MP3 Jukebox Software (Touchscreen, With mp3+g, Video and WMA Tag Support)

[NinjaEpisode]

I'm not getting the lag.  Although, I do not see pictures on History or Top 20.  Instead I see Image Not Found.  Not sure if this is still in the works or not.

[Barry Barcrest]

I'm not getting the lag.

[NinjaEpisode]

Yep, I am using the 1st image found option.

And this PC is slightly faster than the 900mhz, i.e. 3 Ghz, but in the end, the PC that the Juke will be on will be less that 500mhz most likely.

[Barry Barcrest]

Yep, I am using the 1st image found option.

And this PC is slightly faster than the 900mhz, i.e. 3 Ghz, but in the end, the PC that the Juke will be on will be less that 500mhz most likely.

P500mhz.... I really think you need to test the software out on that. I know that i can't use animations and visualisations on my P700 but aside from that everything else is fine. You might want to check to see what you can actually achieve on you P500, also this will help me to look at areas that need speed improvments.

[Silver]

Quick query:

Does freebox completely ignore direcotry structure and just use tags?

If it finds mp3's in completely different directories, but have the same Artist/Album tags - will it display them in the same album?


Feature request: this may be a biggy, and not where you want to go,  but I was wondering if it was possible to add filtering options on the fly - such as list by artist, album, track title.... I know its not very 'jukeboxy' but when the collection is really big it can really help....

[NinjaEpisode]

Feature request: this may be a biggy, and not where you want to go,

[Barry Barcrest]

Update #2:
Reinstalled... No change.
One oddity though, I have 90 mp3's in the directory and after building the database it said 90 bad! Everyone of them plays fine in all programs including freebox.
Also my hard drive is NTFS in case it makes any difference. I'll keep trying different things and get back if there is any change.

Make sure you have the animations turned off and also the visualisations. They really do kill performance...

Quick query:

Does freebox completely ignore direcotry structure and just use tags?

If it finds mp3's in completely different directories, but have the same Artist/Album tags - will it display them in the same album?


Feature request: this may be a biggy, and not where you want to go,

[PileDriver]

Problem fixed!
The problem was the album art tag.
I removed all art tags from my test directory and it creates the database in a flash.
Now loading albums in less than 2 sec. Also now it thinks all of my mp3s are good again. MUCH better!!
Now to tackle the 60+ GB of music on the rest of the system.

[NinjaEpisode]

UPDATE 2:
If any of you guys do use MSN i recommend adding me as we can talk through problems and ideas in real time. This would be a great help to me... Thanks.

Don't have MSN, but would be happy to give you a gmail account and I use google talk.

P500mhz.... I really think you need to test the software out on that. I know that i can't use animations and visualisations on my P700 but aside from that everything else is fine. You might want to check to see what you can actually achieve on you P500, also this will help me to look at areas that need speed improvments.

Not concerned about the animations and visualisations personally.

I just put Freebox on a Celeron 400 w/192 mb of Ram.

Trying to create the database bombed after 1 1/2 hours.  But, since there's really no change in the database from my other machine, I just copied the records.rec file over and launched the app.

The app took about 10 minutes to load, but I would expect as much since it's such a large list.

Regarding the lag, well, yes it does, and no it doesn't.  What I mean is it seems to depend on the album.  Some seem to load quickly, others do not.  I wonder if this has anything to do with tagging or not?  Since I'm using the database I doubt it, but it might.

This particular little laptop also has a touchscreen so I'll be able to test that now.

Something I noticed:  If I select an album from album view, but don't do anything else after selecting the album, just let Freebox sit there, the application defaults back to a strange screen.  The picture area gets wider and is blank.  Underneath is Album, Artist, Track, Released and Comments all blank, and it has the Current Rating on it.

What's that all about?

[Barry Barcrest]

UPDATE 2:
If any of you guys do use MSN i recommend adding me as we can talk through problems and ideas in real time. This would be a great help to me... Thanks.

Don't have MSN, but would be happy to give you a gmail account and I use google talk.

P500mhz.... I really think you need to test the software out on that. I know that i can't use animations and visualisations on my P700 but aside from that everything else is fine. You might want to check to see what you can actually achieve on you P500, also this will help me to look at areas that need speed improvments.

Not concerned about the animations and visualisations personally.

I just put Freebox on a Celeron 400 w/192 mb of Ram.

Trying to create the database bombed after 1 1/2 hours.

[NinjaEpisode]

Where is the option to switch to help like an attract mode?  Is this the Random Play option?

Looking forward to the database enhancements....

[Barry Barcrest]

Problem fixed!
The problem was the album art tag.
I removed all art tags from my test directory and it creates the database in a flash.
Now loading albums in less than 2 sec. Also now it thinks all of my mp3s are good again. MUCH better!!
Now to tackle the 60+ GB of music on the rest of the system.

Sweet, i did wonder what was going on to be honest. Glad you resolved it and it's all working for you.

Where is the option to switch to help like an attract mode?

[NinjaEpisode]

Barcrest,

I don't know if I asked it before, but what are the chances of supporting multiple drives?

For example, a feature that would all you to add drives to scan.

--I would click the Add button, and it would allow me to browse to a folder to add.
--I then click the Add button again, and add a second drive.

The software then knows to scan both drives to create the database.

Too difficult?

[Barry Barcrest]

Barcrest,

I don't know if I asked it before, but what are the chances of supporting multiple drives?

For example, a feature that would all you to add drives to scan.

--I would click the Add button, and it would allow me to browse to a folder to add.
--I then click the Add button again, and add a second drive.

The software then knows to scan both drives to create the database.

Too difficult?

Nope fairly straight forward actually, i will add try and add this to the next version. I will basically just add another button next to generate database that says update database. It will then work just like generating the database but it will append to the existing database. This does involve tidying up a fair bit of code in the config.exe so i might improve the database handling in the main program as well before making the next release, I will see if i can get it working tonight....

In

[Dermbrian]

Enhancement request
Barcrest, would you consider adding an option to not generate track numbers?  Or handle track numbers in a similar way that Chris and Salmonking's jukeboxes handle them?

My entire collection is in the tag and filename format "xx - Songname" where xx = track number on the LP.

When I display an album, I get the following with Freebox Alpha:

01. 01 - Song Name 1
02. 02 - Song Name 2
etc...

Brian

[Barry Barcrest]

No worries the next version will have an option to turn off track numbers.

[Dermbrian]

No worries the next version will have an option to turn off track numbers.

That's great news.  Thanks!

[Barry Barcrest]

No worries the next version will have an option to turn off track numbers.

That's great news.

[NinjaEpisode]

I get a runtime error when I try to go to History after the 'fix' for album art. 

[Barry Barcrest]

  I will look at it tonight with a view to uploading a new version tomorrow. I have added several other fixes so if i can recreate this issue and fix that then i can get a release out tomorow. I was hoping to get a little more feedback on the skinning tool but i don't think anyone is really using yet.

[NinjaEpisode]

I was hoping to get a little more feedback on the skinning tool but i don't think anyone is really using yet.

Without going into too much detail, can you give a quick rundown of exactly how to use it?

[Barry Barcrest]

I get a runtime error when I try to go to History after the 'fix' for album art. 

This is strange i checked it myself and it works fine for me... Can anyone else test it? All you need to do is change the cover art option and click history and see if you get an error or if the pictures show up. PLEASE post back here and help me out.

I was hoping to get a little more feedback on the skinning tool but i don't think anyone is really using yet.

Without going into too much detail, can you give a quick rundown of exactly how to use it?

Load it up and you should be able to select through your skins via a drop down box. This then displays a mock up of the menu screen you see in the jukebox. By clicking on these menu buttons you can change the shape, colours and text of them and save out the manu.ini file thus updating the menu for that skin. The version i have has got a few more features than the last one i released, you can now copy settings to all buttons and it also loads the background textures.

Should be in the next upodate tomorrow

Sorry about that but i have no internet acces at home for the time being

[james77]

Hi,
Just letting you know of few things I am having issues with.

[Barry Barcrest]

Hi,
Just letting you know of few things I am having issues with.

[menace]

I have a question on how the program sorts directories that are filled with assorted artists and albums?  I have a 1 hit wonder category and when I run the config to get the database i can't really see a pattern to how these are being grouped--is it by album or artists?  How would I get freebox to see the whole 1 hit wonder category as 1 album in the album view without losing individual artists names?

NM: figured it out--what your tagger calls version 2, mine was calling version 1 so i couldn't get them to see eye to eye.  Now I'm going through my catalogue and correcting all my ID3 tags so that they show the same info for both version "1" and "2".

[james77]

Hi Barcrest,
thanks for the response.   I thought that the "use folder name" was for naming the cover and not for displaying it. I really do not use and tags since I have mostly wav files.  Right now I just have the covers labeled image.jpg, and they seem to load.  What exactly does that option do?

How does the program display the name for the cover?  I wonder if it would be possible to display the image name as the cover name?  So you would name the image "artist-album.jpg"  and the program would use that as the information? 

Another possibility would to use the folder name to display the image name ( but, I could see that as a problem unless the program went back two folders to get the artist, and one folder to get the album)  Does that make sense?

thanks,
James

[Barry Barcrest]

I have a question on how the program sorts directories that are filled with assorted artists and albums?

[menace]

Specs:
p3 700 Laptop with 256Mb ram and 10Gb hard drive running XP.  Database is 1180 songs.  When I run config It goes into about 5 or 6 songs and then stops--I let it run for like an hour just to see if maybe it was a visuals problem, but it was still creating the database but nope--nothing.  I have tried numerous times and I have yet to be able to create a database.

So I ran the program without a database which leaves me with 7 pages of 6 albums each.  The only thing is the computer is MAXED out just trying to turn the pages--what am I doing wrong or is this laptop just not cut out for this?  You (barcrest) mentioned you had a p3 700 with 256 running win2K and it was done in minutes so I'm thinking I have some configuration issues.

Also, i have taged, retagged and tagged again and yet I still get listings saying various artists or no tag--what program are you using to retag your mp3's?  I've tried id3tagit and for whatever reason freebox isn't picking up all the tags created (it seems randomon which it recognizes and which it doesn't)  Any suggestions?

[Silver]

Specs:
p3 700 Laptop with 256Mb ram and 10Gb hard drive running XP.

[syren]

Hey Barcrest,
Just want to say thanks for creating this program!

[Barry Barcrest]

Specs:
p3 700 Laptop with 256Mb ram and 10Gb hard drive running XP.

[Silver]

Nice work - I'll take a look in the next couple of days and get some feedback to you...

looks like great progress!

[Barry Barcrest]

Nice work - I'll take a look in the next couple of days and get some feedback to you...

looks like great progress!

Cool, hope you like it. I have been busting my nuts over it even though i had no internet access... As always i am also open to suggestions for new features. The main things that will need testing are;

Jump to Album
New Config.exe

I am 100% sure both new features work bug free but with the jump to album it is more if people prefer this method to what we had before, if so i will finish it off. if not then i can revert back to the old system.

The SKINTOOL.EXE is also lacking in features to enable new skins to be created so i am really looking for suggestions here too if anyone gets the time.

Thanks Again
BB 

[Silver]

Had a quick look: Not had much time so if I miss something obvious, apologies....

config (the new one above) will crash if you select an empty drive - eg a cd drive with nothing in it.

config progress bar now does not "stick" after a few bars - although mine always finished the process if I left it. Interestingly it slows down massively when scanning certain albums (looks like similar place to where it paused before) but works fine. The same albums seem to cause a delay when calling them up in the main program - I have no idea why. They have ID3 tags of v1.1 and v2.3, like almost all my other mp3s.

A choice of fonts for certain areas would really help me out. Maybe I can do this with a skin, have not tried it. When viewing an album far too many of my songs are listed off the screen...

Also when viewing an album, only 10 songs are listed, with up/down buttons - I've not seen the space under the down button used for anything - can the list be extended down there?

Jump to album - can that list box scroll if there are too many albums? Also it appears to not name albums based on the album tag. It appears to name almost all my albums "Various Artists - Album name" which makes searching unhelpful. The albums do not have the various artists in the album tag.

Good though - all working.

[Barry Barcrest]

Had a quick look: Not had much time so if I miss something obvious, apologies....

config (the new one above) will crash if you select an empty drive - eg a cd drive with nothing in it.

Yep this is a bug, need to look at a fix for that...

Fixed this for the next release See bottom of post.

config progress bar now does not "stick" after a few bars - although mine always finished the process if I left it. Interestingly it slows down massively when scanning certain albums (looks like similar place to where it paused before) but works fine. The same albums seem to cause a delay when calling them up in the main program - I have no idea why. They have ID3 tags of v1.1 and v2.3, like almost all my other mp3s.

There are some parts of some tags it doesn't like. We have worked out the embedded art is one thing that gives it problems, there must be others need to keep looking for a better way to read tags.. Hmmmm. At least it no longer sticks now, as for some people this looked like it had hung. You are correct though if left it would still complete.... Well for most of us

A choice of fonts for certain areas would really help me out. Maybe I can do this with a skin, have not tried it. When viewing an album far too many of my songs are listed off the screen...

Well i can offer font sizes maybe, i will look into this as something for the skin tool.....

Also when viewing an album, only 10 songs are listed, with up/down buttons - I've not seen the space under the down button used for anything - can the list be extended down there?

I will look at this for you in time for the next release. This now displays an extra 4 tracks

[Silver]

Wow fast work!!!

The jump to album will use the up and down buttons to scroll yeas, also it will display cover thumbnails next to each listing eventually. The varisous artists thing has been in for a while, if an album has more than one artist on it will be titled various artists. Otherwise which artist name would it use? The one from the first mp3? The second? The last? For this reason you have to make sure that albums by the same artist have the same tag. I can add an option to turn this off but your compilation albums will then show as being by the first artist?

I was not referring to the albums being listed as by Various artists in the main list view - thats fine (although I'm finding there are loads of albums by 1 artist, where lots of the songs have collaborators....).
Its the "jump to album" bit - If I have an album "Dance hits of the Decade" or whatever, I'd like to jump to it by selecting 'D' - but the jump to album bit lists it as "Various Artists - Dance hits....". It seems to be adding the Artist to the album name when I'm trying to jump. This means I have around 100 entries out of 120 coming under 'V' in my test sample (yes almost all of them are compilation cds).

A reduction in font size as an option would certainly help me....


Thanks for all your efforts.

[Barry Barcrest]

Wow fast work!!!

I was not referring to the albums being listed as by Various artists in the main list view - thats fine (although I'm finding there are loads of albums by 1 artist, where lots of the songs have collaborators....).
Its the "jump to album" bit - If I have an album "Dance hits of the Decade" or whatever, I'd like to jump to it by selecting 'D' - but the jump to album bit lists it as "Various Artists - Dance hits....". It seems to be adding the Artist to the album name when I'm trying to jump. This means I have around 100 entries out of 120 coming under 'V' in my test sample (yes almost all of them are compilation cds).

A reduction in font size as an option would certainly help me....


Thanks for all your efforts.

Hmm i see what you are saying, it is still jumping to the artist but now it gives a list rather than changing the album view screen.... Hmmm i will have to have a think about that. On the albums where there are collaborators i normally add the .Feat information to another tag field. Not ideal i know but it is the only real work around for the Various Artists. I will have a think about it while i am at work today and see if i can impliment something tonight.

[Silver]

One thing I've asked for in any of the jukeboxes that I've tried here - which is quite un-jukebox like, but very handy for large collections - is options to display all the albums by any available tag field. Ie genre/year/artist/album name.. all on the fly.

Obviously this may be very hard depending on how your whole system is setup, and may well be something you don't want to do, but thought I would mention it anyway....

[Barry Barcrest]

One thing I've asked for in any of the jukeboxes that I've tried here - which is quite un-jukebox like, but very handy for large collections - is options to display all the albums by any available tag field. Ie genre/year/artist/album name.. all on the fly.

Obviously this may be very hard depending on how your whole system is setup, and may well be something you don't want to do, but thought I would mention it anyway....

I do want to add something like this actually, it is just low on the priorities... Pester me about it in a week or so. I have been thinking and i really need to improve the tag reading support ASAP so i can support embedded art and also prevent the problems with the tags it doesn't like.

[Silver]

If "low on your priorities" = "ask me in a week or so" thats pretty impressive....!

Having tried loads of jukebox of software I realise its quite hard to have your cake and eat it - that is have nice gui (suitable for touchscreen) that doesn't rely on small text (a la Freebox or WinCab)  and have huge mp3 collection (a la itunes or whatever).

My ideal at the moment would be a gui/setup similar to yours (with a bit of skinning) and an itunes backend (although I find itunes buggy in windows). Itunes scans all your songs, completely ignores directories and filnames, and builds an XML database based on the tags, and just lists everything based on tag fields, allowing you filter quickly and easy. Its not even that well written or fast. I've always thought that if you just build a database backend recording all tag info, then the display can be completely user-customisable - as once the interface is in place, all filtering etc is just done on the fly.