DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox 3.0 Beta 6 Released

[Chris]

DOSCab and WinCab Jukebox version 3.0 Beta 6 has been released.  The biggest change in this version is the addition of a screensaver and a new BTN_RANDOM button, along with a heap of bug fixes.  Also new in this version is support for StripGrids in the skin files, which will make setting up new skins much easier.  Multiple StripGrids are supported, and the old Strip format is still supprted as well in case you till want to place each strip individually. Most of the old skins have been cleaned up to use StripGrids, and a skin gallery is now available on the Web page.

You can get the latest version at http://webpages.charter.net/celamantia/jukebox .

Please note that I am putting this together at 3 AM, so it is entirely possibly that I've goofed something up as I'm completely exhausted.  If you see anything wonky, please let me know.

--Chris

[Lave Laar]

The link to the download doesn't work.

[Chris]

The link to the download doesn't work.

This is why I shouldn't do things at 3 AM.   

Link fixed.

--Chris

[Dermbrian]

Thanks for fixing the link.  I'm already enjoying checking out the new skins. 

bjrock28.skn sure looks nice!

Thanks for sharing this, Chris!!

Brian

[Dermbrian]

My mouse is not working.  Mouse = Enabled.  I remarked out the pointer line just in case that was the issue, but no difference.

The mouse has worked in previous versions on my system.

I've only tried with bjrock28.skn.

Brian

[Chris]

What version of Windows are you using?  I know the mouse was working with Windows XP before I packaged it up...

[Dermbrian]

What version of Windows are you using?  I know the mouse was working with Windows XP before I packaged it up...

WindowsME. 

I really need to move on to XP.

Brian

[Chris]

What version of Windows are you using?

[Chris]

By the way, there are a few things I need to make clear about upgrading to this version.  I know that many people upgrade the same way they upgrade MAME, by simply copying over the new executable, but that won't quite work in this case because of some structural changes.  I apologize for the changes, but such are the perils of a beta version...

- Previous versions included a file called jukebox.dat; this file contained the internal dot-matrix display fonts, the mouse pointer images, and a symbol list for all of the setting in the INI files.  This file no longer exists; the pointers and fonts have been split out into separate files (jbdotmat.fnt and jbdefptr.ptr, respectively) and the symbol list is now internal to the code.  One side effect of this is that you can now change the display font, and an additional display font called jbsans.fnt is included in the ZIP.  Additional fonts will probably not be made available, as I am planning to add TrueType support to the displays eventually.

- Settings in the jukebox.ini related to controls and input have been groupt together in a new [Controls] section.  If you are re-using your old jukebox.ini, you'll need to look at the jukebox.ini in the ZIP file as a model for getting your settings into the proper section.

- All skin files have been renamed from .INI to .SKN, and most have had name changes, i.e. defskin.ini is now default.skn.  These files are still plain text files, and the old INI files will continue to work, but if you are not using custom skins, it is probably best to wipe the contents of the skin folder and replace it with the files from the ZIP.

- Some errors regarding floating-point math bugs have been fixed.  The upshot of this is that some display elements may be a pixel or two off from where you expect them to be, so you may need to adjust custom skins slightly.

That is all I can think of for now...

--Chris

[Dermbrian]

What version of Windows are you using?  I know the mouse was working with Windows XP before I packaged it up...

WindowsME. 

I really need to move on to XP.

If you download the alleg41.dll file from http://webpages.charter.net/celamantia/jukebox/alleg41.dll and copy it over the version in your jukebox folder, does it fix the problem?

--Chris

Chris, that did fix the mouse issue.  Thanks again.

BTW, I did not overlay anything.  I extracted the new version to a new directory and set things in the new jukebox.ini to reflect my config.

Brian

[dgo]

I just want to say thanks for a great update of an already fantas
tic program!

Now it's perfect for me!

[sWampy]

Thanks for the screensaver. ;-)

[sWampy]

One feature request, after having wincab up on my cabinet most of the weekend with the new screensaver feature, a simple my photos screensaver option would rock.  Turn my cabinet into a fancy photo album. ;-)

[Lave Laar]

Couple of bugs :

"AddQuotes=False" doesn't do anything.  The titles are quoted no matter what.
"ForceUpperCaseTitles=False"
"ForceUpperCaseArtists=False".  They are both uppercase no matter what.

[Chris]

Couple of bugs :

"AddQuotes=False" doesn't do anything.

[koolmoecraig]

Hello,

I am customizing WinCab on my PC before installing into my cab. I have a problem. Sometimes when I play a song, it plays in super fast forward and when the song ends(a matter of seconds) it kicks me out to desktop. There doesn't seem to be any rhythm or reason.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Craig

[Chris]

This is a new one on me.  Usually, these kind of wierd problems are due to bad MP3's.  Yeah, I know it's a cop-out answer, but apparently a popular tag editor had a bug that clipped frames improperly and thus there are a lot of these running around.  I've compensated for them as best I can, but there's only so much I can do...

Unfortunately, the machine doesn't usually go wonky on the bad file, it just destabilizes the jukebox so it dies soon after.

Try running an MP3 checker (lots at http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mp3+tester) to see if anything comes up whacked.  Also, set DebugLevel to 5 and send me the results of the jbdebug.log after a crash, so we can see if there's anything useful in it.
And if you can narrow it down to a particular file or set of files that cause the problem, it might be useful for me to get my hands on them for testing.

Anyone else seeing this behavior?

--Chris

[sWampy]

In case anyone wants it here is a hacked bjrock28 skin to be 6 x 6 and use just numbers.  Because of my bad photoshop skills, it's doesn't look as good as the original, but is much more user friendly on 6 button control panels than bjrock28, but still lets you have 36 songs per screen.

http://www.landoncrews.com/bjrock16.zip

[surf]

I installed the new version, however, when starting up and searching for music, it gives me a fatal error that I have no music!  This is after searching for a few seconds (titles are showing up). I deleted my old settings in the data folder and the older jukebox worked fine with the same mp3's in the same directory...


Help!

[surf]

Just an update, but it searches through all my folders but finds no music...

I have mine set up as:

C:\My Music\(folder)
    CD's\(folder)
       Aritsts\(folder)
          Albums\(folder)
              mp3's(files)

I set the ini to "C:\My Music\CD's\"

This worked in the previous version, but now it just searches the folders then gives me the fatal error...
It leaves a log in the "My Music" folder as well...

I just want my jukebox back!!

Thanks...

[Chris]

Can you set DebugLevel to 5, run the jukebox and send me the resulting log file so I can see what's going on?

Thanks!

--Chris

[Lave Laar]

Regarding the unicode bug I found something interesting.

[surf]

Chris,

Debug log in the mail.....

Thanks!

[Johnny]

Chris,

I have one small problem with the latest version of Doscab/Wincab.
When the screensaver is running and I'm going back to the program, the program terminate! (like pressing Esc)
Not a big problem, but just to let You know...

- Johnny

[Chris]

Regarding the unicode bug I found something interesting.

[sWampy]

* Play all the songs randomly without repeating.

Right now the jukebox will not repeat the last 20 songs, which should be over an hour without repeats.  I could make this value configurable, so you could at least get close to this goal.


--Chris

If you ever want to take this to the extreme and actually track when songs were last played, letting you assign a thumbs up/thumbs down to songs where songs with 3 thumbs up played are more often than one with no thumbs up, and one with 3 thumbs down never play during random play mode.   Sortof like a tivo.   And if you want to get really, really crazy, let you have multiple sets of thumbs, one for artist, one for song, and one for genre. There is a sql library called SQLite that would make this pretty easy to implement ;-)

[Chris]

* Play all the songs randomly without repeating.

Right now the jukebox will not repeat the last 20 songs, which should be over an hour without repeats.

[Lave Laar]

This is a very interesting clue that will hopefully help me solve this bug... I take it your Windows system language is set to something other than English?

[Chris]

I just thought it would be nice if the jukebox was playing and the screensaver on, to occasionally switch back to see the interface.

[sWampy]

* Play all the songs randomly without repeating.

Right now the jukebox will not repeat the last 20 songs, which should be over an hour without repeats.  I could make this value configurable, so you could at least get close to this goal.


--Chris

If you ever want to take this to the extreme and actually track when songs were last played, letting you assign a thumbs up/thumbs down to songs where songs with 3 thumbs up played are more often than one with no thumbs up, and one with 3 thumbs down never play during random play mode.   Sortof like a tivo.   And if you want to get really, really crazy, let you have multiple sets of thumbs, one for artist, one for song, and one for genre. There is a sql library called SQLite that would make this pretty easy to implement ;-)

That's a sharp left turn into media player territory.  DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox will never be able to compete with media-player style interfaces on these sorts of features, so instead it concentrates on being the best jukebox simulator it can.

Not really, all jukeboxes I've seen have extensive audit systems, that show every stat you can think of about the music played, so the owners can figure out which songs to leave in, and which to take out.  This data is also used so it can have attract modes that play either super popular songs, new songs, or never played songs to try to get people to notice the jukebox.  So if you are going to simulate a juke box, you could/should keep this data.  If you are going to keep the data for stats, you might as well add the feature to let us put some weight to the selections by hand since most/all of these are going to be used in homes and will never get the play time/variety one would get in the real world.   

It was really just a hey wouldn't that be cool thought.

[Lave Laar]

The most time-consuming part of the process would be thinking of what to call the option in the jukebox.ini file.

How about ScreenSaverExitTimeout ?

[Chris]

Not really, all jukeboxes I've seen have extensive audit systems, that show every stat you can think of about the music played, so the owners can figure out which songs to leave in, and which to take out.

[RacerX]

* Play all the songs randomly without repeating.

Right now the jukebox will not repeat the last 20 songs, which should be over an hour without repeats.  I could make this value configurable, so you could at least get close to this goal.

--Chris

That would be very cool.  I just saw this thread.  Dang, I'm way behind.  I need to download this latest version and check it out!

[sWampy]

Not really, all jukeboxes I've seen have extensive audit systems, that show every stat you can think of about the music played, so the owners can figure out which songs to leave in, and which to take out.  This data is also used so it can have attract modes that play either super popular songs, new songs, or never played songs to try to get people to notice the jukebox.  So if you are going to simulate a juke box, you could/should keep this data.  If you are going to keep the data for stats, you might as well add the feature to let us put some weight to the selections by hand since most/all of these are going to be used in homes and will never get the play time/variety one would get in the real world.   

It was really just a hey wouldn't that be cool thought.

I don't keep extensive audits explicitly to discourage people from trying to use it as a commercial jukebox.  Right now I just keep a raw play count, and that play count does affect which songs are played in the random modes, i.e. songs higher on the list are more likely to be played (this was new in beta 5, I think). So right now you mark a song with a "thumb" by simply playing it.  The flaw in this system is that random selections count as a play; I should go in and special-case random plays to not increment the play counters.

--Chris

cool, didn't know play counts moved them up.  It might be cool/easy to implement then to allow you to assign 2 buttons, one to increase popularity of a song, and another to reduce it, maybe even make it negative where songs like Happy Birthday, Auld Lang Syne, etc could be set to never play, unless they were picked from the menu.   If you implement the genere etc colored strips, you could auto add top 10/25/100/thumbs down symbols on the strips.   I can see if you provide to much audit, it would help commercial people use it, but it would also be cool for us geeks.

[RacerX]

Chris,

I finally had a chance to download and try out this latest version.  Great job!  The screensaver is cool.  I like that you put the song info in a floating box as part of it.

[Chris]

I just thought it would be nice if the jukebox was playing and the screensaver on, to occasionally switch back to see the interface.

[Chris]

The most time-consuming part of the process would be thinking of what to call the option in the jukebox.ini file.

How about ScreenSaverExitTimeout ?

[Chris]

Right now I just keep a raw play count, and that play count does affect which songs are played in the random modes, i.e. songs higher on the list are more likely to be played (this was new in beta 5, I think).

cool, didn't know play counts moved them up.

Actually, looking at the rev history, it's new in the latest version (b6).  But I'd intended for it to be there from the beginning....

[RacerX]

Chris, what's the difference between Radio mode and the new Random mode?

EDIT:  I see.  The new Random button queues up a random song.  Cool!

[surf]

To anyone who had the same problem as me, after upgrading to the newer version and not being able to load any songs into the jukebox...

I moved my music into a different folder and now it is reading it???

Thanks...

[Chris]

bjrock28.skn sure looks nice!

That skin was donated by Bryce Jeannotte.  I just tried it out at 1600x1200... if I ever build a dedicated juke, I'm probably using this skin at that resolution.  If your monitor and video card will go that high, give it a shot....

--Chris

[sWampy]

Chris, how about an option to put 2 artists on a strip, where you don't end up with blank strips.

<song 1>
<artist 1>/<artist 2>
<song 2>

Or if you don't like that, maybe just duplicate the song on top and bottom, some reason the blank strip just doesn't look right, to me.

And I've noticed sometimes on my dual monitor XP pro SP2  setup at work, when exit jukebox, it leaves a wincab on the taskbar that you can't close with out ctrl-alt-del kill task.

[Chris]

Chris, how about an option to put 2 artists on a strip, where you don't end up with blank strips.

<song 1>
<artist 1>/<artist 2>
<song 2>

Or if you don't like that, maybe just duplicate the song on top and bottom, some reason the blank strip just doesn't look right, to me.

I looked into this once, and it was a pain in the tail to go back and match them up and still keep them in a reasonable alphabetical order.  For a random sort, it would be easy, as I would just need to make a second pass through the stripper.

Making the bottom a dupe of the top, though, would be a simple, easily configurable change.  To keep it from "looking" like a dupe, there could be a third option to dupe the first song from that artist; since the half-label will be the last song, it won't be a true dupe unless you only have one song from that artist.

I have to rewrite the stripper when I add filters, so I may be able to think of some magic then...

And I've noticed sometimes on my dual monitor XP pro SP2

[sWampy]

Chris, how about an option to put 2 artists on a strip, where you don't end up with blank strips.

<song 1>
<artist 1>/<artist 2>
<song 2>

Or if you don't like that, maybe just duplicate the song on top and bottom, some reason the blank strip just doesn't look right, to me.

I looked into this once, and it was a pain in the tail to go back and match them up and still keep them in a reasonable alphabetical order.  For a random sort, it would be easy, as I would just need to make a second pass through the stripper.

Making the bottom a dupe of the top, though, would be a simple, easily configurable change.  To keep it from "looking" like a dupe, there could be a third option to dupe the first song from that artist; since the half-label will be the last song, it won't be a true dupe unless you only have one song from that artist.

I have to rewrite the stripper when I add filters, so I may be able to think of some magic then...

And I've noticed sometimes on my dual monitor XP pro SP2  setup at work, when exit jukebox, it leaves a wincab on the taskbar that you can't close with out ctrl-alt-del kill task.

Not sure what's causing that at all.  Does it even show up in the process list when you go to end-task?

It may be something in Allegro, and I'm due to update my version of Allegro soon (I'm a couple of revs behind), and I know they've been doing a lot on atexit() stuff.

--Chris

I can't seem to get it to do it with any consistancy, and it doesn't happen very often, maybe 1/20 times it's run.  One of these aweful to track down bugs.   I just thought I would mention it incase someone else has the problem, you would know it wasn't unique.

Main reason I asked about the strips is I seem to have a ton of one hit wonders enough were I would say 1/3 or more of my strips have just one song. ;-/   I think it would look cooler even if you did something like <song2 (reprise)> .  It would be sortof cool to see how long it took my friends to figure out it was the exact same song. ;-)

A sort by song title would also be nice, and if that happened, a artist1/artist2 would be needed for sure.

[Chris]

Sort by song title would be unworkable in 45-style double label or album label mode.  It could be doable in single label mode.  If you have a ton of one-hit wonders, perhaps one of the single-labels skins is a better fit for you, such as as chrome.skn or aj8.skn.

Right now I'm knee-deep in trying to get album art for CD-label mode in place before I go on vacation starting this weekend, but it's proving trickier than I thought once rotation is taken into account.  You can specify that the art be to the left, right, top, bottom, inside (on the side toward the center of the screen horizontally), outside (away from the center of the screen horizontally), inside vertically, or outside vertically of the track list, which complicates things a bit.  Album art can also be disabled completely.  I'm debating whether or not to work on a mode where the track list is overlaid on top of the album art, but it would require some work and I'm not sure anyone would use it.

--Chris

[sWampy]

Sort by song title would be unworkable in 45-style double label or album label mode.  It could be doable in single label mode.  If you have a ton of one-hit wonders, perhaps one of the single-labels skins is a better fit for you, such as as chrome.skn or aj8.skn.

Those single song skins just don't look like old time jukebox.  That's the main apeal of wincab.  There are several 50's style resturants around here that have the mini jukeboxes on each table, and most of the strips in them are multiple artists per strip, so eithere someone makes custom jukebox 45's or these mutiple table jukeboxes just simulate 45's with multiple artists on them.   

[surf]

A few ideas...

How about a Geiss(sp) or WhiteCap screensaver...

Using a mouse or touchscreen, selecting the Artist would bring up all of the songs from that Artist?

This is the best Jukebox prog out there.... Keep up the good work!

Surf

[Lave Laar]

Just had a party with doscab as the center of attention.

[Johnny]

Chris, how about an option to put 2 artists on a strip, where you don't end up with blank strips.

<song 1>
<artist 1>/<artist 2>
<song 2>

Or if you don't like that, maybe just duplicate the song on top and bottom, some reason the blank strip just doesn't look right, to me.

And I've noticed sometimes on my dual monitor XP pro SP2

[Chris]

There are several 50's style resturants around here that have the mini jukeboxes on each table, and most of the strips in them are multiple artists per strip

But these jukeboxes don't have to keep their labels sorted in any way. 

so eithere someone makes custom jukebox 45's or these mutiple table jukeboxes just simulate 45's with multiple artists on them.

[Chris]

Just had a party with doscab as the center of attention.

[froggerman]

Hi Chris,

I just installed a new monitor so of course the first thing that I wanted to try was your Beta 6. I just downloaded a new copy, set the music path and launched it.
No problem. Then I thought I should set the resolution and aspect ratio to my new screen size 1920x1200 and 1.6.

Now the application crashes every time I press Esc to exit. So trying to help I set the debug level to 5. Works perfectly every time! Put the debug level back to DISABLED and it starts failing again.

Thoughts?

[froggerman]

The problem seems to happen with the default.skn. I was trying bjrock28.skn and it doesn't have the problem.

I also have a couple of questions. When I set UseZero=True the zero is used as the first number instead of the last number. Is there any way to change that behaviour? i.e. The first label has A0 and A1 instead of A1 and A2.

On my real Rock-ola juke box the title strips are numbered differently than they are in WinCan. The first label is A1 and B1. In other words every label in the first column is letter1. A1, B1, C1, D1. Is that a possible?

The reason I am asking is that now that I have a wider display I would like to try a skin that has 5 or 6 columns of labels. The problem is I don't see how I could access the 6th column and if I use 5 columns the 0 seems to be in the wrong place.

I sure do like the new way of laying out the title strips though. It is a breeze!

[Chris]

The problem seems to happen with the default.skn. I was trying bjrock28.skn and it doesn't have the problem.

Sounds like something's overrunning a buffer.  I don't know of anyone using the juke at this high of a resolution, so we're in uncharted territory.  Can you set back to the default skin and debuglevel=5 and send me the resulting log?  Even if it doesn't crash, it should give me an idea as to what's going on.

I also have a couple of questions. When I set UseZero=True the zero is used as the first number instead of the last number. Is there any way to change that behaviour? i.e. The first label has A0 and A1 instead of A1 and A2.

Not at this time.  UseZero is really meant for numeric keypads, not the alpha-numeric entry method.  Is it really A10 that you need?

On my real Rock-ola juke box the title strips are numbered differently than they are in WinCan. The first label is A1 and B1. In other words every label in the first column is letter1. A1, B1, C1, D1. Is that a possible?

With the standard dual-strip labels, the second song on a strip always increments the second digit, not the first.  It could, of course, be done using the single strips, but I'm sure that's not what you want....

The reason I am asking is that now that I have a wider display I would like to try a skin that has 5 or 6 columns of labels. The problem is I don't see how I could access the 6th column and if I use 5 columns the 0 seems to be in the wrong place.

I take it you're having trouble with the 5 and 6 buttons?  By default, the 5 and 6 buttons above the letters on a keyboard are mapped to coin entry, like MAME, but all of the numbers on the keypad are mapped to their equivalents.  Look in controls.ini and remap to taste.

If that's not the problem, I'm not sure I understand why you can't access the additional columns.

I sure do like the new way of laying out the title strips though. It is a breeze!

Yeah, it was a real pain to lay out skins the old way.  You can use multiple StripGrids, though, so for those who really like laying them out the old way it's still available....

[froggerman]

1. I will go back to the default skin and send you the log.

2. I was trying to cheat and us A0 rather than A10 but the ideas was that A1 should be the first title. I was pretty sure this was going to be the answer.

3. No, you are the correct. I was just commenting on how a real jukebox is layed out. That is how they are able to access 160 or 200 titles, 10 number and 16 or 20 letters.

4. No problem with the 5 and 6 button, I have that under control. The problem is that the current system uses 1 & 2 for the first column, 3 & 4 for the second column, 5 & 6 for the third column and so forth so you when you get to the fifth colum you only have 9 left, or 10 if that was possible. Is it? Then the sixth colum should be 11 & 12 if this is possible but I didn't think it was. I hope I explained that correctly.

Talk to you soon...

[Chris]

Adding digits 10, 11, 12, etc. is trivial; figuring out how to display a "single digit" 10 and up is going to require some special-casing.

For now, if you have 6 columns, you can use numbers 1-6 and use twice as many letters as you have rows, so the first column of the first row is A1/A2, then A3/A4, then A5/A6, then B1/B2, then B3/--BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--, then B5/B6.  Not perfect, but it'll work.

I got your log, and nothing in it looks out of whack.  The crash-on-exit thing may be something that was fixed in the latest version of the library I'm using.  The fix was just posted today, though, so it may be a bit before I can incorporate it... when it crashes on exit, does it just hang forever, or does it give an error message?

--Chris

[froggerman]

Hi Chris, don't bend your brain too much on this, I am just poking at the limits of your program and my new display.

So to implement the double letters I set the high letter to double the number of rows I have and the high number to 6?

I looked over the log too and it looks perfect. What happens is that you press the Esc key and the screen goes black, which is normal, but the desktop does not reappear right away. Instead that little Microsoft popup displays asking you if you would like to notify Microsoft that an application has terminated. I had the same problem with one other skin, perhaps the CD one. I created a new test skin and it didn't seem to have any issue.

If there is a new version or something else you would like me to test let me know. By the way if you need testing for large number of songs I can help with that too as I have over 10,000 mp3 right now.

Cheers.

[Chris]

So to implement the double letters I set the high letter to double the number of rows I have and the high number to 6?

Right.  High number equal to number of columns, high letter equal to number of rows (not selections, titlestrip rows) times 2 (converted into letter form, of course).

If there is a new version or something else you would like me to test let me know. By the way if you need testing for large number of songs I can help with that too as I have over 10,000 mp3 right now.

Heh.  I'll bet creation of the initial index is ugly with 10,000 songs... shouldn't crash, though. <fingers crossed> Paging through it's going to be a bear... save a couple of buttons on the CP for the NextAlpha/PrevAlpha buttons coming in Beta 7.

--Chris

[froggerman]

The initial index was pretty bad...but scrolling through is pretty fast, remember I use 56 songs per page 

[Silver]

save a couple of buttons on the CP for the NextAlpha/PrevAlpha buttons coming in Beta 7.

Aha! NOW we're talking! Glad to see progress is oncoming as always!

[Chris]

save a couple of buttons on the CP for the NextAlpha/PrevAlpha buttons coming in Beta 7.

Aha! NOW we're talking! Glad to see progress is oncoming as always!

Well, the PrevAlpha/NextAlpha keys aren't news; I talked about them in http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,34107.0.html.  They're still not working to my satisfaction, though; if your somewhere in the list of artists that start with "A" and press NextAlpha, curently it'll switch to the first page that starts with an artist that starts with B, like The Beatles (the word "The" is ignored), even though the last artist on the previous page might be "The Bangles".  The problem is that if it stops on the previous page, the impression is that you jumped from A to later in A unless you go through all the selections and see the B at the end of the page.  So the behavior that is correct is perceived as incorrect, and the behaviour that's perceived as correct is incorrect.

--Chris