Interactive mode problem

[lordsub]

I just discovered Virtual Jukebox and i love it.  I am setting up all my MP3s to work with it (wrote a small VB program to do it for me =)  )  However, i dont want to display albums. I just want artists.  So basically i make an artist folder and under that i make a folder called "the best of" and under that i place all my mp3s and cover art for that artist.  This is working great except for two things.  I like to use interactive mode when choosing a song some times that screen wont come up for an artist.  It just flashes and disappears.  It appears that the few that it does this on, has a lot of songs in there but not more than 30.  Is this a limit of the program because it is only expecting albums and doesnt expect to have that many songs?  Another problem is that i cant seem to get the verticle scroll bars to work with my keyboard, is this possible?  Oh and one other thing, my cover art doesnt appear to be cycling.  i have set it in the options, but it only stays on the first one and never rotates.  do the filenames of the art have to be similar?  or is there some other trick?

Thanks in advance, and once again i want to say that i really enjoy this program.  In a couple days i will have a nice jukebox hooked up to my entertainment center =)

[lordsub]

Follow up:
The interactive mode does not appear to be working for a most of selections now.  It just flickers and thats it.  It happens when i have only a couple songs for that album.  Is this a known bug or am i doing something wrong?

Also have a request =)  If possible could the current album playing be optional?  Im talking about the information that is stored in the lower left hand corner.

[VMJ Team]

I will check into these problems...It would be interesting to know if anyone else has experienced these symptoms...I am unable to reproduce this behavior.  The track list for each able is limited to 99 tracks.  I will also add an option to turn off the album information display.

[lordsub]

Thanks Cyberpunk.  Here is some more information about it.  I have tried it on two different computers.  Both are running Windows XP.  One is a Pentium3 500 and the other is an Athlon 1700XP.  I have plenty of ram in both.  I have it set up to display 4 albums per page.  It appears to be happening most the time now. some albums only have 2 tracks and they still dont work.  If you need any other debugging information please let me know.  

One other thing and i dont know if this is related or not, but when i do get an interactive page to pop up and it has more songs listed than are viewable on the screen, i cant seem to get the list to scroll down without using a mouse.  If i use to the mouse to select one, then i can use the up and down cursor keys, but they dont seem to work until the list gets focus and the only way i know to do that is to use the mouse.


Thanks

[lordsub]

So no one has had this problem?  It is really starting to tick me off, because it's such a cool program, but its not working for me.  I did some more testing and it only happens when i use the keypad to enter the numbers.  If i use the mouse to click on the album, there is no problem.  Although, this doesnt suit me, because my final setup wont have a mouse.  I also tested full screen vs windowed and it happens both ways.  I dont know what was used to do the graphics on this, could it be a directX problem?

[Steve G]

The problem you are having with the Interactive mode is purely that you are punching in the numbers too quickly.
If you select one number, then wait for it to appear on the screen and then select the next number everything will be OK  

[lordsub]

Thanks Steve G!  That was the problem.  Would be nice if that didnt happen though =)  

Next question is about scrolling down a list of songs that dont fit on the screen.  How can i do that?  Keyboard only =)


Thanks

[Steve G]

Yes, I see your problem.
When I build my jukebox I don't want to have to use a mouse, but your right there does not seem to be a way to scroll down the list without one !
There is an option for selecting keys to 'Scroll Up' and 'Scroll Down' but I can't seem to get them to do anything.

CyberPunk can you help ??

[VMJ Team]

I'm on it...I'll see what I can come up with.

[Ted_Striker]

For the group of us that are building jukeboxes  with no mice here's an idea for the too many songs problem.  Why not have VJ generate another albumn if the track list gets too long automatically.  As an example.  If say you can display 9 tracks on one albumn screen, if an albumn has say 11 songs then just generate another albumn using the same albumn cover and the 2 (or 3 if you use the 00 select all tracks option) extra songs.  Doing it this way would eliminate the need to scroll down the list and it would also eliminate any housekeeping as far as directory structure of the mp3 list.  

I did this manually and it was a big pain but the result was nice.  I store my mp3 by alphabet letter/artist/albumn.  I just made /albumn1 and /albumn2 and put a copy of the albumn cover in both directories.  This approach works great with VJ but makes finding songs in other applications a little more difficult (now what dir was that in 1 or 2?).  If VJ could do this when it generated its own database list, it would make mp3 organization a little less cluttered.  It would also eliminate the need for adding extra control buttons to the jukebox (like if a "digital scroll" was implemented.)  I am currently retrofitting an old jukebox with VJ ala planetjay and I would like to keep the outside shell as "authentic" as possible.  I think this solution would also help the touch screen users out there as well.

[Mameham]

 I'm all for your approach Ted... it would also save hard drive space... though that doesn't matter too much anymore...

 It'd be good to have a "split point" so you could set it at 9, 10 or 20 songs depending on your display. It'd also be cool to have an option to set all albums at equal length... cause I think 2 song albums don't look so hot... so it'd be cool if the program saw you were at 14 songs and instead of having a 10 song album and a 4 album it would create two 7 song albums...

 - Eric