a release, and test it a bit before sending out.

once nowplaying is working again, and the above problem has been fixed, i will try to build a release (it will include your modifications in the skin if you agree with that?)

 

[ZetaVu]

Yeah, definitely. I've gotten used to the botton tool bar.

The now playing seems to work in most cases but usually you have to move somewhere on MP to refresh it. I have no idea why the whole play program stopped with the latest cvs, and honestly I'd say wait another cvs to make sure it wasn't a glitch unless you can replicate.

Also, do you know where I can find the wording to call albumart, lyrics, next song or any list or instructions (example, #Play.Current.Ttle)? I'd like to start playing with those in different displays, but I cannot find anything to help me.

 

[MrSensitive]

a neat trick I use is to enable the property browser in the external display plugin by JoeDalton..

this lists all property's and their real time value..
(just enalke the external display plugin, go to setup and tick the checkbox next to show property browser)