Yet Another Jukebox Program

[SalmonKing]

Wow, thanks for all the positive feedback!   

Nice to see, and keeps the fire under me to keep going on these WIP features.... 

[davidb]

Holding my breath for next update!!!

Just a thought, SK, but how about allowing display of albums in order of album title as well as artist title - adds a bit more fun at parties. For that matter, how about a random display? Even more fun! I say that because when I get to a jukebox that I don't know I love the "discovery" aspect of scrolling forward. When it is set up artist alphabetically the guests will have to scroll through 30 odd Neil Young discs to get to something different, and I don't know many people that like his music that well!!!!

[SalmonKing]

Holding my breath for next update!!!

Just a thought, SK, but how about allowing display of albums in order of album title as well as artist title - adds a bit more fun at parties. For that matter, how about a random display? Even more fun! I say that because when I get to a jukebox that I don't know I love the "discovery" aspect of scrolling forward. When it is set up artist alphabetically the guests will have to scroll through 30 odd Neil Young discs to get to something different, and I don't know many people that like his music that well!!!!

hmmmmm.....strange idea, but I guess I can do that.   

Edit : aaaaaaand it's done, expect it in the next update   

[Random24]

These updates all sound GREAT.

I do however have one small issue.  Maby I'm just not looking in the right place but I have a touch screen only Juke and in the last few versions it looks like some of the functionality has been removed.  What I am mostly talking about is the volume control and the number pad in the bottom right section of the screen.

I find that the new keypad section is severly lacking for my particular situation.  Is there any way that you could make it an option to have the old one?

Thanks for making such great software. 

[SalmonKing]

These updates all sound GREAT.

I do however have one small issue.  Maby I'm just not looking in the right place but I have a touch screen only Juke and in the last few versions it looks like some of the functionality has been removed.  What I am mostly talking about is the volume control and the number pad in the bottom right section of the screen.

I find that the new keypad section is severly lacking for my particular situation.  Is there any way that you could make it an option to have the old one?

Thanks for making such great software. 

I am currently revamping the touch screen features.  Sit tight, they'll make a comeback!   

The only thing is, do you REALLY need the number pad?  The idea was that if you can touch an album, and it comes up on screen, then you touch a song to put it in the queue.....that would make the numbers redundant.

[Random24]

But if you have over 1500 albums, like me, it is nice to be able to use the number pad to jump forward and back in the list faster than paging through all of them.  And before you ask, I have tried the new find and jump functions and frankly the XP onscreen keyboard SUCKS.  I appreciate your trying and I know that the OSK is a standard windows app but that is the problem.  It breaks the look and feel of the juke app.

[SalmonKing]

But if you have over 1500 albums, like me, it is nice to be able to use the number pad to jump forward and back in the list faster than paging through all of them.  And before you ask, I have tried the new find and jump functions and frankly the XP onscreen keyboard SUCKS.  I appreciate your trying and I know that the OSK is a standard windows app but that is the problem.  It breaks the look and feel of the juke app.

One of the other parts is to add buttons to scroll the Scrollable Jump with, then you touch the letter to select it.  Would that suffice with the jumping?

[Random24]

I guess it would probably work well.  I won't know for sure of course until I get a chance to test it. 

The volume control though is pretty important.  We use the jukebox when my friends come over to do pen and paper role-playing and sometimes we turn up or down the music.  Without the volume control it makes the jukebox either useless or anoying. 

As for the volume control, it never seemed to repeat if you just clicked on it and held like the left and right page buttons did.  I tried checking the auto key repeating in the options but it didn't seem to have any effect on those particular buttons.

[SalmonKing]

I guess it would probably work well.  I won't know for sure of course until I get a chance to test it. 

The volume control though is pretty important.  We use the jukebox when my friends come over to do pen and paper role-playing and sometimes we turn up or down the music.  Without the volume control it makes the jukebox either useless or anoying. 

As for the volume control, it never seemed to repeat if you just clicked on it and held like the left and right page buttons did.  I tried checking the auto key repeating in the options but it didn't seem to have any effect on those particular buttons.

Yeah, only some buttons had auto-repeat enabled on them.  I will keep all this in mind when I finish the new touch screen controls!

[davidb]

SK, I am loving your software, have been running it all week to test it out. Another "tweak" for us touch screen folk that are using 640X480 8" screens (probably only me!!!) is to provide an option for album scrolls without the jump/find keypad, left scroll situated at the left of the "Track List" zone and the right scroll situated across at the right of the track playing zone where the key pad would be usually. That gives the ability to use touch screen for most of the navigation at a party by touch, with serious home use utilizing the keyboard for jump and find.
I am putting on a party next Saturday night for my wife's birthday, I hope it is the "big debut" of SK Jukebox with our friends.

[davidb]

Have kust noticed a minor "glitch". I run the software so that it is on random when there are no selections. It seems that the "random" selector stays on even when tracks are being selected.

[destr0y]

Hail to the (Salmon) King,

I've gutted my arcade machine, in favour of a HTPC (running all my old emulation stuff still, of course).

[davidb]

SK, relevant to key entry selection of tracks, perhaps option to be able to turn album number off when in full page display but keep track numbers displayed. In full page mode the number is automatically entered into the track list   and entry of track number only is required. This will stop "guests" getting it wrong by entering the album number again.

[digitaldj]

SK,
Any new updates with the EQ?
Jukeman

[lameduck]

OMG I made the switch!

I was planning on using a not-so free jukebox software, even purchased it but there hasnt been any progress with it for almost a year.

I am floored - simple, to the point, excellent!!!!

I cant wait to see the revamped TS part, as i plan on a touchscreen only setup

Would be nice to see Clear Queue and Next Song and maybe Vol+/-
1-0 would be cool but not all that needed



Time to work on jukebox as I have found IMO the 'holy grail' of T/S Jukebox software


SK thx for sharing and as soon as the T/S update expect paypal

[JLR2000]

SK, relevant to key entry selection of tracks, perhaps option to be able to turn album number off when in full page display but keep track numbers displayed. In full page mode the number is automatically entered into the track list   and entry of track number only is required. This will stop "guests" getting it wrong by entering the album number again.

Could you just change the font color of the album numbers on full page display to be the same as the background, in effect making it "invisible"?  I haven't tried it myself....just thought of it...I'll try it later if I have time....

UPDATE:

Yes, that does work.  Would be nice to remove the "X",  maybe only make it visible if mouse support is turned on.  But changing the font color is a quick and easy way to give you what you are asking for without a code revision....

[davidb]

Getting rid of the X is a great idea  Clicking on the full page art work to return to the 4 cover view would be good. i.e. select a track or click the artwork to return.

[davidb]

SK, the program is generally running very sweetly now that I have been testing it for over a week. I am looking forward very much to your next release.

I have found an annoyance when using the touch screen. If I select a song by "double clicking" on the song in the list while in 4 cover display the computer sometimes takes a couple of seconds to add the track to the queue. That is not a problem and probably relates more to the computer and seems to happen when it is about to finish playing one track and is moving onto the next. The problem that arises is if in that couple of seconds delay I touch the album cover artwork to enlage the playlist (thinking that my selection hasn't occurred) then the program either goes into a loop or freezes. Either way it needs to be shut down and restarted.

SK Jukebox is a great piece of software!

EDIT
I have just used SK Jukebox in a party situation at home. I ran it without a touch screen (my new touch screen went belly up after 1 day and is now in for warranty repairs/replacement

[messiah]

I have been using SK Jukebox for some time now after moving from VMJ after it just wasnt stable. SK works exceptionally well and it has everything i need in a jukebox excepting being able to play videos. It sounds as if SK will never support video, which is a shame as I have hundreds of music videos, but hey it works and doest crash all the time, and even better its free so i really cant complain can I (Though I would almost certainly pay for it if it supported video).

Other than that there is only one small thing i would like to change, and that is the Screen saver function for the current playing song. I use VMJ in my loungroom and have it connected to my TV and it would be better if I could see the current playing song as full screen picture instead of a small "quarter" screen shot jumping round the screen, its just really hard to see on a TV unless your close to it.  Basically what I would like is when the screensaver comes on it shows a full screen with an album picture, title and song title in larger fonts. Not sure how hard this would be to do but I would greatly appreciate it if it can be done


Keep up the good work

[davidb]

SK, I am still loving your work!

The more I use the program the more I realise that my CD collection (now all ripped into mp3s in about 1,5000 file) is difficult to manage in one directory. I have therefore broken it up into sub directories e.g. party music, jazz, wifes music, laid back etc. (too hard to go back over that many tracks and set up IDE tags! Besides, I will change my mind often as to what is in directories and changing IDEs isn't fun.

Consequently I have been going into options and removing and adding directories. How about a button enabled list of directories as an option on the main screen? Just a thought.

[SalmonKing]

Hi all,

Just letting you know I AM still alive, but work has not been kind to me lately.  I am still working on a few things, plus will get some requests organized before the next update.

The EQ went well and is fully operational, it took a couple of days.  As for other features, some are going well, and others have been tried & scrapped.  I will 'report' more once the next release is ready.

SK.

[miles2912]

I hate this SOFTWARE!

Now dam it I have to figure out how to add a Numeric touchpad to my MAME cab so I can use it as a jukebox too!!  Grumble   

Seriously good job so far.  I have only been playing with it for 10 mins (first jukebox software that I have used) and it is easy to figure out and use.  Looks like I have to organize my MP3's better and use a consistent naming scheme for consistency.

Don

[davidb]

SK, I have noticed something odd over the past couple of days. I have taken to not shutting windows XP down each night but just close SKJ using the top right X. When I opened program manager tonight there were three instances of SKJ running and one of those was not responding. So I did a bit of playing around by opening, closing etc. and each time I closed the program it remained "running"! Most odd.

[Freeplay]

I hate this SOFTWARE!
Now dam it I have to figure out how to add a Numeric touchpad to my MAME cab so I can use it as a jukebox too!! Grumble

Don, I have built a dedicated jukebox running SK, and I don't have a Numeric key in sight.

[nighthawk2099]

I really enjoy this software.  It's easy to use and easy to setup.  One question I have (or suggestion as it might be) is, would it be possible to setup a group of single key mappings to change the Genres (such as push the letter "R" for rock list, "J" for Jazz list etc..) instead of hitting the "\" and then chosing from the list.  The idea for me is not to have any Up Down arrow or Enter keys setup on the box.  Hope this makes sense.

Thanks.

[ChalkyWhite]

Hello, just joined up to pass comment on SK Jukebox.  A truly marvelous piece of software!

I've just got the arduous task of ripping my CD collection now!  :-/

One question, which I cannot find an answer to in the search option.  When I rip using Windows Media Player for XP at 192Kbps (supposed to be a happy medium between quality and disk space), the cover art gets saved as folder.jpg which is fine, but as a hidden file.  SK Juke cannot make use of this file, until I open it in my fave graphics package and resave which takes away the hidden attribute. I also rename to the artist name as I'm thinking that the auto-update that WMP does from the internet might put the file back to hidden at some point in the future, as it seems to do with several CDs that it cannot identify, and renames my hard work of typing each track title back to 01-Track 1, 02 Track 2

Have i missed something with the hidden file trick?  Not too much of an issue, but I'm sure easily sorted.

Cheers, Tony

[JLR2000]

Here's what I use/do:

Good Program for ripping CDs to MP3s(freeware):
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/gettingstarted.html
This is the setup page, also need a mp3 encoder but this page tells you what to get and it's free also.  This software used to be pay but has recently become freeware. Takes a little time to setup at first, but this is one time only, then very fast and easy to use.

For CD and DVD covers I go to either BUY.COM or AMAZON and copy their images.  I also use Google images when all else fails. BUY.COM are the best quality and have recently redone their website which makes the large CD & DVD covers difficult to save (no right click).  Here's how to grab them still:

Find the album you want, and then do a right click on the SMALL IMAGE and do a "Copy Shortcut".  Paste the shortcut in the Address bar of the browser like so:

javascript:largeIM('http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/403/64012403.jpg ');hide('ppForm')

now REMOVE everything before the "http://" and after the ".jpg", like so:

http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/403/64012403.jpg
Pretty easy still and great cover art.

Hope that helps....good luck.

[SalmonKing]

Hello, just joined up to pass comment on SK Jukebox.  A truly marvelous piece of software!

I've just got the arduous task of ripping my CD collection now!  :-/

One question, which I cannot find an answer to in the search option.  When I rip using Windows Media Player for XP at 192Kbps (supposed to be a happy medium between quality and disk space), the cover art gets saved as folder.jpg which is fine, but as a hidden file.  SK Juke cannot make use of this file, until I open it in my fave graphics package and resave which takes away the hidden attribute. I also rename to the artist name as I'm thinking that the auto-update that WMP does from the internet might put the file back to hidden at some point in the future, as it seems to do with several CDs that it cannot identify, and renames my hard work of typing each track title back to 01-Track 1, 02 Track 2

Have i missed something with the hidden file trick?  Not too much of an issue, but I'm sure easily sorted.

Cheers, Tony

Well, you could always use a batch file to clear the attribute. 'attrib -h *.* /S' will do it, so either do the following, depending if you're OK with a command prompt or not :

Option 1

- Start -> Run -> type 'cmd' and hit Enter (type it without the quotes)
- Browse to the root of your mp3's
- Type 'attrib -h *.* /S' and hit Enter (again, without the quotes)

Option 2

- Open Windows Explorer and browse to the root of your mp3's
- In the file/directory listing on the right, right click an empty space and select New -> Text Document
- Call the file 'unhide.bat'
- Right click the file and select Edit
- Type 'attrib -h *.* /S' and hit save the file (again, without the quotes)
- Just double click the file and it'll clear the hidden attribute

[ChalkyWhite]

Thanks SalmonK.   I am familiar with DOS commands, and must admit to forgetting about that little trick - the old tricks are dying off!!

Perhaps a future feature release to allow SK to recognise hidden files??

Cheers, Tony

[SalmonKing]

Thanks SalmonK.   I am familiar with DOS commands, and must admit to forgetting about that little trick - the old tricks are dying off!!

Perhaps a future feature release to allow SK to recognise hidden files??

Cheers, Tony

Yeah, I'm sure that's possible.

At this stage, it looks like I won't be able to work on the program until after xmas/new year, but at least I'll have a week of peace to look forward to where I can spend some quality time with it   

[davidb]

SK,

all the best into the new year. You have done a great job with SKJ so far! 

[JLR2000]

SK,

all the best into the new year. You have done a great job with SKJ so far! 

Ditto SK -

Thanks for all your efforts!   

[CartmanDP1]

Wow what an awesome program, pretty much everything I've been looking for in a Jukebox. My only suggestions are adding an add entire album feature, unless i missed it, and an app-to-run on exit feature as in MAMEWah so it wouild be easy to switch back and forth. Again, excellent program, great work.

[digitaldj]

SK,

I have a problem going on with SK Jukebox that when the program comes up the volume is pretty loud for a second then goes back down to what ever level you had it set at when it was shut down. Could you look into this for me and let me know if there is anything you can do. I have my amp turned up some and it about makes you pee your pants when it first loads up!

Thanks!
Jukeman

[SalmonKing]

Wow what an awesome program, pretty much everything I've been looking for in a Jukebox. My only suggestions are adding an add entire album feature, unless i missed it, and an app-to-run on exit feature as in MAMEWah so it wouild be easy to switch back and forth. Again, excellent program, great work.

Thanks for the feedback.

For adding an entire album, use the song code '00'.  There are a couple of options in the setup screen that you can use for it, one for displaying '00 All Tracks' in the song listing, and the other is to use the All Tracks feature without displaying it in the list.

I'll have a look at adding in the other request when I get the time.

SK.

[SalmonKing]

SK,

I have a problem going on with SK Jukebox that when the program comes up the volume is pretty loud for a second then goes back down to what ever level you had it set at when it was shut down. Could you look into this for me and let me know if there is anything you can do. I have my amp turned up some and it about makes you pee your pants when it first loads up!

Thanks!
Jukeman

hmmmm.....I got it to happen once, but not since.  I have done something I think may fix it, so let me know if the issue is fixed after the next version has been released

SK.

[CartmanDP1]

Thanks for the quick responce, the display play all tracks function is exactly what im looking for as i'm using regular arcade controlls without a keypad, touchscreen, or trackball. Also, after searching the forum I've found a few other ways to launch skjuke from mamewah, so the app-to-run on exit isnt really neccesary anymore. I was going to suggest adding a help screen but then I found you already have one. Great software, great support, and great updates. This juke can't be beat.

[digitaldj]

SK,
Thanks for the response! When will the next version be out?
Jukeman

[SalmonKing]

SK,
Thanks for the response! When will the next version be out?
Jukeman

As I've said a few posts up, probably not until after xmas/new year.  Just too busy at the moment!

SK.

[digitaldj]

Sk,

That's fine, i was just anxious and hoping something had changed!

Jukeman