A few Problems *2nd Edit*

[Orclord]

Hello.....

I am having a few problems.. I have just started using DOS/Win Cab and I must say it is just what I was looking for in a skinable jukebox program.

The problem is... it was working OK for a few days, then it would intermittently not load a  skin and just return to windows. Now it will not load any skin and just returns to windows and I have to stop the program using Windows Task Manager. I have tried rebooting and re-installing but to no avail....Any Thoughts ?

Also I noticed some of my albums were split and many just had single songs on, I noticed on these after the album title there appeared to be some garbage text. I first tought this was because they were multi-cd albums contained within one main folder, so I split them up into there own folders, deleted the database and rebuilt but it was still the same. On further investigation via the log it seemed the albums in question were the only ones that the program reported as reading unicode from the tags and not ascii. I re-tagged them all without using unicode and they were fine....Is this a known problem as I will have to re-tag quite a few when I switch it to my main music dir rather than my test one.

Other than these probs I love the program because it allows me to re-skin everything for a touchscreen.

Any help would be appreciated...

Cheers..

Orc

Whoops.....Using Win XP SP2

*Edit*

This always appears in the log, without me doing anything.....

0:00:00.00-LVL1-IDLER_PROC: Jukebox shutdown requested via application close

*Edit No2*

It is now working again......Not gonna say too much of what I did...Just in case it stops again.....I want to make sure I have isolated the problem......

[Chris]

Weird.  Once you do know for sure please let us know!

[Kevin Mullins]

Also I noticed some of my albums were split and many just had single songs on, I noticed on these after the album title there appeared to be some garbage text.

I have had a very similar issue running under Win98SE.

Everything worked great while testing and tweaking things to suit my needs on my project.
But after I started to load the final songs albums/lists I started getting the same problem as described, which brought my project to a screeching halt because it kept missing songs in the two albums I have setup and would also split several of the songs up into their own album. (even though the album name showed the same as the others)

I too thought it was a tag issue. Also tried retagging all the songs several times.
Is there a specific tag version I should be looking to use that is most compatible with WinCab?

It is now working again......Not gonna say too much of what I did...Just in case it stops again.....I want to make sure I have isolated the problem......

Let us know what it is you have tried so that maybe we could try the same things and see if that makes a difference on ours.

[Orclord]

Well so far so good.....

The starting and going straight back to windows reminded me of Mame problems I have answered in the past, where the problem was resolution based.....Sooo I checked everything and it was fine....

Then I started thinking about anything to do with resolution/monitor etc...

After a lot of head scratching and searching through my comp I found a program "Ultramon", which I used when I was testing a dual setup a while back.....Deleted that and all seems well....

*Crosses Fingers*

Oh and here is what I have done today....If anyone is interested....It's still only WIP..

Orc.zip

[Orclord]

Everything worked great while testing and tweaking things to suit my needs on my project.
But after I started to load the final songs albums/lists I started getting the same problem as described, which brought my project to a screeching halt because it kept missing songs in the two albums I have setup and would also split several of the songs up into their own album. (even though the album name showed the same as the others)

I too thought it was a tag issue. Also tried retagging all the songs several times.
Is there a specific tag version I should be looking to use that is most compatible with WinCab?

Well my solution to the prob with the proggy not running I was posting as you posted.....

With the tagging issue I can only say my prob is with tags that are encoded with unicode via tag & rename, They seem fine after I re-tagged them turning unicode off....

I originally had a prob with split albums because the "SongsPerStrip=" in the .skn was set to 13 and anything over that it would split onto another album......I changed that to 20 and it seems OK (Apart from the albums that have more), but I had to lower the font size......

I'm still messing with the proggy and finding out as I go along.....

Learning curve = Yes.....

 

[Kevin Mullins]

With the tagging issue I can only say my prob is with tags that are encoded with unicode via tag & rename, They seem fine after I re-tagged them turning unicode off....

I have been using both MP3Tag and Tag&Rename trying to figure this one out.
When you say "turning unicode off".... do you mean in the tag editing software or in the jukebox software?

I originally had a prob with split albums because the "SongsPerStrip=" in the .skn was set to 13 and anything over that it would split onto another album......I changed that to 20 and it seems OK (Apart from the albums that have more), but I had to lower the font size......

You can set the "SongsPerStrip up to 100.
But like you said you may have to tweak this or that to make them fit your particular skin etc.

Your skin looks good too btw.
But why are the songs starting at 11 ? (111, 211, 311, 411)

[Orclord]

Turning It off in Tag & Rename......The bloody thing is on by default....

Turn it off under "Options"--->"Tags" first tick box....

I then had to remove all tags and look the album up on freedb again and re-tag......Worked fine after that..

As for the numbering.....I'm still learning and mucking around....

 

[Kevin Mullins]

I'll have to give that a shot and see if it cures my problem with the tags also.   

Because that would be awesome...... I was really happy with everything else with WinCab.
It has all the other little tweaks and such that really made my juke project function very well.

I'll be sure to post back with my findings.

[Chris]

Unicode can be a pain... if a tagger encodes in Unicode but doesn't mark the tag as Unicode, it's impossible to get things right.

[Orclord]

I pointed the proggy to my main music dir ( I was using a test dir before, due to the fact another JB prog really farked my main one up) and it crashed whilst building the database....

On inspecting the log it was crashing at an album encoded in .OGG....Whipped out DBpoweramp and converted it to .MP3.....It then passed that album and crashed at one with unicode tags.....Seems it really likes these little beauties.....

Now this got me thinking.....Rather than using the Tag & Rename process I described if I could just reconvert using DB....Because when removing all the Tags you stand the chance of it not being recognised at freedb and amazon...Iirc freedb will not recognise an album if the tracks are in the wrong order...

So I reconverted the unicode album using DB and it seems it converts without Unicode so everything passes...

If anything changes I'll let you know......

Downside is I'll prob have to do this with about 300 or more albums That were tagged using Tag & Rename...

Nevermind though....I like this proggy...

 

*Edit*

The tags that are causing the problem are....

ID3V2.3 (UTF16)

[Chris]

There was a problem with playing OGGs, but I wasn't aware of any problems scanning them.  I'll have to look at that.  (The problem with playing OGGs is fixed, hopefully to be uploaded soon.)

[Kevin Mullins]

Turning It off in Tag & Rename......The bloody thing is on by default....

Turn it off under "Options"--->"Tags" first tick box....

I then had to remove all tags and look the album up on freedb again and re-tag......Worked fine after that..

Yup, this fixed my problem with using the ID3 tags as well. All songs now come up under the appropriate albums I've created and they have the correct and complete song lists. But for my project I didn't need to re-tag anything but the "Album" name. Which I just did by selecting all and did one bulk shot at it. (for most people I guess they would want to do the whole re-tag process if needed)

Totally different problem I had during this process:
But I also figured out why I could only get 97 out of 100 songs to show up in my lists...... basically I have two albums 100 songs each.

Even though I had -

SongsPerStrip=100 (which is the max allowed)
FontSize=10 (which I thought was pretty darned small)
Height=1000 (which is the max allowed)

Not all 100 songs would "fit" in the grid...... so it would literally drop off the last few songs and throw them into another album of sorts.
I dropped the font size down to 9....... and all is good.

WooHoo !!

[Orclord]

Good to hear you have it sorted....

Glad to be of help in aroundabout sort of way....

 

*Edit*

You were right about you do not have to delete the tags...Just look up the album when you find a match and just re-tag it without Unicode

The re-tag changes UTF16 in the tag to ANSI and all is well.....

[Chris]

SongsPerStrip=100 (which is the max allowed)
FontSize=10 (which I thought was pretty darned small)
Height=1000 (which is the max allowed)

Not all 100 songs would "fit" in the grid...... so it would literally drop off the last few songs and throw them into another album of sorts.
I dropped the font size down to 9....... and all is good.

WooHoo !!

That 1000 maximum height is just a sanity check....   1000 is supposed to be ridiculously large for a titlestrip, but it's not out of order for a CD titlecard on a high-res skin.  I've increased this limit to 2000 for the next release.  The 100 song limit is more practical, as memory is allocated for that, but I have increased the limit a bit to 120.

--Chris

[Kevin Mullins]

That 1000 maximum height is just a sanity check....   

Well... ya know some of us just have to be difficult. 
Glad to hear you raised it for the next release, now maybe I can use a font big enough to actually read. 


Now all I need are scrollbars.  (hint hint)

The 100 song limit worked out perfect for me, but I guess there could be the possiblity for a 240 song jukebox like mine or some variation of it.

[Chris]

That 1000 maximum height is just a sanity check....   

Well... ya know some of us just have to be difficult. 
Glad to hear you raised it for the next release, now maybe I can use a font big enough to actually read. 


Now all I need are scrollbars.  (hint hint)

The 100 song limit worked out perfect for me, but I guess there could be the possiblity for a 240 song jukebox like mine or some variation of it.

Scrollbars just aren't gonna happen... at that point you start going from a jukebox to a Windows app, and you start making it more mouse-intensive....

The only place I may put a scrollbar is one that quickly goes through all of the pages; that could be really useful for touchscreen users with very large collections, for who finding a song is currently an ordeal.  I might also put in a slider for volume control.

[Kevin Mullins]

Honestly, I agree with ya on the scrollbar issue. And I really don't need them anyways for the application I'm doing. The number one biggest reason I like your software is that it's NOT like a Windows app and yet very flexible and "tweakable" to suit many needs already.

But I am curious if there is a way to read the database once it's loaded to see where songs were placed in the lineup. Like open the db file in Notepad or something and be able to tell what the song number would be for a particular song. (if that made any sense)
See attached file for an example.

ya know..... I really need to update the thread I started on my project now that I'm further along with it. 

[Chris]

But I am curious if there is a way to read the database once it's loaded to see where songs were placed in the lineup. Like open the db file in Notepad or something and be able to tell what the song number would be for a particular song. (if that made any sense)

You would have to go through the steps the juke does... sort the songs into albums and sort the albums by artist, ignoring the word THE when it appeas at the beginning of an album or artist name.  However, I'll add to my request list a way to make the song list dump to a file complete with addresses.

--Chris