My Music - need your thoughts on how to improve and enhance (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter SteveV
- Start date
- Status
Afghanistan
True, but to work around it at the moment, if you highlight a folder an press 'p' it will make all the files and subfolders into an active playlist, allowing you to shuffle, reorder etc. This is similar to how most portable audio players, and indeed most software jukeboxes (winamp, etc) work. You tell it what folder/files you want to be active (in the active playlist) and then you play through them sequentially or randomly, etc.
- November 14, 2004
- 136
- 2
SteveV and others,
I'm working on better filtering for music views. This might have some impact and I opened a seperate thread. Please have a read and post there if my suggested changes are causing trouble:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/viewtopic.php?p=108133#108133
I'm working on better filtering for music views. This might have some impact and I opened a seperate thread. Please have a read and post there if my suggested changes are causing trouble:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/viewtopic.php?p=108133#108133
Here are some suggestions mostly for enhancing the user's music experience:
- Currently "Media Portal" searches for cover art inside the album's folder, which is nice, but the cover picture has to be named "folder.jpg". I think most music collectors don't follow this rule which originates from WMP and have the cover saved in a file that has "cover" or "front" as an ingredient in its filename. Personally, I am reluctant to start renaming my covers to that, although it could be done with some effort and the help of a file renamer utility, because I prefer to incorporate more information in my cover files (I use an "%artist% - %album% cover" pattern). Thus, I suggest the program to search inside the albums' folders for pictures whose filename has a certain word in it, a word the user could specify [e.g. cover, front, folder or whatever]. I think making the word user configurable should cover most situations and please almost everybody. In case more than one pictures that have the "cover word" in their filename are present in the album folder, there could be an option for the user to specify a couple of words (number depending on the developed engine's robustness) whose presence in the filename disqualifies the picture for cover art (e.g. back, cd, alt etc.).
Alternatively, if this is too much work and has problems getting implemented, I suggest users to use a file renamer utility that can take care of this by changing the "cover word" in the other pictures not intended for covers with another word (provided of course that these other pictures can be easily distinguished from the cover art pictures, which is most likely if your cover art pictures follow certain filename patterns e.g. "cover", "front", "cover (front)", "%artist% - %album% cover").
- In the context menu of music, along with currently available "Show Album info" add "Show Artist info". I also suggest a different way for these two to work. Currently, you press F3 to query allmusic.com for album information and, if you are lucky and such information exists, it is then stored in the MediaPortal database, where you cannot make any modifications.
Since music collections follow the structure ...artist folder/album folder/music files, my suggestions are for "Show Album info" to use the text file it finds in the album's folder (typically the folder the songs reside in) and use it as the album's review and get the other information (artist, album, genre, year) from the media files' tags (other information not available in there, like tones and styles, would have to be dropped). The Artist Info window would display the artist's bio and a picture if it is available. Similarly to "Show Album info", "Show Artist info" would use the text file it finds in the artist's folder (typically the folder one level up from the folder the songs reside in) and the picture it finds in there named after the artist's name.
For Artist bio, it would be nice if the user could alternatively make the appilication search for the artist bio in a folder where all artist bios are saved as text files named after the artist's name.
Note that I don't think that all this information should be collected once from the suggested sources and then saved in the MP database. Instead, I think it should be retrieved everytime the user requests it "on the fly".
- The covers in "Now Playing" should occupy much larger portion of the window. Currently you only get to see zoomed-in thumbnail-sized pictures of the covers.
I can't understand what the progam chooses to save in "X:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\music\albums". I'm testing the program with a folder containing only 15 fully tagged albums that have their covers in their folder named "%artist% - %album% cover" and two of them have their covers named "folder.jpg". So MP should only be able to obtain covers for the latter two albums. Instead, for some of these albums MP saves thumbnail-sized pictures of the covers under the name "%artist%-%album%" but also larger versions under the name "%artist%-%album%L". It also saves the thumbnail-sized picture of the cover as a hidden folder.jpg file in the album's folder. Now, when you already have the cover named folder.jpg, in one instance it copied it in "X:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\music\albums" with the name "%artist%-%album%" and in the rest database updates it didn't save anything for that album although I do get cover thumbnails for that album in MediaPortal. Also, when I deleted some of the albums in the folder and did a database update, MP didn't delete the pictures it saved in its folder for these albums.
This is so complicated and inconsistent that it just makes me wonder... is all that necessary? I dread to think of the outcome if I use the application with my entire music collection (2,500 albums and counting)! I understand the need to generate and save thumbnail-sized versions of the album covers for when viewing albums in icon mode and for the currently playing area (note, only thumbnail-sized versions) but for the "Now Playing" and "Album Info" window I think the original covers should be used in an "on-the-fly" manner.
- Add "jump to the item's folder" option in the now playing context menu for music and video files. That is because sometimes with music files and video files you might be browsing through the rest of your folders while you have them playing and this would be a quick and convenient way to go back to the currently playing item by changing focus to the now playing window and choosing this option in the context menu.
- Add "show now playing" option in the context menu of "My Music" and "My Videos" section for quickly going to the "now playing" window for "My Music" and to resume focus on the playback of the movie for "My Videos" (in the case of "My Videos" section, if there is no movie playing, the button would do nothing or it might look deactivated)
- Displaying genre information in the now playing window for music.
- With winamp plugin enabled, winamp volume bar is always set at half of its length and if you fix it manually, it resets to half upon opening the next file. Why is that? Also, fast forward and fast backwards do not work although winamp does have a fast forward/backwords function: the Back/Fwd 5 seconds (Left/Right arrow key). It would be nice if we can get them to work.
I'm interested to hear what other users think of these ideas, so feel free to comment. Sorry for the length.
- Currently "Media Portal" searches for cover art inside the album's folder, which is nice, but the cover picture has to be named "folder.jpg". I think most music collectors don't follow this rule which originates from WMP and have the cover saved in a file that has "cover" or "front" as an ingredient in its filename. Personally, I am reluctant to start renaming my covers to that, although it could be done with some effort and the help of a file renamer utility, because I prefer to incorporate more information in my cover files (I use an "%artist% - %album% cover" pattern). Thus, I suggest the program to search inside the albums' folders for pictures whose filename has a certain word in it, a word the user could specify [e.g. cover, front, folder or whatever]. I think making the word user configurable should cover most situations and please almost everybody. In case more than one pictures that have the "cover word" in their filename are present in the album folder, there could be an option for the user to specify a couple of words (number depending on the developed engine's robustness) whose presence in the filename disqualifies the picture for cover art (e.g. back, cd, alt etc.).
Alternatively, if this is too much work and has problems getting implemented, I suggest users to use a file renamer utility that can take care of this by changing the "cover word" in the other pictures not intended for covers with another word (provided of course that these other pictures can be easily distinguished from the cover art pictures, which is most likely if your cover art pictures follow certain filename patterns e.g. "cover", "front", "cover (front)", "%artist% - %album% cover").
- In the context menu of music, along with currently available "Show Album info" add "Show Artist info". I also suggest a different way for these two to work. Currently, you press F3 to query allmusic.com for album information and, if you are lucky and such information exists, it is then stored in the MediaPortal database, where you cannot make any modifications.
Since music collections follow the structure ...artist folder/album folder/music files, my suggestions are for "Show Album info" to use the text file it finds in the album's folder (typically the folder the songs reside in) and use it as the album's review and get the other information (artist, album, genre, year) from the media files' tags (other information not available in there, like tones and styles, would have to be dropped). The Artist Info window would display the artist's bio and a picture if it is available. Similarly to "Show Album info", "Show Artist info" would use the text file it finds in the artist's folder (typically the folder one level up from the folder the songs reside in) and the picture it finds in there named after the artist's name.
For Artist bio, it would be nice if the user could alternatively make the appilication search for the artist bio in a folder where all artist bios are saved as text files named after the artist's name.
Note that I don't think that all this information should be collected once from the suggested sources and then saved in the MP database. Instead, I think it should be retrieved everytime the user requests it "on the fly".
- The covers in "Now Playing" should occupy much larger portion of the window. Currently you only get to see zoomed-in thumbnail-sized pictures of the covers.
I can't understand what the progam chooses to save in "X:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\music\albums". I'm testing the program with a folder containing only 15 fully tagged albums that have their covers in their folder named "%artist% - %album% cover" and two of them have their covers named "folder.jpg". So MP should only be able to obtain covers for the latter two albums. Instead, for some of these albums MP saves thumbnail-sized pictures of the covers under the name "%artist%-%album%" but also larger versions under the name "%artist%-%album%L". It also saves the thumbnail-sized picture of the cover as a hidden folder.jpg file in the album's folder. Now, when you already have the cover named folder.jpg, in one instance it copied it in "X:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\music\albums" with the name "%artist%-%album%" and in the rest database updates it didn't save anything for that album although I do get cover thumbnails for that album in MediaPortal. Also, when I deleted some of the albums in the folder and did a database update, MP didn't delete the pictures it saved in its folder for these albums.
This is so complicated and inconsistent that it just makes me wonder... is all that necessary? I dread to think of the outcome if I use the application with my entire music collection (2,500 albums and counting)! I understand the need to generate and save thumbnail-sized versions of the album covers for when viewing albums in icon mode and for the currently playing area (note, only thumbnail-sized versions) but for the "Now Playing" and "Album Info" window I think the original covers should be used in an "on-the-fly" manner.
- Add "jump to the item's folder" option in the now playing context menu for music and video files. That is because sometimes with music files and video files you might be browsing through the rest of your folders while you have them playing and this would be a quick and convenient way to go back to the currently playing item by changing focus to the now playing window and choosing this option in the context menu.
- Add "show now playing" option in the context menu of "My Music" and "My Videos" section for quickly going to the "now playing" window for "My Music" and to resume focus on the playback of the movie for "My Videos" (in the case of "My Videos" section, if there is no movie playing, the button would do nothing or it might look deactivated)
- Displaying genre information in the now playing window for music.
- With winamp plugin enabled, winamp volume bar is always set at half of its length and if you fix it manually, it resets to half upon opening the next file. Why is that? Also, fast forward and fast backwards do not work although winamp does have a fast forward/backwords function: the Back/Fwd 5 seconds (Left/Right arrow key). It would be nice if we can get them to work.
I'm interested to hear what other users think of these ideas, so feel free to comment. Sorry for the length.
good post
my music needs a major overhawl (the front end too I mean)
esp. the first you mention with folder.jpg... imagine how it looks for me that I don't use album folder structure at all! (I have all my MP3, properly named in the same folder)... for months all my MP3 had an... Evanescense cover (!) just because it happened for the importer to find THAT info for an MP3 in my huge MP3 folder... then I deleted that file and now I get a trashy icon that is hugely resized (no default cover in MP)...
this things really do need change
my music needs a major overhawl (the front end too I mean)
esp. the first you mention with folder.jpg... imagine how it looks for me that I don't use album folder structure at all! (I have all my MP3, properly named in the same folder)... for months all my MP3 had an... Evanescense cover (!) just because it happened for the importer to find THAT info for an MP3 in my huge MP3 folder... then I deleted that file and now I get a trashy icon that is hugely resized (no default cover in MP)...
this things really do need change
NLS said:
I have spent considerable time to "tame" my music collection, and I dont mind spending some more. What I mean is that programmer resources are limited. If I had a vote, I would ask SteveV to improve those things that affects everyone and cannot be avoided (slow My Music GUI, espcially playlists, visual appearance, etc).
The folder.jpg issue is very easily cured by using some mp3 organizer to put every recognized music file into for instance "%artist\%album\%track# - %artist - %title" and automatically copy the corresponding cover art to a file named cover.jpg
I am not saying that a "do all" mp3 tagging/housekeeping utility from SteveV wouldnt be helpful (it would, especially since he has been working with id3 tags a lot and knows the quirks). But running a script that renames files is not a big problem for me.
-k
I have ~18000 files.
When I have had parties, the feedback is consistently:
1. Nice/cool graphics
2. Why do I have to wait 5 seconds to select a playlist/view?
3. Why does the player stop at certain songs in the playlist (songs that arent recognized)
4. There are too many songs, I cant make up my mind =)
5. The GUI is confusing. Am I searching for artist or title now? The search itself is great though.
6. Why does so many songs have wrong covers?
7. Figuring out the connection between normal play, playlist etc is a little hard after 4 beers and never having touched MP. This is the real-world test I think. Sober tinkerers will always figure out.
I would say:
As much as possible should be done to the music collection itself (ie adding folder images), not the MP database which is volatile. One may even want to use the music with another player at a later time =)
-k
When I have had parties, the feedback is consistently:
1. Nice/cool graphics
2. Why do I have to wait 5 seconds to select a playlist/view?
3. Why does the player stop at certain songs in the playlist (songs that arent recognized)
4. There are too many songs, I cant make up my mind =)
5. The GUI is confusing. Am I searching for artist or title now? The search itself is great though.
6. Why does so many songs have wrong covers?
7. Figuring out the connection between normal play, playlist etc is a little hard after 4 beers and never having touched MP. This is the real-world test I think. Sober tinkerers will always figure out.
I would say:
As much as possible should be done to the music collection itself (ie adding folder images), not the MP database which is volatile. One may even want to use the music with another player at a later time =)
-k
- Status