some features I would like to see....

[Hutt]

I am planning on building a jukebox very soon but have not purchased any jukebox software yet.

Here are some features I would like to see. Perhaps some of the developers will read this and implement them into their software.

I am thinking of a dual monitor machine so many of my features reflect that.

I am really into the lyric support. I have gone through the trouble of embedding lyrics into ID3 tags for 1000's of songs. I would like support to display them on a second monitor while the main jukebox screen is on the first....I believe this is already available in some software....but in addition....

Some songs do not have lyrics such as classical. So instead of the 2nd monitor doing nothing in a case like this I would like the ability to have a slideshow displayed on the second monitor during selected songs. It could have different groups of pics for different songs or cd's....pictures from the band or composer or whatever may suit the need.
Songs could be set to display a slideshow or lyrics by default or give you the option to decide which when you select a track...so you could even have a slideshow going if lyrics exist. In addition to a slideshow a video file could also be displayed...with no sound obviously.

There are others that I thought of but they have momentarily slipped my mind.
I will post as soon as I remember them...anyone else have any feature requests?

[Space Fractal]

MultiJuke does not support second monitor and vidoes, and maybe would never due, because limits in BlitzMax (they removed DrawMovie command), which MultiJuke is developed in.

The Lyric idea look like a cool idea, but I may need to get one or 2 mp3's to look on, how they are tagged (or looking software to doing it my self).

Since I'm dosent support second monitor, you can instead use the split feature I created for vertical monitor mode, so it show Lyric in the top and gui in the buttons, while it show a CDG or a Lyric.

[unclet]

My jukebox requires WMP to be installed and supports audio and video files.  It actually allows the user to have an audio file and video file of the same song to be stored together at the same time.  Sometimes you the video is not as clear sounding as the mp3, so my software provides you the ability to play either.   Anyway, the software also supports dual monitor and allows the user to choose what is displayed on the primary and secondary monitors (see photo for options).  You can choose to display the lyrics, album cover art or WMP visualizations.  Also there is an option which allows the user the ability to cycle through all of these views by clicking on the media player window. 

However, my jukebox does not read ID3 tag information.  Instead a lyrics text (.txt) file needs to exist which shares the name of the song file.   Also my software does not provide the ability of having a slideshow or anything like this when a video is not playing.

[Hutt]

Thanks for the replies.
unclet...any chance of implementing ID tag support?
When I first started getting my music collection together years ago I had about 2000 individual text files for lyrics...I was a beta tester for a program I can't remember the name of but I think still exists...but I have since incorporated everything into the ID tags and have deleted the text files.

Hopefully you or someone else will make this feature.
Even without the slideshow it can still sort of be done...A video slideshow could be used.
The one advantage of a regular photo slideshow would be to have them shown in random order so it is not always the same.

Thanks again.

[Space Fractal]

pm me a links to 2 files with lyrics at any ripped rate. I have plans to add this feature and show them like cdg does. Otherwice I may try to find info about it.

But you have to use vertical mode, if you choise MultiJuke.

[unclet]

My jukebox software relies on the following directory structure:

  \MainDir\Artist\Album\SongFile

Reading ID3 tags to determine stuff like Artist, Album, etc... would not be beneficial in my jukebox software since it is "directory structure" related.  I do not build a hugh database of all songs and album covers at load time.   Basically, my software would not know what to do  when reading ID3 tag information at all.   As a result, I do not plan on supporting it.   I also have heard that ID3 tag information can take too much time to read in and that some people do not like to rely on ID3 tag information since a lot of the information is incorrect.  I have never heard (until now) of someone putting lyrics into the ID3 tags.    Anyway, I am sorry, but my software was not designed with ID3 tags in mind.   

You might want to try out the software first to see if you even like it.   Test it out with about 20 files only and see what it can do.  You might not care for it, or wish it behaved differently, then you would not care if it had ID3 tag support or not.  Anyway, if you do decide you like it as is, then you could store all of your mp3 and lyrics appropriately in about one weekend worth of effort (since you said you have a 1000 files).

[Space Fractal]

Yes, Unclet, pulling out from ID tags is MUCH slower than just pulling out directorys. Hince I wanted to support both id3 tags and FileMask in MultiJuke.

The only downside tags.dll (www.un4seen.com) seen not to support that tag (I guess Lyrics use %TEXT) in id3 tag, so I must to wait get it supported. It should not take so long time, and have sent a request to the forum.

I may so even create a command line utilty to pull these tagged text back to txt file again witch same name.

Alternativ, you could pulloff Lyrics from various site like http://www.onlylyrics.net (which have a pretty easy url setup) and maybe other sites, which I have not checked out. This is a idea to putting in Uncles Jukebox (and my own of course).....

[Hutt]

Well, my directory structure is like you say but I still have the files tagged with artist, title, track no., year, lyrics, etc...and they are 100% correct as I have spent many hours making sure of this.
Making text files for the lyrics is no longer an option as I have about 4000-5000 songs.
Relying on ID tags might slow down the process if the whole program relied on it for the directory and all....however I don't see why it would take any time at all to just pull the lyrics from the tag for the current song that is playing??? The lyrics for 1000's of songs wont all have to be read...just the one that is playing.

I wish I knew how to write computer code

[unclet]

If I found a way to pull the lyrics text out of the file and then store it as a TXT file on your harddrive in the proper place then that would not be bad.   Next time around, the TXT file would already exist.  I might not even have to store the lyrics in the TXT file at all if nothing else relies on the TXT file existing ..... can not remember.

Anyway, going on vacation for a few days in about 1 hour .... so I will look into this when I get back.   I warn you though, I just got done spending about 2-1/2 months updating the software a lot ..... and my wife and kids (and myself to a certain degree) are quite sick of me spending that much time in front of a computer monitor.   I will see how much effort this takes and let you know.   

** Of course is Space Fractal writes a utility which will go through a directory structure and will extract any ID3 song text into a TXT file (sharing the same name as the songfile) then all you would need to do is run this utility one time and it should generate all the 4000-5000 lyrics TXT files for you.  Then you are all set. 

See ya for now ..... lets see what Space Fractal can whip up for you ..... if nothing pans out then I will try to see what it will take to read ID3 lyrics text .....  I really have no idea what that means at the moment though.   

[Space Fractal]

no for that purchase, it should been pretty easy, since the file is open anyway when playing the file...

Uncle, can you use dll files? I found some Pure Basic code (reading id3 tags from version v2.3), so I can covert that into a dll, so you can use in your app.

Im are not sure which args (# tag) lyrics use, since I need to find a file with contain lyrics first. But here is a test to try out in the attach (to quit, just chacel the reqeuster).

Uncle: Yes for the batch utility, that is what I would, but first I need tag info, how the lyric works. Hard to blindcode without a file with lyric (because Im dosent use any one)

[richms]

It would be better to support synchronized lyrics then just text lyrics.

If you can somehow use the minilyrics plugin (www.minilyrics.com) - then it will handle the downloading from their server for you.

[Barry Barcrest]

English Mini Lyrics Site.

http://www.crintsoft.com/

[richms]

I've always just gone there and clicked english

If it can somehow query there server, then thats awesome, otherwise if it just looks for the .lrc file in the directory with the same name, then most of my library has that already, and for the ones that don't I just have to play it in foobar and let it try to download it if possible.

[Barry Barcrest]

I was going to add this to freebox but as i support MP3+G i really didn't see the point so it never go added.

[unclet]

I have been looking into this ID3 Tag stuff and frankly it seems to be a big pain the butt to parse through all this data and pull out the correct information.   Call me lazy, but it might be easier to get a program which will extract the lyrics from your mp3s and create a TXT file for you automatically.  I would get in touch with Space Fractal to see what he can do for you ..... seems like he is willing as long as you supply some sample mp3s to him for testing.

I am not really ready to start learning about ID3 tags and such since none of my mp3 utilize mp3 tags.

If I can find a free Visual Basic control which allows me to simply extract this information rather easily then I would go ahead and do it for you, but I can not seem to find such a control. 

figured it out ..... see next post

[unclet]

Ok, I think I figured out how to do this.  I added a new "Misc" option to extract the lyrics from the mp3 file (ID3V2 tags only) when a TXT lyrics file does not currently exist.

You can get the new version of my software (v2.10) at my site:

http://unclet.arcadecontrols.com/Jukebox/index.html

[Space Fractal]

I never heard from the thread user about the little test program, because I was unsure which tag for use since I diddent have any music with tags on (normal I heard eletronic music). Hince I never get any progress about it (even it should been pretty simple to extract them all in a batch program.

I would been happy to get one or 2, or elsewice get a app to put some lyrics into as test (I do have some popular music). I havent have time to search around, since I have looked on network part on Multijuke (webserver dropped). I hear %TEXT tag only was used by comments and not lyric.