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?

[egosbar]

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

i trialled 100 songs and most of the were around the 92-97 range so i normalised them to the default 89db , there is one song though from that normalised to 89.4 but it has a red y in clipping and a red y in clip track , what does this mean and how do i fix it ( should i delete the song and download a new copy?)

[RetroBorg]

i trialled 100 songs and most of the were around the 92-97 range so i normalised them to the default 89db , there is one song though from that normalised to 89.4 but it has a red y in clipping and a red y in clip track , what does this mean and how do i fix it ( should i delete the song and download a new copy?)

I have to admit I'm not too sure about the clipping bit.

[abispac]

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.

Collections larger the 999 wont work? thats a lie, i got my collection perfectly working on skjukebox, and the way your software wants to find my music, i dont like that, sorry but this is defenitly not for me, ill bail out, good luck with your project. 

[BadMouth]

sample pics sent to the address in the first post.  

what are the sample pics bad?

See my earlier posts.  My current album art doesn't show up in the jukebox, but it I open and save it with paint.net, it shows up just fine.
I sent SKG before and after album covers so he can try to figure out the difference.

[egosbar]

just tossing another idea out there

in the track list , the numbers are really no good to anyone you dont know the song coming up etc without opening the tracklist option , i opted for in skjuke that the song names coming up are displayed .

skg  -  is it possible to have multiple programmers work on this project and pool the work so more could be done in shorter amount of time  and to save your sanity  , im sure there are programmers out there that would love to help in some way

[skepticalgeek]

abispac, I looked at the files you sent me. Sure enough, the before doesn't load, and the after does. Not sure why. Thing is, I'm using a simple label component. I tell the component what size it needs to be, pass it a file name, and tell it to automatically scale the contents to fit. Maybe it's a scaling problem with the large file size, or maybe the original file is using some kind of compression the component doesn't understand. Your paint.net program is able to compress it to 1/10th the size without quality loss, so there seems to be something wonky with the file. I'll look online and see if there is a fix for that.

ego, track names was the first thing I tried when I started writing this, but screen real estate became an issue, especially in netbook mode. That's why I made the track list screen. Also, I think I may know what is causing your playlist issue. I think you "album" with 277 tracks is causing problems again. I can't really expalin without slippering into programmerese, but the next update will have more feedback and better error handling on that screen.

[RetroBorg]

A few bugs I've recently found.

Any song title with a . in it ends before the .

For example: U.S. Forces appears as U, T.N.T. appears as T

I've had the next bug happen twice, the jukebox is about to play the next song in the queue and the details of the song appear but it doesn't play, so I go int the track list "ctrl T" and select the next song and "play now", "save and exit", that song starts playing but when it's finished the song that originally was meant to be playing that it was stuck on then plays but the details of the song are from the song I selected "play now" for.

Hope that makes sense.

My biggest issue I have right now is the speed of album slide, sometimes it's fine but then it slows up and takes forever then after a while comes good again.

I'm going to do a batch resize of all my album covers to 500x500 and see if it makes any difference.

[skepticalgeek]

Oops. You're right about the dot. When doing the directory  search, I use the dot to separate the track name from the file extension (mp3, ogg, flac, etc). I didn't consider the possibility of song names with a dot in them. Thanks for the catch.
 
Interesting about the other the song getting "stuck". Can you duplicate it consistently? Is it specific song(s), does it happen when the track list reach a certain size, etc? Grasping at straws here, but did you hit the space bar at any time? Space bar is the pause/unpause button.

[egosbar]

abispac, I looked at the files you sent me. Sure enough, the before doesn't load, and the after does. Not sure why. Thing is, I'm using a simple label component. I tell the component what size it needs to be, pass it a file name, and tell it to automatically scale the contents to fit. Maybe it's a scaling problem with the large file size, or maybe the original file is using some kind of compression the component doesn't understand. Your paint.net program is able to compress it to 1/10th the size without quality loss, so there seems to be something wonky with the file. I'll look online and see if there is a fix for that.

ego, track names was the first thing I tried when I started writing this, but screen real estate became an issue, especially in netbook mode. That's why I made the track list screen. Also, I think I may know what is causing your playlist issue. I think you "album" with 277 tracks is causing problems again. I can't really expalin without slippering into programmerese, but the next update will have more feedback and better error handling on that screen.

ill delete the album and try later today

as far as the real estate onscreen i hate to say it mate but the number buttons take a lot of space and really the only thing im using numbers for at the moment is to access 000 screen, and to tell the truth they appear to me to drag the eye of the main focus of the jukebox , as i said i am a bit of an artist and most times when i paint if something is drawing the eye to a place where i dont want it to then i have to change and draw the eye to where you want it to be and that is the album art

the black eyed peas album END wont play it loads but wont play , although it plays fine on skjuke , the files are all mp3 and i can see nothing different in the way it is tagged etc , i wonder if that is why the debbie album is not working as it has one of those songs in it , ill try later and muck around a bit with it

the scroll bars on the 4 album view dont do a lot and again take away from the look , considering you cant pick a song from the 4 album view and need a mouse to scroll them , i disabled them in skjuke and only had them in full album view

[skepticalgeek]

Badmouth, I know what is causing your album art issue. The large file you sent me, the 1 MB one, is not a jpeg file at all, it is a bitmap file. I'll try to explain without sounding too nerdy. An image editing program like paint is fairly smart. It loads the raw data from a file into a buffer, and analyzes the buffer to determine what it is dealing with. The label control I am using isn't that smart. It looks at the file extension to determine file type, then goes to one of several different dll files to determine how to handle that file format. In this case, you told it the file was a jpg when it wasn't, so it went to the jpg dll. Since the jpg dll couldn't read a bitmap file, nothing loaded into the label. When I changed the file extension to .bmp, the file showed up fine. This won't work for you, however. At least not yet. You see, I forgot to provide support for pic files other than jpg in the initial release. This was just an oversight, I forgot to add the appropriate DLLs when I was building the install package. This will be rectified in the next release. This also explain why your paint program shrunk the file by 90% when you loaded it and saved it without changing. You told the program to save it as a jpg, so it did, and that included applying jpeg compression to it.

Ego, it's funny how one person's passion is another's poison. The number keys are one of the primary reasons I built this to begin with. I found in using SK Juke, that I was always using numbers to enter the track, since my fingers are large and not nimble, and that I had to attach a physical keyboard to my jukebox PC since trying to double click my touch screen was more annoying than not. Also, some of the things I left out because I found them off-putting and distracting, like the weird special effect bars and wavy lines while the song is playing, are things you say you miss.

Today I am going to see about adding support for 4 digit album numbers. This will be a configurable option, so if you have a small (under 1000 albums) collection, you can still use 3 digit albums. This will also mean that for large collections, the Options screen will be "0000". I will also try to add Move to Top and Move to Bottom buttons on the track list screen. I also appreciate the thought of sharing the load, and if any programmers want access to the source, I will gladly zip it up, post it to my Mediafire account, and send you the download link. But any new person would need a few weeks to get familiar enough with the code base to help, especially if they have not used Qt before. Easier to do things myself for now.

[egosbar]

Ego, it's funny how one person's passion is another's poison. The number keys are one of the primary reasons I built this to begin with. I found in using SK Juke, that I was always using numbers to enter the track, since my fingers are large and not nimble, and that I had to attach a physical keyboard to my jukebox PC since trying to double click my touch screen was more annoying than not. Also, some of the things I left out because I found them off-putting and distracting, like the weird special effect bars and wavy lines while the song is playing, are things you say you miss.


[/quote]

exactly the reason for skinning , dont get me wrong i dont totally dislike the numbers its that the take a lot of room and most people will be using a mouse or touch not entering numbers especially with large collections = more numbers, the only effect bars i liked in skjuke was the spectrum and colored to my liking.

not sure if you need a move to bottom button as if you dont like the song you can always just delete it , move to top would be excellent though

[egosbar]

Ego, it's funny how one person's passion is another's poison. The number keys are one of the primary reasons I built this to begin with. I found in using SK Juke, that I was always using numbers to enter the track, since my fingers are large and not nimble, and that I had to attach a physical keyboard to my jukebox PC since trying to double click my touch screen was more annoying than not. Also, some of the things I left out because I found them off-putting and distracting, like the weird special effect bars and wavy lines while the song is playing, are things you say you miss.

exactly the reason for skinning , dont get me wrong i dont totally dislike the numbers its that the take a lot of room and most people will be using a mouse or touch not entering numbers especially with large collections = more numbers, the only effect bars i liked in skjuke was the spectrum and colored to my liking.Just wondering if you changed the font size in full album view in skjuke for fat fingers , i had the same problem and increased the size a lot and had no problem then, maybe here we need a little more space between songs or the check box in full album view

not sure if you need a move to bottom button (as there is one blank spot in track list options)if you dont like the song you can always just delete it , move to top would be excellent though

sorry for being so picky mate but as it is a program built from a love of skjuke as i share then i cant help to compare them , another feature i liked in skjuke was the ability to touch a song in the track list and delete it


[/quote]

[egosbar]

skg      i split the 277 songs into 3 albums tunes one two and three , i had a photo of myself in the folder and sk juke picked it up and used it for the album cover while still playing the songs , when i split these songs there was still a error , when i removed the photo they worked , a strange problem i had is that when i cut out about 90 songs and put into album 2 , then cut another 90 odd from one and put into album three , album two and three have the files showing album one has no files showing even though the properties say 90 files , ive tried everything here and cant get it working , skg juke picks up the album but no files ,    very wierd lucky i have a copy lol , although when i start to use skg juke regularly i wont need this album

the black eyed peas album i fixed , basically i used mp3 tag to tag all my music with 500 x 500 album covers , i tagged this using an album cover that wasnt the right one , i must of some time picked this up removed the album cover from the folder replacing it with the new cover  while not retagging it, sk juke recognised the picture in the folder and used the right cover and played fine, skg juke used the right cover but there must be some sort of problem with not having the original picture in the file , so i used mp3 tag to tag the songs with the new cover and bingo worked no worries,this could be a problem in big libraries.

there is a   problem with tagging and art i suspect as i also fixed the debbie album , the first song in her que was kylie minougue all the lovers which didnt play on the normal album either , when i removed the tag using mp3tag it worked but i also had to remove the jpg (and it was a jpg 570x570 ) the songs play fine if i have the cover in the folder then the songs load to playlist but wont play.I tried to retag the songs with the art but again they stopped working ,  i have had a couple of albums that were nearly impossible to tag with art even with mp3 tag , not to sure why but i normally delete these albums and get another copy if i like them a lot.

i also removed my large album 277 songs along with the debbie album that wasnt working , i done this previous to the above problems , what i wanted to do is see if the edit playlist - add to playlist option would be faster , didnt work it doesnt matter if i add one song or 50 it takes around 50 seconds to move them into the playlist using the right arrow button .

[skepticalgeek]

Ego,

A little confused by the wording of your post. For the record, I don't use the mp3 tags for anything. SKG Juke looks for a picture file in the album directory called "cover", and if it doesn't find it, uses the first picture file it finds in the directory. Also, keep in mind my previous post, where I said I forgot to include support for anything other than jpeg files. Are you saying that when you tag your mp3 files with art, they no longer play in SKG Jukebox? If do, can you e-mail me a couple, so I can see where the problem lies?

[RetroBorg]

Today I am going to see about adding support for 4 digit album numbers. This will be a configurable option, so if you have a small (under 1000 albums) collection, you can still use 3 digit albums. This will also mean that for large collections, the Options screen will be "0000".

I probably don't understand this right, at the moment I have over 1000 albums and they all load and play good as far as I can tell.

[egosbar]

Today I am going to see about adding support for 4 digit album numbers. This will be a configurable option, so if you have a small (under 1000 albums) collection, you can still use 3 digit albums. This will also mean that for large collections, the Options screen will be "0000".

I probably don't understand this right, at the moment I have over 1000 albums and they all load and play good as far as I can tell.

no what happened with this particular one black eyed peas the end i tagged it with a cover 500 x 500 , then i deleted that cover out of the folder and added the new cover without using mp3tag to tag it , so there must of been some sort of conflict , once i removed the tag from the songs and tagged it with the new cover the songs played well , what im saying is skjuke didnt have the problem , im confused about the kylie minougue one it is a 570 x570 jpeg image in the album  folder , when i remove it no cover obviously shows but it plays when i put it in the music freezes , ill email it to you

by writing the tag into the songs using mp3 tag my ipod picks up 100 percent of the cover art without it the ipod misses probably around 50 percent of them

i know your program resizes them what size is best as i have one that is only 170 x170 that skjuke wont find even though its in the songs folder .

[RetroBorg]

Did you quote the wrong reply egosbar?

[egosbar]

Did you quote the wrong reply egosbar?

sorry mate i did , skg will know what im on about

a query are you having trouble with making a playlist taking 50 seconds to add one song to the list?

[RetroBorg]

sorry mate i did , skg will know what im on about

No problems, I was a bit confused at first.

a query are you having trouble with making a playlist taking 50 seconds to add one song to the list?

Just played around with it, the first time I tried I had a song playing with another in the queue, I ticked about 30 songs and tried adding them to the playlist all at once, nothing seemed to happen, I noticed the seconds stopped moving on the song that was currently playing, when the song finished the next song didn't play, after about ten minutes of waiting I Alt Tabbed and was looking at some things on the net while I was waiting, then after about another two minutes everything seem to lock up and I had to Ctrl Alt Del and end task on SKG, once SKG closed my computer was okay again.

I then thought I was probably too aggressive with choosing 30 songs, so this time I had no songs playing and selected just one song, ten minutes later and still nothing, so Ctrl Alt Del again to get out of it.

Looks like there's obviously some issues with playlist creation.

[RetroBorg]

I just did a rebatch of all my album covers, made them 512x512, this has made a huge difference to the speed of the album slide.

No more of the nasty stuttering I had been experiencing.

It still doesn't match the speed of SK but it has made flicking through the albums much more enjoyable. 

Any chance you can make it so the slide continues if you keep the left or right buttons/keys held down like Sk does?

[skepticalgeek]

I probably don't understand this right, at the moment I have over 1000 albums and they all load and play good as far as I can tell.

You are probably choosing the song by clicking on the screen. Try choosing the song with the keyboard or number buttons, you will see some alien behavior. That is what I am fixing at the moment.

Ego, I will look at the idea of the slide continuing.

When adding songs to the playlist, the program has to check every track to see if it is checked, then set an available flag on that track. This takes the same amount of time whether adding 1 track or 100. I've made some changes to the playlist screen, so I ask that you hold off on any more playlist testing until you get the next update.

[egosbar]

I just did a rebatch of all my album covers, made them 512x512, this has made a huge difference to the speed of the album slide.

No more of the nasty stuttering I had been experiencing.

It still doesn't match the speed of SK but it has made flicking through the albums much more enjoyable. 

Any chance you can make it so the slide continues if you keep the left or right buttons/keys held down like Sk does?

good idea

[egosbar]

i was wondering about doubling up on songs in a playlist , was pleased to see that the songs you choose dissapear out of the to add list eliminating this problem nice work

a lot of songs in the playlist that have been added and i have probably around 50 or more so far, about half of the songs have some part of the song title missing , for example songbird is just bird , there are a couple that only have one letter in them although when you look in tracklist the names are good.

The add to playlist is a really good option to check if you have some albums not in the right place , i have around 700 and found three or four that were not in the right folder , just by looking down the list when adding on the left it is very easy to see if anything is out of place ,

[RetroBorg]

I probably don't understand this right, at the moment I have over 1000 albums and they all load and play good as far as I can tell.

You are probably choosing the song by clicking on the screen. Try choosing the song with the keyboard or number buttons, you will see some alien behavior. That is what I am fixing at the moment.

Yeah you were right I just tried using the keypad and no good.

[BadMouth]

SKG, do you plan to add support for other album art file types?

Since you discovered that mine were bmp with a jpg extension, I'm considering finding a way to convert all of them to true jpg.
(hoping to speed up my current jukebox software)
If you are adding support for other formats, I'll wait, so I can test the new art handling with my old album covers.

Also, do you think you'll pursue having the software add track numbers if they aren't part of the file name?
If not, I'll go ahead and use media monkey to rename all my files to include the track number.

Once you release the next version, I'll install it on my xp jukebox and Windows 7 laptop and get some real world use in.
(My main pc I'm testing it on now is running Vista 64)

[egosbar]

Also, do you think you'll pursue having the software add track numbers if they aren't part of the file name?
If not, I'll go ahead and use media monkey to rename all my files to include the track number.


[/quote] im in the same boat here most of my music does not have the track number in thier name ,would be good not to have to send my collection back to a rename program as there are always some stuff ups

looking forward to the new update soon 

[RetroBorg]

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?

I've just had a go at key mapping, it appears it adding okay in the configuration screen but once back to the jukebox in play mode it didn't seem to work.

[skepticalgeek]

Bandmouth , yes the next update will have support for more picture file types. I meant to support jpg, png, gif, bmp, and tiff, but forgot to include the appropriate DLL files. You will still have an issue if the file extension doesn't match the file type.

ego, I'm working on some logic that will examine the track names on a per album basis, and add them to the display if they are not part of the file name. Should take a day or two.

Retroborg, I looked at the key mapping on my main deployment machine. Looks like it works if you run the app from within the C:\SKG_Jukebox directory but fails when you use the desktop icon or menu shortcut. Problem in the logic that is looking for the custom keys XML file.

I will try to have an update posted next weekend. I have to finish the fixes so far, port everything to the Linux version, and update the manual. Thanks for all the input.

[egosbar]

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?

I've just had a go at key mapping, it appears it adding okay in the configuration screen but once back to the jukebox in play mode it didn't seem to work.

i had a go at the key mapping for my volume control knob which also can be used to simulate four other buttons and couldnt get it working , my juke isnt on the net (keep viruses off it ) but i may have to have an option to turn it on for album art download and ripping cds also updates , i have wireless so i think i need a dongle is this all i need ?

[egosbar]

=ego, I'm working on some logic that will examine the track names on a per album basis, and add them to the display if they are not part of the file name. Should take a day or two.
[/quote]

the names are fine skg , songbird for instance is the name of the file yet when i added it to the playlist only bird shows up (im talking about the custom add to playlist screen here ) not the tracklist , nearly half the songs are not fully named and some have only one letter of the hole song showing , the track list is no problem all songs named correct that i can see

skg     i think ive tested this version to the limit and its a great start mate , keep up the good work , maybe i can help you at least in writing the manual if you want , i could type some of the new features etc and send it to you to edit and proof it , may save you some time

[egosbar]

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

[/color]

badmouth i have music that i want to add to skgjuke that is organised    album-artist one folder \ tracks and coverart

i need it for skg juke as artist\album\tracks and art , how does media monkey do this ive mucked around now for 2 hours and cant get it to sort the music the way i want , and to name the source folder artist only

[BadMouth]

I'll see if I can put together specific instructions when I get home from work.
Here's a little help from memory if you want to mess with it before then.....

There is somewhere in the options where you specify how the file is saved.
i.e. C:/My Music/<artist>/<album>/<title>  (it may pop up automatically after you do the next step)
Click on the artist folder in media monkey so all songs show up, then select them all, then right click and choose "auto-organize files based on tag info" or something to that effect.
Media monkey will create a folder for the artist, a subfolder for the album, and the file will be named the track title.
You can also include the track number in the file name by putting <track #> <title> (or something like that) instead.

I had my entire collection in one big folder with the files named <artist> - <album> - <title> with album art attached to the tags.
I used the above method to change the folder structure when I tried different jukebox software.

You may have to clean up the compilations if you don't want them showing up under each artist.

[BadMouth]

egosbar-   It pretty much works like I said in the above post.  
> Open MediaMonkey, click on the "Artist & Album Artist" folder so ALL songs appear in the center pane.
> Click on any song in the center pane to change the focus to there
> Press Ctrl+A to select all tracks
> Right click and select "Auto-Organize Files"
> The window shown in the picture below will pop up.  Select "Copy Files to New Destination" if you want to keep a copy of your original structure intact.
   You can type in the Destination based on what I have in there or you can click on the Configure button to the right.  It will show you how the folder
   structure will look when you're done.  Duplicate file names will be highlighted.  It will not let you continue until you fix the duplicate/long file names.
   You can double click on the file name in the pane below and change it so it's
   different.  I usually just add a space after the end, so it doesn't appear to be different, but it's not seen as a duplicate.  This will restructure everything
   automatically.  The only thing that's not so great is the handling of compilations/soundtracks.  You'll get a different folder for each artist.  
   These will have to be combined by hand if you want them to show up together in the jukebox.  EDIT: Actually, you can select the album and use the "Auto   
   Organize Files" feature to combine them back into one folder with the album name in place of the artist.  I think that's how I did it.  I think I did end up
   with some stray empty folders.  It's been a while since I did it.

[egosbar]

I'll see if I can put together specific instructions when I get home from work.
Here's a little help from memory if you want to mess with it before then.....

There is somewhere in the options where you specify how the file is saved.
i.e. C:/My Music/<artist>/<album>/<title>  (it may pop up automatically after you do the next step)
Click on the artist folder in media monkey so all songs show up, then select them all, then right click and choose "auto-organize files based on tag info" or something to that effect.
Media monkey will create a folder for the artist, a subfolder for the album, and the file will be named the track title.
You can also include the track number in the file name by putting <track #> <title> (or something like that) instead.

I had my entire collection in one big folder with the files named <artist> - <album> - <title> with album art attached to the tags.
I used the above method to change the folder structure when I tried different jukebox software.

You may have to clean up the compilations if you don't want them showing up under each artist.

worked it out lol wasnt that hard once i thought about it , album \ artist \ track number and title and for compilations just album \ track number and title

[BadMouth]

and for compilations just album \ track number and title

You may have to do album\album\track number and title
for the jukebox software to pick it up.

[egosbar]

and for compilations just album \ track number and title

You may have to do album\album\track number and title
for the jukebox software to pick it up.

yes skg juke wont pick up the compilation albums , i see album / album / track title will work i think , although it would be better if skg just looked in the source folder and sub folders inside that
with 3500   albums i think a search for song or album is a must

skg i think that testing with large music collections is so much different then with only say a couple of hundred albums , when there are so many fast scrolling is a must and also searching for album or artist or song , i have up down left right buttons on my juke , sk juke scrolled left or right four albums at a time but it also used some other keys (cant remember which but any free keys will do)for up down which i mapped using an ipac this function was supposed to go from letter to letter , this didnt always work but it scrolled around 20 albums at a time which is handy when you have say 30 ac\dc albums you can get though them very quickly to the next artist starting with A

there is a bug but its only happened twice now , when i cleared the juke and went to add albums  it picked up a folder called egos programs , this was nowhere near the source folder of my music , i had to shut the program down a couple of times as there was no source file showing for the juke to know where to look although the programs still showed up as albums

[egosbar]

ok changed the compilation albums with media monkey to     album\album\track - title  picked them up fine although a lot of the compilation albums have long name        ie the summer hits of 2009  , this presents a problem on the view screen as you have to name album \ album the album title takes the place of the artist it doesnt show the whole name as the letters are too big and it is centered so you miss the first few letters of the album and it looks no good

maybe i can play a bit and call the artist part various artists then the album name  is in smaller font so should be ok

[skepticalgeek]

ego, That is what retroborg did with his soundtracks and compilations. He put them in folders called "soundtracks" and "compilations", lowercase so they would show up at the end. I am working on a fairly substantial update, ahve the changes done in the Windows version, porting to the Linux version now, and then will update the manual. Hope to have the update online this weekend or early next week at latest. I will e-mail you guys the new download link when it is up, as well as putting a post here as to what all the fixes and features are. Speaking of the manual, does anyone have any feedback on that, good or bad? I'm not much of a documentation person, in my job we have tech writers for that. Also, still in desperate need of testers for the Linux version. I only had one guy respond so far. I sent him the download link and never heard from him again.

[egosbar]

not too keen on renaming them again   ive spent about 20 hours now retagging again , i have mp3 tag can i batch tag these albums to have

album (called various artists) \ album ( called actual album , ie the hits of summer 2004)  \ track number - artist - song title , or is there a better program to use

looking forward to the next update though

[egosbar]

ego, That is what retroborg did with his soundtracks and compilations. He put them in folders called "soundtracks" and "compilations", lowercase so they would show up at the end. I am working on a fairly substantial update, ahve the changes done in the Windows version, porting to the Linux version now, and then will update the manual. Hope to have the update online this weekend or early next week at latest. I will e-mail you guys the new download link when it is up, as well as putting a post here as to what all the fixes and features are. Speaking of the manual, does anyone have any feedback on that, good or bad? I'm not much of a documentation person, in my job we have tech writers for that. Also, still in desperate need of testers for the Linux version. I only had one guy respond so far. I sent him the download link and never heard from him again.

the manual is fine mate ,  i did read it and noticed something and forgot to post ill re read and let you know

[egosbar]

ok i want to retag the compilation albums , what i want to do is a batch tag , i want to tag the artist as various artists or compilations , then the variousl artists will show as the artist name and the correct name for the album will show under it  then track artist title

so it will be

various artists \ album name \ track number title artist

i have media monkey and mp3 tag how can i batch tag all songs to have various artists as the artist name?

[RetroBorg]

I have mine organised like this:

\compilations\Album\Track - Artist - Title

for example:

\compilations\100 Greatest Rock Songs of the 90s\001 - Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

[egosbar]

  and name them small letter so that various artists are all after z and before a

[egosbar]

and name them small letter so that various artists are all after z and before a

but if i put them all in a folder called various artists will skgjuke call them that or what the album is tagged

[BadMouth]

but if i put them all in a folder called various artists will skgjuke call them that or what the album is tagged

I'm pretty sure that skepticalgeek has said the software gets the names from the folders and file names, which would mean that the tags are irrelevant.
(too lazy to read back through his posts, but feel free)

[RetroBorg]

but if i put them all in a folder called various artists will skgjuke call them that or what the album is tagged

I'm pretty sure that skepticalgeek has said the software gets the names from the folders and file names, which would mean that the tags are irrelevant.
(too lazy to read back through his posts, but feel free)

Yeah SKG doesn't use tags.

I've got a trial version of Dr. Tag where you can configure it to restructure your music anyway you want but being trial it only allows 50 file saves then you have exit Dr Tag and start again, pain in the ass if you have a whole lot of music to do.

[egosbar]

I've got a trial version of Dr. Tag where you can configure it to restructure your music anyway you want but being trial it only allows 50 file saves then you have exit Dr Tag and start again, pain in the ass if you have a whole lot of music to do.
[/quote]

media monkey is free and does a great job

[egosbar]

skg - i just loaded heaps of albums all work fine except the J section ,  i can scroll four albums then error comes up and skg closes??
ill test it out again when new update available

[skepticalgeek]

Guys, I just finished a new update, 0.72 Second Beta. There are several fixes and new features.

    Up/Down arrow keys no correspond to volume up/down.
    Ctrl -M minimizes the window.
    Adding tracks to playlist is much faster and more responsive.
    New Move to Top button in Track List form
    Holding down left/right arrow keys keeps panels scrolling continuously. Scrolling is also smoother. Though it can still slow down somewhat if album art files are large. When SKG Jukebox loads the next panel of albums, it scales the artwork to fit the panel. This can be very processor intensive, especially for large art files. Album art between 500 and 1000 pixels per side works bes and still looks good.
    Can now map a Custom List or Playlist to a single keystroke. Can also map 2 different keystrokes to a Playlist, one for playing it in normal order, and another one for random order.
    New configuration option for large collections, that is larger than 1000 albums. If using this option, album numbers will be 4 digits instead of 3, and the Options screen is accessed by pressing "0000" instead of "000".
    New configuration option, Connected, specifying whether jukebox is connected to Internet. By default this is set to True. Setting it to False will disable features such as album art downloading and CD ripping.
    Track numbers now appear on the screen, even if they are not part of the file name.
    Assorted bug fixes and performance tweaks.


ego, is there something odd or out of place with the albums that are supposed to be downloaded next?
I'll e-mail all of you with the new download link.

[egosbar]

Guys, I just finished a new update, 0.72 Second Beta. There are several fixes and new features.

    Up/Down arrow keys no correspond to volume up/down.
    Ctrl -M minimizes the window.
    Adding tracks to playlist is much faster and more responsive.
    New Move to Top button in Track List form
    Holding down left/right arrow keys keeps panels scrolling continuously. Scrolling is also smoother. Though it can still slow down somewhat if album art files are large. When SKG Jukebox loads the next panel of albums, it scales the artwork to fit the panel. This can be very processor intensive, especially for large art files. Album art between 500 and 1000 pixels per side works bes and still looks good.
    Can now map a Custom List or Playlist to a single keystroke. Can also map 2 different keystrokes to a Playlist, one for playing it in normal order, and another one for random order.
    New configuration option for large collections, that is larger than 1000 albums. If using this option, album numbers will be 4 digits instead of 3, and the Options screen is accessed by pressing "0000" instead of "000".
    New configuration option, Connected, specifying whether jukebox is connected to Internet. By default this is set to True. Setting it to False will disable features such as album art downloading and CD ripping.
    Track numbers now appear on the screen, even if they are not part of the file name.
    Assorted bug fixes and performance tweaks.


ego, is there something odd or out of place with the albums that are supposed to be downloaded next?
I'll e-mail all of you with the new download link.

brilliant mate , ill check into the J albums and see what is wrong cant see what should stop it though

[RetroBorg]

Guys, I just finished a new update, 0.72 Second Beta. There are several fixes and new features.

    Up/Down arrow keys no correspond to volume up/down.
    Ctrl -M minimizes the window.
    Adding tracks to playlist is much faster and more responsive.
    New Move to Top button in Track List form
    Holding down left/right arrow keys keeps panels scrolling continuously. Scrolling is also smoother. Though it can still slow down somewhat if album art files are large. When SKG Jukebox loads the next panel of albums, it scales the artwork to fit the panel. This can be very processor intensive, especially for large art files. Album art between 500 and 1000 pixels per side works bes and still looks good.
    Can now map a Custom List or Playlist to a single keystroke. Can also map 2 different keystrokes to a Playlist, one for playing it in normal order, and another one for random order.
    New configuration option for large collections, that is larger than 1000 albums. If using this option, album numbers will be 4 digits instead of 3, and the Options screen is accessed by pressing "0000" instead of "000".
    New configuration option, Connected, specifying whether jukebox is connected to Internet. By default this is set to True. Setting it to False will disable features such as album art downloading and CD ripping.
    Track numbers now appear on the screen, even if they are not part of the file name.
    Assorted bug fixes and performance tweaks.

Looking forward to checking it out. 

[egosbar]

some very nice updates skg great work again mate

control m - minimise window
very good option and was a must, worked perfectly

adding tracks to playlist faster
a huge improvement , songs add pretty much instant although having all my compilations under one folder called various artists i cant expand that folder to see tracks , this is set up various artists as common artist name  \ album \ track number - song title - artist , excellent work here

move to top button in track list options
my favorite improvement for sure , this button is invaluable with large tracklists

hold down left or right continuous scroll
worked perfect , although i think with this option the scroll should be very fast to get through to the end of a letter or mid letter  quickly ,

new config for large collections 0000
this worked but when i shut down the juke i have to recheck the large collection and uncheck the internet every time , need a memory here

track number appear
perfectly done

now for my overall thoughts , not critisism just my thoughts based on a very large album collection

album scroll still too slow for me as i have 27 ac -dc albums so it takes a long time to get through the individual letters if you want a album near the end of that particular letter

when using numbers although i doubt very much if many will especially when you have a large collection , to pick one song now i have to type 6 numbers ,  i really think this option is a waste of space on the main screen which could be better served with other buttons , also if your going to use numbers then the main screen shouldnt go to full album view ,

some of the manual still talks about max 999 songs and also albums having 3 digits , also reference to 2 digit tracks when playlists may have 300

track list numbers are long now in my collection 6 digits which look pretty bad in the tracklist , basically it just looks like a heap of numbers , i think the track list really needs to show the song title , i remember i think you said this could be hard , but skjuke done it so it is doable , and would make the juke look so much better

click on song in main list doesnt pick song it only goes to full view , selecting songs on main screen would be an additional advantage especially for mouse users

scroll bars on the main screen album lists - are they nessasary if you cant use them without a scroll mouse , also the horizontal ones are wasted

where can i turn off the scroll sound , as it comes through my amp when im playing music and selecting albums slightly irritating

one screen of four albums had a problem and would shut down as error , i took these albums out and all worked fine , every one of these song plays in media player no problems and the art is fine , not sure on this one as they look fine , had the same problem halfway throught the J selection with the old version and now same albums same collections the J list scrolls no worries

ability to color change font and size would be awesome

as collections now are becoming very large a search option an onscreen keyboard button are a must , these  buttons could possibly replace the number letters along with an options button and maybe even a couple of buttons that you can write your favorite playlist name on it and use (pleanty of real estate where the buttons are  , sorry to keep going on about the buttons mate as i know you like them but a touch screen is so much quicker ,  i also have  0 -9  on my actual jukebox so that option is doubled up on my juke

all up thought mate some really good work  here and you need a collective pat on the back , i can only imagine how hard your working

regards

ego

[egosbar]

skg - got to say mate your on the way to having a cracker here

volume up and down allowed me to program my powermate griffen volume knob , small problem here are the increments are to quick , to give an example sk juke had volume page up and page down , it takes around 6-7 seconds of holding to go from 0 - 100% of volume and its perfect using the powermate , skg takes around 2 seconds would be good if you can match those increments ( gives a better touch to volume control) and also have a pop up volume bar telling the percentage as you turn ( check out sj juke onscreen display when using volume)

if you remember my previous post about the powermate , remembering it has left right for volume ( it also can be mapped ) so using both mapping tools of skg juke and the volume knob ive been able to program it to  --   left right volume up and down , press in and turn right mapped to cont n for next song and press in and control left mapped to cont c lets me clear track list with no keyboard
now for the great part ,  i mapped home to my playlist ego and end to my wifes playlist i then mapped the griffen powermate to press in short to home and my playlist comes up and press in long and my wifes playlist comes up -      BRILLIANT MATE

still a little sticky in places on the scroll left and right and as i said earlier too slow in my opinon be great if you could adjust speed here so that guys wanting the slower look can use it and blokes with huge collections can go fast through the particular letters

im going to add two buttons to my juke now ego and debbie which will map to our playlists

i know you have the alphabet up top and i love that , but a great feature of sk juke was the up down buttons went to next letter ( this is great for going to the next couple of letters with button controls ,this can be used in conjunction with page up and down as up down is being used by volume

loving it so far cant wait for the next update

[egosbar]

just had another thought while enjoying a beer and playins some tunes

screen  burn may be a problem now , there is a lot of screen not doing anything , i had sk to scroll albums at 5 second intervals after 2 minutes of no use this kept the top of screen going and its great to sit back and see an album you havent heard for a while and play it

im back at the large number buttons again ( sorry mate haha ) they are bright and large and would after time burn the screen i think

ok now for the ducks guts of applications for this juke - A REMOTE CONTROL  how about using an apple i phone as a remote i know there are a couple of jukes doing it album player i think does it ,now that would be a hit

oh and lose the number buttons  lol sorry dude but they are an eyesore and pretty much useless in the end , a mouse or touch kill entering numbers for songs. So much space wasted on the buttons that could be put to great use.


ego

[egosbar]

is there an option to turn of the album scroll sound as it comes through my speakers as my songs are playing

[skepticalgeek]

Hey ego, a lot of good comments.

It's true that the list of track numbers in the lower left doesn't convey a lot of information. That's why I created the track list form, to give more information and control. I tried doing a track list there ala SK Jukebox but ran into a screen real estate issue. I'm sorry but I like the number buttons. I thinks they give it a more authentic jukebox look and feel, they take me back to the old 45 jukes and CD jukeboxes of the 70s and 80s. I'm thinking of just putting info about the next coming track in the lower left, kind of like Tetris telling you what the next block is. There is more than enough room for that, and if you want more info, click the lower left and bring up the track list form.

Screen burn in really isn't a problem with modern monitors. You have to go back quite a few years to find a monitor where that is an issue.

A track search function is a neat idea. I'll look into that.

I've never written anything with a remote control interface. I'm not sure where to start. But it is a good idea for a future update.

Still working on scrolling speed. I've never done animations before, and getting the timing right is tricky.

Playlists are stored in an xml file in the resources directory called, strangely enough, playlists.xml. If you back that up and restore it, you can use the same playlists after restore. If you try to load a playlist that has songs that have not been are not in the library, you will get some alien behavior, so make sure you add all your music back first. Also, moving your playlists and custom lists xml files is a good way to use the same lists on two platforms, like your jukebox PC and a laptop.

BTW, if you haven't done so, try installing the juke on a platform with a widescreen monitor. Both the development machine and deployment PC were widescreen notebooks, so by default I ended up tweaking the appearance to look best that way.

[egosbar]

haha no problems mate your the boss , great work though

still playing with it

when adding a playlist can you make it add to current list not delete current playing list.

you really only need three or four songs that are coming up next down bottom left , that would allow you to pick songs see the next couple and decide to go to track list options and delete or move up other songs

i love the track list options mate , sk had the same but you couldnt add to top

thinking more on the remote aspect , what about a blue tooth remote like a ps3 ( the actual remote not the hand control for games) it has skip etc for the dvd and blu ray , rather then a phone i think the remote is like 40 bucks instead of an iphone , really you only need volume up and down and skip song , i have a lot of music and i dont mind just putting the whole collection on random sometimes but its a pain to keep getting up to skip a song you hate.

[egosbar]

skg - just done a pretty good session listenting to the juke , had 5 people over pushing buttons selecting songs and loving the jukebox , there were about 4 times the music went to mute and it didnt matter what you done you had to shut down the program and restart , i played the same song or album when it come back on and not a problem . i hate comparing to sk all the time but since it is a dedication to that program i think i have to so you can improve . when this sort of thing happened with sk you would close and restart and your track list was still there , skg you lose the tracklist which as you can imagine sucks when you have twenty or thirty songs lined up, hope it easily copied , other then that it ran great

ego

[skepticalgeek]

ego, I'll look into saving the track list in case of restart. Shouldn't be hard to implement. Good idea.

Any chance the music was paused and not muted? The space bar maps to pause/unpause current track. If one of the buttons was mapped to that and was hit accidentally, it might look like it was muted. Were the seconds still ticking away on the Now Playing section, bottom center?

[egosbar]

ego, I'll look into saving the track list in case of restart. Shouldn't be hard to implement. Good idea.

Any chance the music was paused and not muted? The space bar maps to pause/unpause current track. If one of the buttons was mapped to that and was hit accidentally, it might look like it was muted. Were the seconds still ticking away on the Now Playing section, bottom center?

wasnt paused mate the seconds were clocking up

[egosbar]

BTW, if you haven't done so, try installing the juke on a platform with a widescreen monitor. Both the development machine and deployment PC were widescreen notebooks, so by default I ended up tweaking the appearance to look best that way.
[/quote]

pretty much locked into a 19 inch 4:3 screen as most actual juke owners will have , ive spent a lot of time building my juke so ill be sticking with that screen size although i do have a spare 22 inch widescreen i was hoping in a future update that video clips may be an option.

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys. I appreciate all the feedback so far. I managed to implement the feature where the program remembers the existing track list and reloads it when restarted. I will be starting on the track search function in the next few days. I am also reading a Dummies book on building web sites, since I don't have much experience with that.

ego, funny you mentioned video clips. Once the jukebox is where I want it to be, and the web site is up, there are two other projects I want to start working on. The first is a multi-emulator front end, to be called SKG Gamebox. The next is the SKG Videobox. Think of a UI similar to the juke, for all you movies, tv shows, music videos, etc. These are just in the idea stage right now, but they will share a similar UI, and the design goals will be the same. Namely, multi-platform, open source, touch friendly, and netbook friendly as well.

[BadMouth]

SKG, just wanted to let you know I'm still on board.  Have some other projects going down and haven't had a chance to test the new release yet.

One thing I thought of, that might have already been covered;  You might want to include some type of logic in dealing with artist names that begin with "The".
It's one shortfall of my current jukebox software.  I had to remove "The" from all the band names to keep them from showing up under T.  That always annoyed me, but I did it anyway because there wasn't a way around it.  Although not jukebox software, mediamonkey has a checkbox to ignore "The" and organize the artist based on the next word.  i.e. The Beatles shows up with the Bs.

[egosbar]

SKG, just wanted to let you know I'm still on board.  Have some other projects going down and haven't had a chance to test the new release yet.

One thing I thought of, that might have already been covered;  You might want to include some type of logic in dealing with artist names that begin with "The".
It's one shortfall of my current jukebox software.  I had to remove "The" from all the band names to keep them from showing up under T.  That always annoyed me, but I did it anyway because there wasn't a way around it.  Although not jukebox software, mediamonkey has a checkbox to ignore "The" and organize the artist based on the next word.  i.e. The Beatles shows up with the Bs.

this has already been done mate , one of the things i noticed in the first version of skg juke as a great improvement over sk juke

[BadMouth]

this has already been done mate , one of the things i noticed in the first version of skg juke as a great improvement over sk juke

Thanks, guess I should have read the instructions before posting.
Other projects are taking up all my time

[egosbar]

skg  -   just going back through all the posts to compile a list of suggestions that still may have a future in skg juke , i thought it would be good to have an updated reference point of suggestions every now and then to make it easier to see them , if anyone has anything to add please quote and add your thoughts or unanswered questions

having just updated my library from artist-album\music to artist\album\music , even though media monkey does this reletatively good it still has issues transferring some art especially with double albums , i hope this is the last time i ever have to re tag lol , have you been able to see if it is hard to program skg juke to look for both forms of folder options?

can the album art be bigger

automatic scroll through the albums when juke not in use for a minute or two , auto scroll through full album view would be even better

blue tooth remote , volume up and down and next song would the basic functions , ps3 remote is bluetooth and cheap


options to change font size and color for personal taste

i know your working on this one , option to have fast or slow scroll album speed , fast being as fast as sk juke was

up down option ( could be mapped to page up and down as volume is using up down) to have skg juke scroll to start of next letter using only button , this is a good option for actual juke builds with buttons , the a -z up top is awesome but to just go a couple of letters is quick using buttons

just a thought is there a real need to have the songs on the four album view , without the songs the art could be bigger and the juke may look even better , might be good to just click on a album cover and see the songs inside (scroll bars on four album view dont really do anything as if you touch them you go to full album view) an option to have no scroll bars on the four album view

an option to have the song now playing  add to playlist ( with a drop down menu of your playlists to choose which one to add)

permanent memory for selecting no internet and large album collection

an option to turn scroll sound off , very annoying when playing an album as it comes over the top of the song

will there be an onscreen keyboard for the track search similar to sk juke , as i want my juke to work without the need for a keyboard

[egosbar]

skg i know your working on a platform for movies , music videos etc

is it possible to incorporate music videos in skg juke , have a button that reads music videos and movie clips take you to a screen with your collection?

would it also be possible to have page up and page down (which i can map to my up down arrows on my juke , i already have a volume knob so dont need them for volume ) to have the albums scroll say 5 screens or 20 albums at a time , as ive mentioned in a large collection you can easily go to the letter but to get to say avril lavigne at the end of the A's it takes some time

[skepticalgeek]

A configuration option to disable the album scrolling sound and a track search screen are next on the list.

Album art size is a function of panel size. When the panel with a single album on it resizes, it sizes the album art so that it is always a square and never takes up more then half the width of the panel.

I suppose I could map page up and down to next/previous letter. Also, in case you didn't know, the letter buttons on the standard keyboard map to the letter buttons up top. When I want to go the end of the A's, I hit the "B" button to go to the start of the B's and work backward.

Adding the current song to a playlist is an interesting idea. I have to figure out how to make it touch friendly. Also, The jukebox doesn't know which playlist it is playing. To the juke, a playlist is just a bunch of track numbers it loads into the queue and forgets about.

A little confused about the no internet and large album comment. Weren't those features already implemented?

Themes are something I will work on in a future update, once I figure out how.

Remote control interface is interesting, but I've never written a UI that interfaces with one, so I'd have to teach myself what's involved.

Haven't gotten much feedback on album art downloading or CD ripping functions. Anyone had a chance to use those?

Thanks for everything guys.       

[egosbar]

A configuration option to disable the album scrolling sound and a track search screen are next on the list.

Album art size is a function of panel size. When the panel with a single album on it resizes, it sizes the album art so that it is always a square and never takes up more then half the width of the panel.

I suppose I could map page up and down to next/previous letter. Also, in case you didn't know, the letter buttons on the standard keyboard map to the letter buttons up top. When I want to go the end of the A's, I hit the "B" button to go to the start of the B's and work backward.

Adding the current song to a playlist is an interesting idea. I have to figure out how to make it touch friendly. Also, The jukebox doesn't know which playlist it is playing. To the juke, a playlist is just a bunch of track numbers it loads into the queue and forgets about.

A little confused about the no internet and large album comment. Weren't those features already implemented?

Themes are something I will work on in a future update, once I figure out how.

Remote control interface is interesting, but I've never written a UI that interfaces with one, so I'd have to teach myself what's involved.

Haven't gotten much feedback on album art downloading or CD ripping functions. Anyone had a chance to use those?

Thanks for everything guys.      

will the track search have an onscreen keyboard function?



as far as add to current song to playlist maybe you could check out windows media player , not sure how hard this would be and a button of add now playing song to a playlist (open list of all playlists) would be great , when you right click on a song in media player you have an option to add song to playlist and all your playlists are there so all you do is highlite the one you want and it goes there , hope you can figure this one out as i love hearing a song not in my playlist and instantly can add it

the internet and large album collection has been done , the problem is it doesnt remember on shut down so every time i open up i have to check the no internet again and the large album collection  ,  a memory here would be good

i think there are remote controls available now for pcs maybe look at them first and see if you can have it skg juke freindly

still havent got my juke on the net mate but ill add the software to my laptop and try these features for you and give you my thoughts

got one for you not that im a dolly parton fan but i have 3 albums from a set ( dolly parton legendary) i cant find and album cover for this one , see what you can find with skg juke

[BadMouth]

I'd like to have separate keys for "Cancel" and exiting the jukebox.

Say someone builds a non-touchscreen old school style jukebox.
They would have to include a cancel button, but if the same button exits the jukebox,
I guarantee a guest will press it in the main screen and exit the jukebox.

I'd also like the option to stay on the 4 album view screen when an album number is punched in.
The switch kind of makes me loose my bearings for a second when typing in an album+song number.

One solution for the albums that have a lot of tracks might be to have some type of logic that creates another pane for an album if it has more than 12 or 13 songs.  It would continue the tracks on the next pane along with another copy of the album art.  (as if they are on a separate cd, but the cd number could still be the same).  Probably not easy to implement, but it would eliminate the scroll bars.  I guess if someone really wanted to, they could manually create another folder and split up the tracks.

track numbers are showing up fine for my file names that don't have them btw

If I get my album art straightened out before weekend, I'll put it on my current jukebox and let my guests have at it.

(oh, and I deleted the annoying page turning sound    )

[s-petersen]

 Hi,
Are you still looking for Linux testers,I have a Ubuntu 10.4 fresh install ,I would like to try it,if it's ok.
Thanks,
Scott

[BadMouth]

CD ripping - The CD had to be loaded before clicking "Rip CD" in the options menu or else I got "500 command syntax error" at the bottom of the cd ripping window.  It came up with the correct artist and album, but didn't list a year or genre, so I tried typing it in the box where it would have appeared, but it wouldn't let me.  Most other software would give you the option to make changes before ripping.

Not sure how much work you should put into the CD ripper.  Personally I'm picky about having all my stuff ripped at the same bitrate, etc, so I don't plan to use it.  (I know you went over that stuff in the instructions)
I'm not sure how much demand there will be for an integrated one.  I'm assuming most people who build a jukebox pc already have their music collection ripped and have a preferred way of doing it.  I guess it does avoid the hassle of ripping it on another pc then transferring it to the jukebox.

[BadMouth]

pretty much locked into a 19 inch 4:3 screen as most actual juke owners will have , ive spent a lot of time building my juke so ill be sticking with that screen size although i do have a spare 22 inch widescreen i was hoping in a future update that video clips may be an option.

Although I'm testing on a widescreen (for now), I agree with egosbar that most people will be using a 4:3 screen for their jukebox.
I've never even considered a widescreen touch monitor an option due to the availability and price of 4:3 models.

[egosbar]

(oh, and I deleted the annoying page turning sound    )

how did you delete this sound mate?

[skepticalgeek]

I've added a config option to not play the page turn sound. That will be in the next update. I'm working on the track search feature now, with an onscreen keyboard that I will also add to the custom list and playlist screens.

I did the switch from 4 album view to single album for two reasons. One, because that's how the SK Jukebox works, and two, because there isn't enough room in the 4 album view to display all the tracks for large albums.

The CD ripper is designed for simplicity. People who are picky about their encoding settings should use something like EAC. People who just want decent rips fairly quickly and easily can use the integrated one.

s-peterson, I've been getting reports that the debian package isn't installing correctly. I need to investigate this, then I'll send you the download link.

[BadMouth]

Everything seems to work fine on my main Vista PC.

I'm installing it on my touchscreen jukebox PC today which runs XP.

How far out is the next update?  I may wait for it before trying it on my Windows 7 laptop.

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys. I just finished the track search feature, and I'm starting on the feature to add the current track to a playlist. I then have to port the changes to the Windows version and test them on the deployment machines. I also need to investigate the problems with the Linux install package. I am probably 2-3 weeks from a new update, which will probably be the last one for the limited beta test. I want to concentrate on building the website and getting it hosted, and getting a decent domain name. Here are some screenshots of the track search screen, and the new Options screen.

[RetroBorg]

Looks good Patrick.

[BadMouth]

Anyone else testing this on Windows 7?

Just installed it on my laptop and I'm having some issues.
The music is on a network drive this time around, but I don't think that's related to the issues.

The big issue is that the main jukebox window stays on top, even when trying to open the options menu or load album art.
The main window becomes unresponsive because focus has shifted to the dialog window, but it isn't visible.
If I go to task manager, I can see the dialog boxes are running, but using "switch to" or "bring to front" has no effect.

Then I tried to run it in XP SP3 compatibility mode and no albums loaded, maybe because I didn't run it that way first.

I will continue to mess around with it, but was curious if anyone else was using windows 7.

[RetroBorg]

Anyone else testing this on Windows 7?

Just installed it on my laptop and I'm having some issues.
The music is on a network drive this time around, but I don't think that's related to the issues.

The big issue is that the main jukebox window stays on top, even when trying to open the options menu or load album art.
The main window becomes unresponsive because focus has shifted to the dialog window, but it isn't visible.
If I go to task manager, I can see the dialog boxes are running, but using "switch to" or "bring to front" has no effect.

Then I tried to run it in XP SP3 compatibility mode and no albums loaded, maybe because I didn't run it that way first.

I will continue to mess around with it, but was curious if anyone else was using windows 7.

Windows XP Pro for me.

[BadMouth]

Tried it without loading any albums and the dialogue boxes pop up fine.  Maybe having the collection on the network drive is screwing something up.
I'll copy the music to my laptop and try again when I get time.  It crashes when you click for the next page and no albums are loaded, but I wouldn't really consider that an issue.

[egosbar]

Hey guys. I just finished the track search feature, and I'm starting on the feature to add the current track to a playlist. I then have to port the changes to the Windows version and test them on the deployment machines. I also need to investigate the problems with the Linux install package. I am probably 2-3 weeks from a new update, which will probably be the last one for the limited beta test. I want to concentrate on building the website and getting it hosted, and getting a decent domain name. Here are some screenshots of the track search screen, and the new Options screen.

great work mate , search function looks great , and add current song to playlist will be awesome , have you worked on a faster scroll?
excellent cant wait for the next update

ego

[skepticalgeek]

One of my machines for deployment testing is a laptop running Win7, and it works fine. I've tried testing it using music on a network drive. It works but performance is not great, especially on a wireless network. If you have any kind of network hiccup while doing the initial directory search, it can just hang indefinitely. Got a 4 day weekend coming up here in the States, so hopefully will get a lot done. Cheers guys.

[egosbar]

Hey guys. I just finished the track search feature, and I'm starting on the feature to add the current track to a playlist. I then have to port the changes to the Windows version and test them on the deployment machines. I also need to investigate the problems with the Linux install package. I am probably 2-3 weeks from a new update, which will probably be the last one for the limited beta test. I want to concentrate on building the website and getting it hosted, and getting a decent domain name. Here are some screenshots of the track search screen, and the new Options screen.

just looking at the search picture you put up , as i said mate nice job , most people who search want to hear the song next so maybe the add to playlist button should be add to next playing
i know you can move it up in the tracklist options but if you can have both options on the search screen it would be better , add to tracklist and add to next playing

[s-petersen]

I was just wondering what kind of machine would run the Linux version,
Thanks
Scott

[egosbar]

skeptikal -      i think i remember reading that the program is open source , i know a computer programmer that said he would probably be able to make a version of skg with the buttons as an option and i wouldnt mind giving him a go at it if you have no problem with that

regards

ego

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys, just a quick progress update. I finished the track search function, the add to playlist function, and put a new button on the key mapper part of the config screen, to view the current key mappings. I am in the process of porting the features to the Windows version, then updating the manual. I will be posting a new update, probably next weekend. This will be the last one, before I go public, though I will still welcome comments and requests.

ego, I'll post a zip file with the source code when i post the next update, and send you the link. s-peterson, I haven't had a chance to investigate the Linux issue, but I will ASAP. Later.

[RetroBorg]

This will be the last one, before I go public, though I will still welcome comments and requests.

Has anyone requested a random feature?

[egosbar]

This will be the last one, before I go public, though I will still welcome comments and requests.

Has anyone requested a random feature?

 my juke is in the paint shop so cant look but i thought it had one , just cant remember if not then it definitely needs on , i love to random the whole jukebox collection which is why a remote with skip is very handy

[skepticalgeek]

I never thought about a random feature, mostly because I'm one of those tightly wound guys who hates surprises, but it's an interesting idea. What were you guys thinking of, a feature that plays a random track if nothing has been played for a few minutes, or something that generates and plays a random list of x number of tracks?

[BadMouth]

What were you guys thinking of, a feature that plays a random track if nothing has been played for a few minutes, or something that generates and plays a random list of x number of tracks?

Well, let me tell you what my current jukebox software does (and why it sucks).

It has a feature where if nobody touches the jukebox for X period of time, it will automatically add X number of random songs to the queue.
The problem is that it has no concern for how many songs are already in the queue.  So if someone loads up the jukebox with 50 songs, people see there are already 50 songs in there and nobody adds any.  Since X amount of time passes, the jukebox adds another X songs to the queue.  X amount of time passes again and the jukebox adds more songs, so the queue keeps growing and is filled with stuff nobody wanted to hear.

If you make an autoplay feature, please base it off the time the jukebox sits idle with an empty queue.

[egosbar]

Hey guys, just a quick progress update. I finished the track search function, the add to playlist function, and put a new button on the key mapper part of the config screen, to view the current key mappings. I am in the process of porting the features to the Windows version, then updating the manual. I will be posting a new update, probably next weekend. This will be the last one, before I go public, though I will still welcome comments and requests.

ego, I'll post a zip file with the source code when i post the next update, and send you the link. s-peterson, I haven't had a chance to investigate the Linux issue, but I will ASAP. Later.

thanks mate i appreciate it

[egosbar]

What were you guys thinking of, a feature that plays a random track if nothing has been played for a few minutes, or something that generates and plays a random list of x number of tracks?

Well, let me tell you what my current jukebox software does (and why it sucks).

It has a feature where if nobody touches the jukebox for X period of time, it will automatically add X number of random songs to the queue.
The problem is that it has no concern for how many songs are already in the queue.  So if someone loads up the jukebox with 50 songs, people see there are already 50 songs in there and nobody adds any.  Since X amount of time passes, the jukebox adds another X songs to the queue.  X amount of time passes again and the jukebox adds more songs, so the queue keeps growing and is filled with stuff nobody wanted to hear.

If you make an autoplay feature, please base it off the time the jukebox sits idle with an empty queue.

sk juke version 3 only adds one song when none are in que on random when that song finishes it adds another . this is all you need i think , and the option to obviously turn it off , the only problem with this feature is when you hear a song you dont like you have to get up and hit skip or delete song , major reason that some sort of remote with skip song and volume is needed in the future

skeptikal have you been able to speed up the scroll , an  option for fast med slow would be great , fast should be very fast just a flash like skjuke on fastest speed

[skepticalgeek]

Progress update guys. I know I promised an update this weekend, but real life has gotten in the way. I completely redid the onscreen keyboard, so it is an optional feature, and is much larger and easier to use. I also finished the random track feature. This is a configuration option which, if selected, will play a random song if the juke has been sitting idle for two minutes. I am now in the process of updating the user manual, my least favorite part of the process. Then I need to port everything to the Windows version, then I will need a couple of days for deployment testing. So the update will be next weekend, I promise. Thanks guys.

[RetroBorg]

Progress update guys. I know I promised an update this weekend, but real life has gotten in the way. I completely redid the onscreen keyboard, so it is an optional feature, and is much larger and easier to use. I also finished the random track feature. This is a configuration option which, if selected, will play a random song if the juke has been sitting idle for two minutes. I am now in the process of updating the user manual, my least favorite part of the process. Then I need to port everything to the Windows version, then I will need a couple of days for deployment testing. So the update will be next weekend, I promise. Thanks guys.

Sounds good.

[egosbar]

got my jukebox back it looks awesome although i took a couple of pics last night it doesnt do it justice , its metalic 2pac black paint and just glows , but in the pics it looks a little flat , this was done by my mate a pro spray painter  , ill take some more pics tomorrow and see if i can capture it better but im very happy

still its only 3 quarters done as i have to wire in the number buttons yet and also find a blue led jukebox sign anyone know where i can get a custom led light made

now just waiting for geek to post the update

skg to tell you the truth most people find out about the jukeboxes through trial and error , although the manual is awesome and youve done a great job i think the work your putting into it is too much
most of us can run computers and anything you need to know can be found by posting a question here , if you monitor this site along with the rest of us then its very easy to put people on the right path , id say dont worry too much about the manual and concentrate on the jukebox , the manual can always be updated later or as i said i can try to help on it if you want

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys. Deployment testing almost done on the latest version. I'll post it tonight and e-mail you guys the link. Some of the improvements are:
    Track search feature with optional onscreen kyeboard. The onscreen keyboard is also available on the Add/Edit Custom list and Playlist screens.
    New feature to easily add the current track to any of your playlists.
    Track List screen in lower left now contains number and name of first two tracks in the list, rather than just numbers for the first 18.
    Option to play random track if sitting idle for 2 minutes.

Ego, thanks for the kind words about the manual. I figure this was a fairly ambitious project, so it deserved a decent manual. I did the best I could even though I'm not much of a documentation person.

[egosbar]

no problems mate , it definitely does deserve a manual but that can be done at a later date after the updates , cant wait for the new version i have my juke back from paint so im ready to have a party this weekend lol

my preference in the track list where you now have numbers and track,  when i used skjuke i only had the track name kept it simple and nice and you could see 5 or 6 tracks coming up , i dont think there is any need for the numbers at all as you have already selected the song (just my opinion though) , the rest sounds great

i think you did say you had the scroll sound as an option now?
have you been able to speed the scroll up?

looking forward to tonight after work

ego

[skepticalgeek]

Ok guys, here is the download link for the Windows version of the third beta.

http://www.mediafire.com/?34x8ox228k4ag5z

And here is the link for the zip file containing the Windows source code.

http://www.mediafire.com/?fv9cfboo7gr2sov

I made some tweaks to the layout so it looks better on screens with a 4:3 aspect ratio as well as widescreens. Tell me what you think.

skepticalgeek

[RetroBorg]

Downloading now.

[egosbar]

me too just got home

[egosbar]

skg ive had a play and here are my findings so far

firstly i would like to know how to best update it , i uninstalled the old version deleted it then copied all the new download but there is no set up option and the skjuke program icon wouldnt run, so i reinstalled the old version copied all the new version which i called skjukebox 3 and pasted into the old skjuke folder and it worked but it is now messy in there (double resource folders etc)and could be problems when looking for playlists etc and may be why im having a few bugs

on startup when i select the options in config for untick juke not connected to internet , untick play slide sound , tick play random song the jukebox remembers these settings on shut down and restart , it doesnt remember the tick large album collection i have to re tick this every time i start skg juke

view key mapping a great addition well done there as i map a lot to my buttons  

import my old playlists how do i do this?

add to playlist not working now (i tried to create a new playlist), i waited nearly three minutes to add a song and the juke just goes to not responding tried this 5 times now and it wont work , a shame as i wanted to test the add currnet playing song to playlist option,wondering if ive added the update to an old version and they are combining somehow,playlists sometimes take a very long time to pick mine are usually 3-400 songs , a problem i can see is when their is one song that has either been deleted somehow or move from the original file , i think this is whats happened to my old playlist it went into error mode , what needs to be done here is the program recognise that the path to a song has been moved or deleted and an option to delete from playlist so that the playlist is still going ot work , i have made a lot of lists over the years and there is nothing i hate more now lol

the numbers and song title in track list main screen is ugly , only the song title is needed here and then you can have probably the next five songs coming up

search feature is not finding all songs even though they are clearly showing , also is there a way to ignore puntuation in the search as when searching you really dont know the exact puntuation , if your only searching for letters it will be a better search , there are a few issues with this feature , when typing in the letters to search they dont show in the dialougue search bar this causes a problem when trying a new search (cant be done unless shut down search and redo) a new search option would be good or even better when the letters show in the dialouge bar when backspace and retype a new search can be started  but a great feature that just needs tickling up

a search for album option might be good in the future but lets get the track search working properly first

add current song to playlist needs to be in tracklist options

ok to cover some of the old ground

album scrolling still too slow - a option to have slow - very fast would be great similar to skjuke (set that on fastest and you will see what im after)

scroll bars on main four album view are useless and take away from the look when albums have long lists , when you try to scroll them using touch it just goes to full mode so may as well get rid of em

options to color code track names , album numbers , track list etc basically the ability to change any font size and color would be awesome , for instance my jukebox is black with blue leds etc so im after blue letters and numbers to look even better in my personal juke

i can see youve worked hard mate well done , i guess everytime you update and change things you create more problems to encounter i would love to know how to program but i bet its a headache , problem i see is the same as what happened to skjuke programmer he got sick of it , at least the source code here is avaliable so if that happens someone can take up the riens

your work as always is appreciated but this version still needs some attention

regards ego

[skepticalgeek]

I fixed the large album collections and the track search bug, and re-posted the setup file. The new link is:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1rc43ttc3436zhh

Sorry about that. Oversight.

As far as updating goes, just uninstall the old version and install the new version. You Config files will not be removed, since they were not part of the intial installation, so they will be picked up by the new version. Since your directory is so messed up though, I recommend blowing it out and starting over. Backup the following files, and restore them to the C:\SKG_Jukebox\resources directory.
Config.txt
Lists.xml
Playlists.xml
CustomKeys.xml

I may tweak the number of songs and other information in the track list section of the main screen. I went with two songs, because 3 really long song titles will overflow that text label.

Scrolling speed is still an issue. I can't seem to make it faster, and still make it smooth. I may include an option to disable the animation at some point.

I tested the Add to Playlist feature earlier today, and it works fine. Could you elaborate on what the issue is?

Looking at the scroll bar issue. Not sure how to do that dynamically in code.

Thanks for the feedback.

Patrick

[egosbar]

I fixed the large album collections and the track search bug, and re-posted the setup file. The new link is:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1rc43ttc3436zhh

Sorry about that. Oversight.

As far as updating goes, just uninstall the old version and install the new version. You Config files will not be removed, since they were not part of the intial installation, so they will be picked up by the new version. Since your directory is so messed up though, I recommend blowing it out and starting over. Backup the following files, and restore them to the C:\SKG_Jukebox\resources directory.
Config.txt
Lists.xml
Playlists.xml
CustomKeys.xml

I may tweak the number of songs and other information in the track list section of the main screen. I went with two songs, because 3 really long song titles will overflow that text label.

Scrolling speed is still an issue. I can't seem to make it faster, and still make it smooth. I may include an option to disable the animation at some point.

I tested the Add to Playlist feature earlier today, and it works fine. Could you elaborate on what the issue is?

Looking at the scroll bar issue. Not sure how to do that dynamically in code.

Thanks for the feedback.

Patrick

no problems mate

the add to playlist just isnt working but it could be a problem with the folders combined , i will uninstall , delete  , and save the specified folders and start again , ill let you know tomorrow how it goes

ego

[egosbar]

hey skeptikal

got the new version working

juke now remembers large album collection and all other settings checked or unchecked   well done

the add to playlist works fine from the add from the current playing song  (awesome feature glad i asked you about this one)but when trying to build a playlist from the config screen it wont add a song using the arrow button just like version one , maybe it might have something to do with using large album collection (not sure just guessing)

had some minor scrolling issues which forced me to shut down and reboot , what will happen if you de activate animation

the search feature only finds songs that are specifically tagged , im guessing by the juke software ive added a pic here for you to see , a lot of my albums have track numbers , i think the juke also adds track numbers and it ends up as below, I might be back to media monkey to retag )

as you can see the top two albums have wierd track numbers and the search feature wont find them unless you use the numbers , the bottom two it finds no problems , not sure on this one id love it if the juke renumbered all my tracks automatically as i hate the look of them , but maybe your search feature can be programmed to ignore numbers and puntuation when searching , so you could still type in 48 crash say and it will pick it up just on the words crash not 48, great feature and will be awesome when its working to full potential although a little slow when you first hit the button 3 or 4 seconds be great if it was instant ( i know mate sorry im knitpicking here  )

idea for the bottom track list on four album view , id make the font a little smaller and also make it white so it matches the album and song info in white opposite it , at the moment with the red colored track list title, the red song titles lose a little , make them white and they will pop also the numbers in the track list take up room if you get rid of them and make the font a little smaller you could possibly see 5-8 songs like skjuke next in line , make the song only use one line and if its title is too long let it only use  as many of the first letters as one line allows , even in a long song title you can still get the jist of the title and what song it is skjuke does this or even better have the song auto scroll across that might look neat if its a long one

would love to get the add to playlist in config screen up and running as im dying to make a long playlist , this worked fine in last version even with large collection

update on my griffin features now , turn right left = volume , press in and right = next song press in and left = clear list  and my two new additions   press in short = options screen (saves typing 0000) and press in long = add current playing song to playlist  , ill have to take a video of it in action soon and post it

great efford dude , im proud to be a small part of its development keep up the great work

oh an afterthought when adding current song to playlist screen , is there any way you can have a name checked all the time , as i use the juke the most id love my name to be checked all the time and if my wife or kids want to build there lists they can check their box , and the check box might need to be bigger for touch screens as its a little fiddly

[skepticalgeek]

Ego,

Are you saying that the Add/Edit Playlist screen is not working? I tested it yesterday, and it seems to be fine, though I accidentally overwrote the recent change I made to make it faster. That's the danger of having two code bases, one for Linux and one for Windows. Usually, when I fix a bug or make an improvement, I do it in one version, then copy and paste it to the other. In this case, I copied and pasted in the wrong direction. Oops. I re-fixed it yesterday, and it will be in the public version, once I get the website up.

The track search glitch you are noticing, and the weird track numbers are related. As you may recall, I added a fix recently to automatically add track numbers if they were not part of the file name. The way the feature works is, it looks for the following pattern for the first five characters of a track name--2 digit track number, space, hyphen, space. "01 - " for example. I can't just use 2 digit and space, because some songs may actually have a 2 digit number as the start of the song title, like Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover". When I assemble the list of track names for the search function, I strip these 5 characters out, if part of the file name, so I am only using the track name. In the case of your Celine Dion album, you have single digit track numbers for tracks 1-9, so it is throwing off the logic, which expects double digit or nothing. The reason double digit track numbers are preferable, is that when you sort the tracks alphabetically, to display them on the main screen, they will appear in the correct order. Alphabetically, 11, comes before 2, but 02 comes before 11. I hope I ma making sense. SOmetimes it is hard to explain things without slipping into progremmerese.

I might work on the search feature between now and public release. Writing a search that just matches the first n letters of a track name is easier. Writing an intelligent search is harder.

Ego, you might want to try to map some feature of your Griffin to the Space key, so you can pause and unpause.

Has anyone else tried the new version, like Retroborg or BadMouth?

Later,

SKG

[egosbar]

no the add edit playlist works but when i try to add a song it doesnt , i can make a playlist but cant add songs from the config screen only the add current song to playlist , when you go back to the last version to make the add faster im sure it will work fine

im out of buttons for the griffen powermate , i only have six options im just working through what are the best ones to suit me

at the moment pause isnt really something i use , i have a remote for the amp i just turn it down if i need to

as far as the track numbers go i think ill have to use media monkey to retag my albums without track numbers , i have a lot and not something i really wanted to do as although the re tag software is good it always messed up some of the albums which need to be manually fixed , are you saying thats what ill need to do in order for my tracks to have the right track numbers

i havent tried the search using puntuation does it ignore puntuation? With large collections an intelligent search is probably the way to go , but after i re tag ill have another play and see

the version is great mate , loving the add current song and being able to see the key mapping  , still having scrolling issues , works ok sometimes but inevitibly it starts to play up , all my covers are between 500-1000 kb so that shouldnt be the problem i dont think , if you add an option to disable scroll animation will the arrow right or left then be pretty much instant? if so then that would be a great option

how about having a main name in the add current song to playlist as a default is that easy to do if so it would be great , i think the main thing is to cut down on button or touch button options so that when a task is needed then you only have to press or touch minimal buttons  , for instance i think when you hit the search button then the keyboard and the list should come up as one , you still have the option to type using the keyboard even when the onscreen one is up that will cut one button movement out , i think a lot of users will be using the onscreen keyboard over a normal keyboard

i think as you do the juke software is ready to go public ( it will be great to hear other opinions) in my view this is potentially the best software out there

one thing that will turn a lot of users off is if they have to re tag their music into  artist\album\track , a lot of collections use artist-album\track
which skg doesnt pick up , hope this is an easy fix so we can get as many users as possible , its a great piece of work mate

regards

ego

[RetroBorg]

Has anyone else tried the new version, like Retroborg or BadMouth?

Sorry Patrick, I've been really busy lately and haven't had much of chance, I'm having a quick look now.

Still have same problem as before with song names in album list, e.g. The Doors - L.A. Woman shows up just as L

Speed of animation nowhere as near as good as Sk Jukebox.

I still have trouble creating a playlist, I find no matter what, I get album I never selected, even when I get rid of them and save they are still there and it's always the same albums, also a little slow responding after pressing edit button.

I have the numbering issue with all the albums that 100 or more songs in the list.

Just as I was writing, program crashed without song even playing.

I will hopefully get a better chance to have a much more thorough look Monday I hope.

Cheers.

Phil

[s-petersen]

 I Tried it on XP MCE, It works Great,a few small problems,it crashed a couple of times when I pressed a letter key and button(s key) when there were no songs under that category,the installer expects a .doc for the manual (I renamed the link to a HTML)works now.The mce remote works for most functions,(except prev,next track)on my wish list.If You want the error report I will send it to you.You've done a great job,Thank You.
Scott

[matty_g_8]

Hey tried your program the other day and i must say it is very impressive!...once you manage to get it to scroll albums faster it will be awsome. A couple of requests i would have would be to have the option to switch off the numbers buttons to select and album number as with most jukebox collections they are quiet large and i for one will never remember what the album number is. Maybe you could swap the buttons to allow for the search button, play/pause button and next button to appear on the front. Keep uo the good work!!

[s-petersen]

 I found something that seems to always crash the program,if you have a current playlist(the one that starts playing at start-up) and add albums to the directory, the program will not start(crash,error report)until you delete the tracklist from the resource directory....so I said to the doctor,"It hurts when I do this", he said "Then don't do that"...
Thanks,
Scott

[s-petersen]

Hi,
I found another thing that crashes the program,if you try to get cover art and the internet isn't available it will crash.
I am kind of layed off until the 4th,so I have had alot of time to play.
Thanks,
Scott

[egosbar]

Hi,
I found another thing that crashes the program,if you try to get cover art and the internet isn't available it will crash.
I am kind of layed off until the 4th,so I have had alot of time to play.
Thanks,
Scott

if you select the no internet option on the start up screen then that should stop that

[s-petersen]

I understand that,but my internet was temporally down,just that it caused a crash,instead of reporting no internet,I'm trying things out ,so I can help
skepticalgeek to polish the program.
Thanks,
Scott

[egosbar]

I understand that,but my internet was temporally down,just that it caused a crash,instead of reporting no internet,I'm trying things out ,so I can help
skepticalgeek to polish the program.
Thanks,
Scott

no problems , didnt think about that if your internet is down , i personally dont use the internet on my jukebox , i prefer to have it as virus free as i can

[s-petersen]

I tried it on 98me,for the heck of it,nope (a small light weight system for a seeburg consolett,networked to the music. Via epia-m 1000)worth a try
createProcess failed code 31,the QTCORED4.dll file is linked to missing export KERNEL32.DLL SetFilePointerEx I would have been surprised if it worked.
Thanks,
Scott

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Been out of town visiting relatives for the holidays. Super busy. Thanks for the reports. Didn't think about someone adding albums to the collection and screwing with the temporary playlist. That feature was put in to address the problem of stopping and restarting the juke, and having it remember what was queued. Also didtn't think to try it on anything earlier than XP. Sorry it didn't work. Still working on some of the outstanding issues, but mostly want to get a website up and running. Later.

[Hippie459MN]

Thanks for this. I will be trying this and see how it works vs my old version of SKJukebox. Again, Thank you. 

[BadMouth]

Has anyone else tried the new version, like Retroborg or BadMouth?

Sorry, I haven't found time yet.  I took my laptop with me to my parents for the holidays and did a lot of maintenance to my music collection so I could test it when I got back.  Unfortuneatley, I've been extremely ill since getting back (and now I'm still sick and behind at work).  It will probably be next week before I can give it some serious attention.

[egosbar]

ive had a fair bit of time trying to use skg now and it seems the scrolling is now slow enough to be a pain , the scrolling is the major thing that needs addressing , its a great program but the scrolling issue forces me to still use skjuke

hope you all had a great xmas new year and skeptikal i hope you continue to improve this project during this year

ego

[BadMouth]

Got a chance to do some testing on my Windows 7 laptop this evening.
I need to catch up on the comments and try it on the Vista & XP computers before I say too much.
Overall, not experiencing any real issues so far.

On the short list for now:

+1 on the scrolling.  Disabling the animation and just having the albums change in place would be a nice option.

I had a couple albums that the correct album art wouldn't come up for, possibly due to wording of the album title or there being many similar albums, i.e. Best of Johnny Cash (There are a half dozen different ones, the correct album art for "The Original Best Of" would not come up ).  It would be nice to be able to manually enter search terms for the album art if the correct one doesn't come up.

I still have to do some maintenance on the collection and transfer the cleaned up version to the other two computers before I can do more testing.
I'll try and get it done this coming week.

[egosbar]

hey skeptikal whats going on havent had any news from you for a while , hope your xmas was good etc
really waiting for an update with the animation on scrolling turned off so i can use the software , at the moment i just cant the scrolling seems very slow now

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys. Still here, and still checking Just been super busy, was out of town for 2 weeks during the holidays, and getting caught up at work. Right now, I'm working on the website, looking at hosting options, reading a Dummies book on site design, things like that. I'm still paying attention, so keep the comments coming. Once I get it finished and hosted, I'll make a new build, with an option to turn off animation, and other features, which will be the first public version. Anyone with exp in site design or can give me pointers as to which hosting service is best, feel free to chip in. I'm a fair programmer, but don't have much experience where the web stuff is concerned. Later.

[egosbar]

Hey guys. Still here, and still checking Just been super busy, was out of town for 2 weeks during the holidays, and getting caught up at work. Right now, I'm working on the website, looking at hosting options, reading a Dummies book on site design, things like that. I'm still paying attention, so keep the comments coming. Once I get it finished and hosted, I'll make a new build, with an option to turn off animation, and other features, which will be the first public version. Anyone with exp in site design or can give me pointers as to which hosting service is best, feel free to chip in. I'm a fair programmer, but don't have much experience where the web stuff is concerned. Later.

great mate looking forward to it as i really want skg to be operational on my jukebox , sorry cant help you with the web design i havent had any experience with that

[BadMouth]

How's the website coming?

I've tested latest version on the Windows 7 & Vista machines. 
Seems to work fine. 
Only came up with a couple minor things for your consideration:

> If you press the arrow to turn the page while you are viewing an individual album, it stays on the album view.  (It does turn the page underneath)
   Intuitively, I'd expect it to leave the album view when I do that.

> Listing the upcoming song titles in addition to the number is a great improvement.  I'm don't think numbers are even necessary.
   Just my $.02

I'll use it on the xp machine (my jukebox) this weekend.
I don't anticipate having any issues with it, but if I do, I'll let you know.

[egosbar]

How's the website coming?

I've tested latest version on the Windows 7 & Vista machines. 
Seems to work fine. 
Only came up with a couple minor things for your consideration:

> If you press the arrow to turn the page while you are viewing an individual album, it stays on the album view.  (It does turn the page underneath)
   Intuitively, I'd expect it to leave the album view when I do that.

> Listing the upcoming song titles in addition to the number is a great improvement.  I'm don't think numbers are even necessary.
   Just my $.02

i agree no need for track numbers in track list , i am having problems with scrolling are you having any , my scroll is slow and sticks , enough so i cant use the program as main software , still using skjuke until geek fixes it up , other then that everything is great

I'll use it on the xp machine (my jukebox) this weekend.
I don't anticipate having any issues with it, but if I do, I'll let you know.

[BadMouth]

i am having problems with scrolling are you having any , my scroll is slow and sticks , enough so i cant use the program as main software

I had those issues in the first build, but not the latest.  It could be that I just know it's limitations now and don't try to scroll so fast.

[BadMouth]

Had a couple issues on the xp machine.

The first one was caused by the old version not uninstalling completely.  I used add/remove programs, but it didn't delete the folder.
The first time it started up, it did not ask me for a path, so I went into the options to add a path.
The old path was already in there, but it wouldn't let me delete it.  So then I try to add a new path.
After selecting the folder, it froze up for a while while it was loading the jukebox, but it still didn't show the new path in the list, etc.
It took several minutes.
Not sure if you could add some type of little message window saying that it's loading the jukebox, please wait.
Right now, it just appears to the user that the path update didn't go through.

The other one is the problem egosbar had before where the music would just stop playing.  I left the jukebox playing with a full queue while I went to do some errands.  When I got back home, it wasn't playing and had stopped on the second album I put in.  It was sitting at 0:00 seconds on the current song.  I couldn't figure out what would have stopped it, so skipped to the next song and it worked fine.  About ten minutes later, it stopped again.  One song ended and the name of the next song popped up, but it never started playing and just sat there at 0:00.  I doubt it's relevant, but I had played the entire album on both of these.  I cleared the queue, added the same album back to the queue and it played all the way through fine.  It wouldn't be as big of an issue if there were a play/pause button on screen, but I usually don't have a keyboard hooked up to my jukebox unless I'm doing some kind of maintenance.

I'm not sure what's going on.  I didn't see any balloons or anything pop up where some other program or update might be interfering with it.  I don't have  a screen saver and the computer power scheme is "Always On".  I don't have any anti=virus software on that machine.  I haven't had any issues with anything interfering with my other jukebox program and it gets used for 4 or 5 hours straight a couple times a month.  To be honest, I only played 5 or 6 songs at a time when testing on the Vista & Win 7 machines, so I'm not sure that I wouldn't have had the same issue pop up on those had I used them for a longer period of time.

I think that's all I'm going to have for you this round.

[BadMouth]

SKG, I picked up on something last time the jukebox stopped playing.  It took a while before it did it again so I could verify it.

When it stopped playing, the track didn't begin and the time read 0:00 [7:07]
When I pressed play/pause to start it back up, the time changed to 0:00 [13:14] (correct for the track)
7:07 wasn't the length of the previous track either.

Not sure if it's any kind of clue to what is happening or not, but it's the only odd thing I've been able to correlate with the jukebox stopping.

EDIT:  Just happened again and did the same thing, went from 6:46 to 6:20 when I pressed play/pause.
          This is on my Vista computer btw, so it's not limited to xp.

[skepticalgeek]

Hey Badmouth. The reason that the directory isn't removed during uninstall is because there are files there that are not part of the original installation, like the config file, and the files for playlists and custom album lists. The Windows uninstall utility won't delete files that are not part of the original install. This is actually useful, because if you uninstall an old version, and install the new one, your config settings and playlists are not lost.

I've experienced the issue of the music no playing, but can't duplicate it consistently, so haven't been able to track it down. I'll work on it after the website is up. In the meantime, I've added an option to disable the sliding animation, as well as added the jukebox minimize function to the Options screen. Later.

[egosbar]

hey skeptikal , just bumping your thread to the top , hows the website going and the new build , really looking forward to testing it without the scrolling issues 

[skepticalgeek]

Hey ego.

Just registered the domain name and started work on the site this evening. Went with Yahoo web hosting. They offer a lot of tools to help build a site quickly, good rates, and no space or page number limits. I hope to have it active by next weekend. Once the site is up and running, I want to get started on my next project, the SKG Gamebox. This will be a multiple emulator frontend, with a UI similar to the juke. It will be written in C#, using Mono as a development tool. Like the juke, it will be open source, cross platform (Windows and Linux), and have a special netbook mode for smaller screens. Don't worry, I'll still be making improvements and fixes to the jukebox, but I at least want to start work on this. Any ideas you have on features, let me know. Later.

[egosbar]

Hey ego.

Just registered the domain name and started work on the site this evening. Went with Yahoo web hosting. They offer a lot of tools to help build a site quickly, good rates, and no space or page number limits. I hope to have it active by next weekend. Once the site is up and running, I want to get started on my next project, the SKG Gamebox. This will be a multiple emulator frontend, with a UI similar to the juke. It will be written in C#, using Mono as a development tool. Like the juke, it will be open source, cross platform (Windows and Linux), and have a special netbook mode for smaller screens. Don't worry, I'll still be making improvements and fixes to the jukebox, but I at least want to start work on this. Any ideas you have on features, let me know. Later.

ok mate no problems , was hoping that the juke would be operationable before you started too many projects , at the moment as ive said im at a standstill as the scrolling is just to buggy , hope you get back to the juke sooner rather then later , understand your busy but hope your not starting too many projects before making sure the juke is finished ie the game emulator sounds like a lot of work

will be keeping an eye out for the next skg juke update

regards

ego

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys. Just a quick status update. I've been working on the website, hope to have it operational by Sunday night. If not then, Monday or Tuesday. Working out the final few glitches in the Linux version. Ended up having to build a system for deployment testing on. Ego, you will be happy to know that I have speeded up the scrolling. There is still some slowdown if your album art files are really large, unfortunately I can't do anything about that. Scaling down pictures to fit in a certain area is expensive, processor wise. There is also a Config option to turn scrolling off, if it is still too slow for you.

This will be my last post in this thread. When the web site is operational, I will post new threads announcing it in this forum, as well as Project Announcements, and Jukeboxes. Curiosity, does anyone know how I get my project added to the list of jukebox projects on this forum, and the wiki?

I'd like to thank all you testers for helping me with this, especially my boy Ego, who was very generous with both words of encouragement and ass kicking, in equal measure. You guys have been great.

[egosbar]

no problem mate , really looking forward to the next update and the site , been a pleasure