SKG Jukebox Update. Limited Beta Test

[skepticalgeek]

Skepticalgeek here, and I'm looking for a few good nerds. Actually I'm looking for some beta testers. As some of you might know, I have been working on a project called SKG Jukebox for the past several months. It is bot a home to and an improvement over the SK Jukebox by Salmon King. It has now reached a stable point, all features working as they should. I am looking for a few people willing to test it, and give some honest feedback. Tell me what works for you, what doesn't, what you would like to see added or changed, and any bugs you can find. This is a cross platform project so I would like Linux as well as Windows testers, preferably 5 of each. Please contact me either through here, or directly at skepticalgeek@yahoo.com. I have now website yet, so I can't give you a download location. I could e-mail you the file however:

A) The files are large. The Windows setup file 16 16.6 MB and the Linux packages are 10.7 MB.
B) A lot of e-mails systems automatically block exe files and similar "dangerous" packages.

I will e-mail you the file, if you request, or I can burn a CD and send it good old fashioned postal service. When contacting me, please specify either Windows or Linux, and, if Linux, whether rpm or deb package. Also, if you are a programmer and want the source code as well, just ask and I will add it to the disc. The project was written in C++ using the Qt toolkit. Check out some of my earlier posts for screenshots and feature descriptions. Thx in advance for your help. 

[RetroBorg]

I'd love to give it a go but the file is too big for my email and I live in Australia so posting probably not viable.

Have you thought of uploading the files to a free MediaFire account or something similar?

Cheers.

Phil

[abispac]

ill take a go at the windows plataform, just an idea, upload the files to megaupload or rapidshare and send us the beta tester the download link, thanks if you take me in consideration.

[skepticalgeek]

Sounds interesting. I've never heard of these services, so I'm going to do some research, and get back to you when I've decided what to do.

[skepticalgeek]

I've gotten a MediaShare account, so from now on any potential beta testers will be given a download link. I've got two Windows testers so far, and I'm waiting to hear from Retroborg as to which version he wants.

[BadMouth]

PM me with the link.

I've been looking for something more modern looking and faster than ThePCJukebox which I've been using for about 3 years.
My jukebox runs a single core 2ghz Sempron and the current software has become less responsive as the collection has grown (currently 25,000+ songs)
I've tried a few others and didn't care for them.  I'll warn you that I'm picky.
My big thing is that I want it to look like a jukebox.  I despise the ones that look like mp3 management software.
I tried freebox, but actually liked ThePCJukebox better, even though it's ancient.

I'll play around with it on Vista 64, then when I get it set up, I'll try it on my jukebox, which runs XP.
Heck, I guess I could even give it a go on my laptop which runs Windows 7.

[gonzo90017]

Count me in for the Windows version.

[skepticalgeek]

Thanks for the responses guys. At this point I have 6 Windows testers and 0 Linux testers. SO I'm full up on Windows testers and won't be sending any more links out for that. I really need Linux testers here guys. For my own deployment testing I was limited to a couple of VMs running on my laptop, which were pretty limited in terms of resolution and such. Thanks.

[BadMouth]

Probably a bit premature since I just started messing around with it, but what is the program looking for as far as album art goes?

I have a jpg in each album folder titled same as the album and another copy titled "cover.jpg"
No album covers are showing up.   (Vista 64)

Also a little lost on it being number driven, but the individual songs not having numbers.
On an old jukebox, you'd enter the album number followed by the song number.
Personally, I don't care for selecting the song or album by typing numbers, I just want to touch the cover or song.
But if you are going for the old school jukebox feel, then I guess it would use numbers.
People who would want this would probably want the option to hide the number keys in the lower righthand of the screen if they were using buttons though.

The song can be selected by clicking on it, but the small font might make it difficult on a touchscreen.

Speed is good, although I don't have album covers yet, which could slow it down.
It would be pretty cool if scrolling through the pages of albums more closely resembled flipping panels in an old jukebox.
I know that would be a big pain though.  Having the left and right page both slide across simultaneously instead of one big panel sliding across the whole display might simulate it somewhat.

Don't take my criticisms personally.  I'm not capable of programming anything.
I'm just the whiny end user.  

[skepticalgeek]

Hey Badmouth. Thanks for the feedback so far. A little confused on the album art issue. What the program does, is it looks for every jpg, gif, tiff, or png file in the album directory. If there is one called "cover" it uses that. Otherwise, it uses the first one it can find. Do you have the artwork in a separate subfolder? How large are the artwork files? Maybe it's having trouble scaling files that are too large or small.

The tracks do have individual numbers. The track number consists of the 3 digit album number followed by the 2 digit track ID. So the 4th track on the 9th album has a track number of 00904. It probably has something to do with how you ripped your discs. I ripped all of mine using EAC, which automatically appends a 2 digit track number to the file name when it creates the mp3 file. The integrated ripper does the same. I'll look into adding some logic which will append the track number if it is not part of the name. In the meantime, there are 2 ways of selecting an album, and 3 ways to add the individual track.

To select the album, either
    1) Key in the 3 digit album number, using keyboard or on screen buttons.
    2) Click on the album on the main screen, or touch if a touchscreen.

To add the individual track
    1) Select by clicking, or typing in the 2 digit track ID, then
        a) Press the "Add Track" button
        b) Hit Enter on the keyboard
        c) Double click the track.

The flipping panels thing is a neat idea, but I'm not much of a graphics programmer, and I'm not sure what it would take to program that kind of animation, especially if I want to keep system requirements modest.

[BadMouth]

Hey Badmouth. Thanks for the feedback so far. A little confused on the album art issue. What the program does, is it looks for every jpg, gif, tiff, or png file in the album directory. If there is one called "cover" it uses that. Otherwise, it uses the first one it can find. Do you have the artwork in a separate subfolder? How large are the artwork files? Maybe it's having trouble scaling files that are too large or small.

The album art is in the same folder as the tracks.  They are organized something like D:\Music\Artist\Album
There are actually 3 pics in there for each album due to me experimenting with different jukebox software.
They are named cover.jpg, coversmall.jpg, and <Album>.jpg
One album cover is showing up...but only one.  I checked the ones in nearby folders and they are all jpegs, all about the same size.
I'll experiment with it tomorrow and see if I can figure out what's different for that one album.
Maybe someone else can report whether they have an issue with it or not by then.

[egosbar]

would love to test this project mate great work by the way

regards

ego

[egosbar]

what i think would be a great idea if possible would be to have the 4 albums that change -  have the four album spots showing named as abcd , when the next four albums change into the window they become abcd

that way you would only ever have to enter album a b c d and the track number not 056  03 etc
this is a pain in really big music collections as the album may be 00456  or even 000??? then the track number

this would be great on a button driven juke as mine is

hope you understand my reasoning if not i can try to explain it in another way

[abispac]

On my pc this thing dosnt even load the music i have, i got the correct paths setup but nothing shows once the program starts.... an update library buton would be nice....

[skepticalgeek]

abispac,

How is your music organized? SKG Juke is an album level jukebox. It expects your music to be organized in Artist subdirectories, and album subdirectories below that. Also, take a look at the Config.txt file in the resources directory. Make sure the music directory is correct.

[egosbar]

my albums loaded flawlessly , 700 odd albums very quickly , although my jukebox isnt hooked up to the internet so when i double clicked the cover by mistake and brought up the album art download screen an error report came up and the program shut down

[egosbar]

Probably a bit premature since I just started messing around with it, but what is the program looking for as far as album art goes?

I have a jpg in each album folder titled same as the album and another copy titled "cover.jpg"
No album covers are showing up.   (Vista 64)

Also a little lost on it being number driven, but the individual songs not having numbers.
On an old jukebox, you'd enter the album number followed by the song number.
Personally, I don't care for selecting the song or album by typing numbers, I just want to touch the cover or song.
But if you are going for the old school jukebox feel, then I guess it would use numbers.
People who would want this would probably want the option to hide the number keys in the lower righthand of the screen if they were using buttons though.

The song can be selected by clicking on it, but the small font might make it difficult on a touchscreen.

Speed is good, although I don't have album covers yet, which could slow it down.
It would be pretty cool if scrolling through the pages of albums more closely resembled flipping panels in an old jukebox.
I know that would be a big pain though.  Having the left and right page both slide across simultaneously instead of one big panel sliding across the whole display might simulate it somewhat.

Don't take my criticisms personally.  I'm not capable of programming anything.
I'm just the whiny end user.  

as beta testers its our  opinions that will make the juke better (or in some cases worse)and its geeks decision to use them or not , i admire what he has done so far and this could possibly be the best juke software out there in a year or two, i agree there are people like myself that have number buttons on there jukebox already so being able to hide the numbers pad would be nice and instead have something small like sk juke has with track list button album art button etc i personally dont want to use a keyboard at all with my jukebox.I love the spectrum bars bouncing to the music in skjuke and would love to see that included along with being able to control font size and color.
i cant select a song to play by touching it i have to use the add to list button , but after using it for a half hour or so i think it stops making a mistake by big fingers picking the wrong song , so i actually think i like the set up here although i think the font could be bigger and the album cover bigger with the buttons being half the size and aslo having font and color options in the future would be great.

my album flicking seems pretty slow and i cant see an option to speed it up but i would think that will be added in the future

some bugginess in the album scrolling not scrolling the whole way at times but if you go the opposite direction it fixes itself

very impressed with the initial playing but still a lot of work to do , dam wish i knew more about programming so i could help , im not sure how programming works whether skgeek can share the load or if he wants to but it would make it easier on him if say someone was working on the change font size and colors for personal preferences

looking forward to the next update geek keep up the good work and please for gods sake if you burn out give the code to someone , im not sure what happened to salmon king it seems odd he just stopped and as far as i can figure i dont think anyone has heard from him , maybe he passed or something im not sure but it was a shame , please dont make the same mistake mate

regards and again thank you for allowing me to test this program for you

[BadMouth]

Sorry, haven't had time to experiment with the album art again (had to decorate my bar for Halloween    )
I promise you that I will test it on the XP, Vista, & Windows 7 computers once I get the bugs worked out on my main pc (Vista)

[skepticalgeek]

Just a quick status update, and check. I've gotten some good feedback this week, fixed several obscure bugs, and added a new feature to allow the user to load a custom album list or playlist with a single keystroke. I just need to add this to the manual. I hope to have an update for the beta testers this weekend, or early next week. Speaking of which, has anyone read the manual, and have any feedback on it? How about some of the advanced features like album art downloading, CD ripping, or key mapping? Has anyone tried any of those? What did you think?

abispac, did you ever get your music to load, or figure out why it wasn't? Badmouth, any progress on the album art issue?

[RetroBorg]

Just a quick status update, and check. I've gotten some good feedback this week, fixed several obscure bugs, and added a new feature to allow the user to load a custom album list or playlist with a single keystroke.

Thanks Patrick, can't wait to allocate a button for each user and one for all music.

I just need to add this to the manual. I hope to have an update for the beta testers this weekend, or early next week. Speaking of which, has anyone read the manual, and have any feedback on it?

Till I read this I didn't know there was a manual, I have found the manual now and I will read it tonight when I get home from work and leave feedback.

How about some of the advanced features like album art downloading, CD ripping, or key mapping? Has anyone tried any of those? What did you think?

Album art downloading I've tried for the few covers I didn't have and it retrieved the correct cover each time, I would just prefer it saves the artwork as folder.jpg

I haven't checked out the CD ripping bit yet, I'll give that a go tonight as well.

I'll also check out the key mapping.

Cheers.

Phil

[BadMouth]

Album art issue.....

Alright, made some time to tinker.  Not sure this will help, but......

My current album art is from Amazon and was fetched using MediaMonkey.
I used the built in art downloader in your jukebox and it worked fine...album cover shows up.  Then I compared the attributes of that pic to ones that weren't showing up.
It was much smaller, so I started reducing the size of the other album art using ms paint.  I shrunk it down until they were tiny and they still didn't show up.

For some reason, I decided to try paint.net to shrink the next one and low and behold, it shows up in the jukebox.  
So I played the hi-lo game to see what size was acceptable and it turns out that the original size works if I open it in paint.net and save it (without even making any changes).  Something is changing because the file size is smaller, but the pic is the same size.  I know it's not the file size that's preventing the original ones from working because the one I shrank in ms paint didn't work.

A few of my original album covers (like 10 out of thousands) were working, but I can't see anything different about their attributes.
The specs look the same as the ones that are not working.

Anyways, here are the details for the working and not working pic if you can get anything out of them.
If there's some other way to view other attributes, let me know and I'll look for more differences.




Oh, I didn't know there was a manual either.  I looked at the readme.txt and thought "well, that's not much to go on"  

[abispac]

Heres my experience:
I got 5500 albums, set up this way:
c:\music\artist-albumname\music.mp3, the way the software expects me to have the music is:
c:\music\artist\album1\music.mp3
c:\music\artist\album2\music.mp3
Wich its an example on how itunes sets up your music, i dont like it that way, so many many users will have diferent setups , like me, and one of the wonderfull things of skjukebox was that sk would look into folders and subfolders for the music, not an especific setup.
When i fire up the jukebox soft, it only gives me a few albums i have set up like the way the software loks for it, and to be honest im lazy to re arreange my music just to test your soft, so maybe you want to change the way that the soft looks for the music, if you wanna please people in general , not just me.
As far as the look, i like that it kinda looks like skjuke, and the simple touch abc letters on top, i would love if i can have a way to make a skin, but that would be in the future i guess 
nice piece of software, keep the good work and i do believe this juke has a good future.  a cold one for u...

[BadMouth]

abispac - mediamonkey can automatically reorganize the folder structure of your entire music collection without too much hassle.

sgk - I was poking around in mediamonkey to see if there was any info about the album art and remembered that originally, I had mediamonkey attach the album art to the tags, but then wanted to try freebox which wanted the album art separate, so I used thepcjukebox to extract the pics from the tags and name them cover.jpg. 

Not sure if that has anything to do with why my current album art doesn't show up, but it's an oddball thing.
The album art issue could be limited to me and not many others.
Nobody else has brought it up.

[skepticalgeek]

Thanks for the input guys.

abispac, 2 things. First, I understand what you are saying about how the music is organized. The thing is, the way the jukebox organizes it is Library, which is composed of Artists, which are composed of Albums, which contain tracks. The easies way to load this from a programming perspective is to do a recursive directory search, so that is the approach I supported out of the gate. I will look at some of the other approaches in th SK Juke, and see if there is a way to implement any of them without major surgery. Also, the SKG Juke at the moment only supports 3 digit album numbers, so collections larger than 999 albums won't work. I will look into making that a configuration option.

Badmouth, I am really intrigued by your album art issue. Could you possibly e-mail me some of the non-working art files, the ones with the large file sizes, so I can try them on my end? The jukebox uses a separate dll located in the imageformats subdirectory of the jukebox. I did not write this. It is provided by the Qt folks for doing image handling so programmers can display jpg images in their programs. Maybe your original files are missing some sort of header info, or are using a weird compression the dll doesn't understand. Anyway, I would like to try a few of them myself.

I appreciate all the feedback. In the next couple of weeks I am going to look into what it would take to set up a website. I am a fair app developer, but don't have much experience in web programming, or web site design. I will probably buy a Do it Yourself Web Site for Dummies book or something. If anyone can give me some advice or direction I would appreciate it. What I would like is:
    A main page where people can get an overview, and I can post news on project updates.
    A Downloads page
    A forum or message boards area.
    A separate area for a personal blog. Not a deal breaker, would just be nice.

Again, thanks for the help. We'll get this thing whipped into shape.

[egosbar]

Just a quick status update, and check. I've gotten some good feedback this week, fixed several obscure bugs, and added a new feature to allow the user to load a custom album list or playlist with a single keystroke. I just need to add this to the manual. I hope to have an update for the beta testers this weekend, or early next week. Speaking of which, has anyone read the manual, and have any feedback on it? How about some of the advanced features like album art downloading, CD ripping, or key mapping? Has anyone tried any of those? What did you think?

abispac, did you ever get your music to load, or figure out why it wasn't? Badmouth, any progress on the album art issue?

i have read the manual sent a email with all my findings so far , ill copy and paste here , there was a mispelt beatles quote called beales in the questions and answers lol not a biggie but the easiest fix you will have haha

[egosbar]

having now loaded around 700 albums and spent a couple of hours testing i have come up with some issues and ideas that may improve skg , a lot depends on how much work it will be to change things etc

so there are a few bugs obviously stilll to fix and i guess that is where to start get what youve got running working before tackling other ideas

ill start with the normal play mode in windows xp

all albums loaded well,  in full album mode i think the song titles are too small and need to be bigger to support double touch easier , also the album art could be bigger

there seems to be no minimise option that i could see or read ( i have read the manual) i dont want to have any part of computer windows in my juke screen but i need a button or key shortcut to minimise the juke window to access other screens and jobs ( for instance when trying to read the manual and test)

i think i remember seeing max 999 albums ,  i have 700 so far  and i have a lot of albums coming so could be well of there 1500 mark , this may pose a problem if i can only load 999

i cant see the option to have the track numbers on the songs some do some dont , which i want as mine is a dedicated juke with number buttons to push , this leads me to the number pad at bottom ,  maybe this should be highlited only when you click the top 0-9 (currently 0-9 makes the albums move to next four albums) buttons and have a cancel on it when your finished , most people wont be adding thier songs by numbers so it seems like a waste of space , id much rather see a box with things like next song and clear list  

i am not hooked up to the net on my juke but i double cliked an album cover and the juke went into error and shutdown

the play now in the control tracklist screen is a great option but i think a play next would be a better option , that way you can have a large tracklist going and add songs to next and do more then one while the current track keeps playing , this will allow you to move 4 or five songs to near the top of the list instead of one and allow you to listen to the now playing song in full, possibly even a play next in the full album screen mode would be a good option as well

I love the improvement of the program not recognising THE  in the album name so THE beatles comes under B not T , skjuke as you know didnt do that , good work

The options for changing font size and colors was a great option in skjuke and i would definitely like to be able to customise all borders font etc

i have a griffen powermate and so far havent been able to get it working , i have mapped it in skjuke to volume up and down (turnning left and right) and hold in left = clear tracklist and hold in and right = next song ,  i havent spent a great deal of time on this so ill muck around again at another time , are there keyboard keys mapped to work for volume?

Album movement is too slow and needs to be adjustable to the speed you have and to very quick , i may have driver problems with xp that may be causing this but skjuke works fine , the albums at times stick a little on the left screen but fix themselves if you go the other way

in skjuke i made an album called EGO and one for my wife called DEBBIE , I have 277 songs in this album and when i tried to play all tracks using 00 in the full album mode whether double click or add tracks the program froze and came up with this error ,  runtime error Prog files/skgjukebox/skgjukebox/skgjukebox.ece then error at 0x7484cb4d referenced at 0x037f58c8, these tracks are full copies of songs from other albums put in there own folder    MY MUSIC /CD'S / ALBUM (EGO) / TRACKS (277 OF EM)

i love playlists and although you have given the option i like to continually add to mine , so if i hear a song i would like to easily add the track playing to my playlist , possibly a button add to playlist in the track list options.

when adding a song in the full album view mode you pick a song add it and the screen goes back to four album view , i think you need to be able to add multiple songs then have a back button to go back to the four album screen

when creating a new playlist i got to name one EGO but i when i selected tracks to add from an album i clicked the add arrow and the program shut down

in your manual , questions and answers there is a question about ripping a beatles album in the answer to that question you state the new BEALES album etc you forgot to add the T to make it beatles

there was nothing in the help screen i had to go to program files and open the manual that way

need an option to add a now playing song straight to a playlist similar to windows media player right click add to playlist

these are just my views mate and im looking forward to the next edition to trial , will you send us an email when there is a new beta update ?

keep up the good work and if there is anything i can do for you let me know , im no programmer but im pretty handy with computers and data entry etc , if you have any jobs you need that is time consuming etc then let me know and i may be able to help im a quick learner

regards

ego

[egosbar]

Just a quick status update, and check. I've gotten some good feedback this week, fixed several obscure bugs, and added a new feature to allow the user to load a custom album list or playlist with a single keystroke. I just need to add this to the manual. I hope to have an update for the beta testers this weekend, or early next week. Speaking of which, has anyone read the manual, and have any feedback on it? How about some of the advanced features like album art downloading, CD ripping, or key mapping? Has anyone tried any of those? What did you think?

abispac, did you ever get your music to load, or figure out why it wasn't? Badmouth, any progress on the album art issue?

this could be a good button on my juke ,  ego and debbie (wife) keymapped to e and d mmmmmm better not paint it yet lol

[egosbar]

sgk - I was poking around in mediamonkey to see if there was any info about the album art and remembered that originally, I had mediamonkey attach the album art to the tags, but then wanted to try freebox which wanted the album art separate, so I used thepcjukebox to extract the pics from the tags and name them cover.jpg.  

i tagged all my music with album art using mp3tag mainly used images  from google images 500x500 and from what i see mine all worked , although i havent gone through each album , the album flipping is a little slow but not sure if that is to do with a driver issue in xp or the speed it is set , ill go and look now to see if all albums covers are on

skg - 90% of the the albums that were not showing up their art had the art outside the album so it went root folder cd's / artist/album and art next to it/ tracks
once i dragged the art into the album with the tracks it picked them up , skjuke picks them up from under the root directory and picked up all album art for the same library

skg , there was a bit of a wierd one where the program started to pick up folders on my desktop even though they were not in any directory that the program was supposed to pick up , i actually had to move these folders off the desktop for it to stop picking them up  after moving them everything is ok again strange one

[egosbar]

just had another play , skjuke has picked up all my album art from the same folder skg juke is picking them up , skg juke has probably missed one in 20-or 30 from 700 albums

looks like ill have to get a dongle to pick up my wireless , i didnt really want to have the internet hooked up to my juke as that is all it is used for but i couldnt rip a album or download the art needed for the albums missing

one problem ive sorted is after zz top and before abba i had about ten albums including  blink 182  - dream theater etc , the problem here was the source folder started with a small letter not a capital , when i renamed the artist starting with a capitol letter they went where they should of


skg    when i look at download album art  - album art select albums - left hand drop list to show missing album art , it is picking up another directory which is egos programs , this folder is not inside my cd root folder the only folder in that is my artists / albums / tracks
so it is showing missing album art in for instance mp3 tag among all my other programs


skg     what is very wierd is that as mentioned i made 2 compilation albums named Ego and Debbie , the folders that work are named CD"S ROOT FOLDER/ARTIST/ALBUM NAME/TRACKS  -   these two are sourced from c d's (root)/ Ego (artist)/ tunes(album) / tracks 277 this one will not load on 00 play all tracks as mentioned the program crashes ,    Debbies album is sourced from  c.d's(root) / Debbie(artist) / tunes(album) / tracks  63  these load to the track list but dont play ??
both albums play fine in skjukebox

as an after thought just wondering about screensavers , i loved skjukebox flicking through albums after a couple of minutes good to glance at here and there and sometimes see an album you havent played for ages

skg        still trying to work out the add songs to a playlist they just wont move in , anyone else having trouble??

skg        a main feature of my juke is my griffien powermate volume control , i cant get it working using keymapping ,  skjuke it works flawlessly

[RetroBorg]

i think i remember seeing max 999 albums ,  i have 700 so far  and i have a lot of albums coming so could be well of there 1500 mark , this may pose a problem if i can only load 999

I have 1746 albums loaded up, no probs.

I love the improvement of the program not recognising THE  in the album name so THE beatles comes under B not T , skjuke as you know didnt do that , good work

I hadn't noticed this as I have all mine named like "Beatles, The" but this is a good feature and would of saved me a lot of work.

The options for changing font size and colors was a great option in skjuke and i would definitely like to be able to customise all borders font etc

Yeah I like colour stuff.

i have a griffen powermate and so far havent been able to get it working , i have mapped it in skjuke to volume up and down (turnning left and right) and hold in left = clear tracklist and hold in and right = next song ,  i havent spent a great deal of time on this so ill muck around again at another time , are there keyboard keys mapped to work for volume?

I was intending to put a Griffen powermate on my jukebox when I make it, it would be great if SKG supported this.

in skjuke i made an album called EGO and one for my wife called DEBBIE , I have 277 songs in this album and when i tried to play all tracks using 00 in the full album mode whether double click or add tracks the program froze and came up with this error ,  runtime error Prog files/skgjukebox/skgjukebox/skgjukebox.ece then error at 0x7484cb4d referenced at 0x037f58c8, these tracks are full copies of songs from other albums put in there own folder    MY MUSIC /CD'S / ALBUM (EGO) / TRACKS (277 OF EM)

I don't think SKG can handle albums of over 99 songs.

I just noticed on some of my compilations like Triple J top 100 where I have 100 songs if I click on number 100 if crashes the program.

I also noticed that if I click on song number 001 on album number 457 it will come up as 45701 it should display 457001.

[RetroBorg]

one problem ive sorted is after zz top and before abba i had about ten albums including  blink 182  - dream theater etc , the problem here was the source folder started with a small letter not a capital , when i renamed the artist starting with a capitol letter they went where they should of

I know this wasn't an intended feature but I've used it to my advantage, I have a folder named Compilations and another named Soundtracks, they have heaps of albums in both of them and I've always hated flicking through artists starting with C and S because of all the Compilation and Soundtrack albums to get through.

So after reading egosbar post I renamed both of these folders to lowercase and they now appear between Z and Numbers, great!

It would be good if there was a intentional feature to remove compilations and soundtracks out of C and S and also perhaps have a shortcut icon up where A-Z is at the top of jukebox.

[egosbar]

one problem ive sorted is after zz top and before abba i had about ten albums including  blink 182  - dream theater etc , the problem here was the source folder started with a small letter not a capital , when i renamed the artist starting with a capitol letter they went where they should of

I know this wasn't an intended feature but I've used it to my advantage, I have a folder named Compilations and another named Soundtracks, they have heaps of albums in both of them and I've always hated flicking through artists starting with C and S because of all the Compilation and Soundtrack albums to get through.

So after reading egosbar post I renamed both of these folders to lowercase and they now appear between Z and Numbers, great!

It would be good if there was a intentional feature to remove compilations and soundtracks out of C and S and also perhaps have a shortcut icon up where A-Z is at the top of jukebox.

great thinking mate , definitely can use this to advantage

[egosbar]

im having trouble making a playlist anyone got their playlists working?

i wont have to worry about a compilation album with 277 songs if i can succesfully make a playlist , the playlist feature would have to have an easy feature to add the now playing song to your personal playlist so you can continually build it

skg      what about a volume normalisation feature in the future , ive normalised mine using itunes some time ago but have noticed lately that i get a bit of volume variances , and if your running good speakers especially with mp3 and clipping you do run the risk of blowing your speakers when playing loud.

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys,

I made a few small changes last night. I mapped the up and down arrow keys to volume up/down, and added a minimize key, Ctrl-M. I just need to add these to the key mapper and update the manual. I looked and the components I am using don't have any kind of volume normalization routine. I could pick a decible level and set every song to that as it starts playing. I ma not an audio engineer though, and some things confuse me. Does anyone know what a good baseline would be, i.e. what a "normal" volume level would be for music listening?

I had no idea what a Griffen powermate was. I had to look it up and go on their website. If you can map it to the up and down arrows, it should serve as a volume control. Anything more than that would take a while. I've never written a program that had to interface with an analog device, so I'm not sure where to start.

I was going to fix the problem with lowercase artists appearing at the end alphabetically, but since my Aussie testers are using it to separate their compilation and soundtrack album, I may just re-classify it as a feature. Seriously though, I think maybe I can add some logic to check an artist name against a set of key words, and if it matches, move that to the end of the list. A good list would be Various, Compilations, Soundtracks, and Comedy. Any other suggestions to add to the list? Not sure about adding more round buttons to the top. Screen real estate is an issue, especially in netbook mode. (I actually developed this on a netbook, and got netbook mode working before implementing normal mode)

I added a config option for if the juke is not internet connected. It will disable album art and cd ripping, but at least it won't crash when trying to access those functions. I will also take a closer look at the Add/Edit playlist screen. If nothing else, I can give better progress feedback when it is adding tracks.

Later

[egosbar]

i think most normalise programs use 89 db

[BadMouth]

sample pics sent to the address in the first post. 

[egosbar]

skg - still having trouble with the playlist option , no trouble at all with the album option

i can add a playlist ego , although the name doesnt come up in the name box but when i shut the program down it saves it and keeps the songs i picked to add with the right arrow (but they dont move into the right hand window like the album list does) as soon as i hit right arrow to add you cant access any other buttons and the program freezes , i then hit esc to shut down which takes a while or i go control alt delete and it says not responding
thing is when i go back in and go to edit the playlist that froze the songs are there

[egosbar]

had another play with the playlist option

checked 20 songs in a library of 750 odd albums , when you hit right arrow to add everything stops and it takes around 50 seconds to add those 20 songs , i didnt try but im guessing one song takes the same , the album list works straight away , im sure there is a way to quicken this up , but a great option

skg have you thought any more on the play next option ?  my playlist will have 3-400 songs so moving the last song up one by one is out of the question , if your having a go on the juke and someone adds say 7 songs and wants to hear them if you can play next you can pretty much add all seven songs to the top of the que and then go and sit down

glad you mapped the up down volume to up down arrow , the griffen powermate has a screen to asign buttons and i think when this is added ill be able to get it working

great effort so far mate

[RetroBorg]

skg      what about a volume normalisation feature in the future , ive normalised mine using itunes some time ago but have noticed lately that i get a bit of volume variances , and if your running good speakers especially with mp3 and clipping you do run the risk of blowing your speakers when playing loud.

You should check out a program called MP3 Gain, the good thing about this program is any adjustments done to the volume can be reversed later.

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/index.php

[egosbar]

sample pics sent to the address in the first post. 

what are the sample pics bad?