flash frontend...the journey begins

[browndog1978]

I thought I would start a thread to track my progress in developing a jukebox frontend with Adobe Flex, Flash and Air.
For those that dont know, Adobe Air is a runtime that allows you to develop desktop applications in Flex and Flash.

Anyway, below is a link to a video of a test I did to download album art from amazon.
.

This is the first time I have used either flex or air for development. I think it went well. It uses the amazon API to get the album art from the amazon site.

The source for this can now be downloaded from:
http://www.2pha.com/flexExamples/albumCoverFinder/AmazonCoverFinder.zip
You must add your own Amazon Web Services ID and add the papervision3d source folder to your project

[gonzo90017]

Good luck. 

[Lilwolf]

Nice idea!  I've been using Flex/Flash/ActionScript at work for the last few weeks for a new project.  Not a bad scripting language and not as slow as I initially expected.  Biggest problem I've found so far is that its single threaded so no background loading

Whats the long term plans for the frontend? 

[browndog1978]

At first the plan was just to make a quick frontend for the juke Im building my Mum, but the more I experiment, the more I want to add.
I will also release it for others to use if they want.
Depending on my spare time and what the next version of Adobe Air has to offer I might keep the development going after the initial build. I would like to incorporate some sort of cd ripping mechanism, but Air does not seem to currently support optical drives.
My main goal atm is just to get the whole juke finished before my Mums 50th on the 10th of march, but I was offered a fulltime position as a flash developer today so that might not be too easy.

I will keep this thread updated as I progress, though I wont be doing anything tonight as I am halfway through a bottle of scotch

[browndog1978]

Hi Guys,
Its been a long time since I started this thread, but finally today I started development of my Air jukebox front end (work is taking all of my time).
I also won an ebay auction today for a whole heap of music videos so am planning on incorporating video and multi-monitor support.
Anyway.......
I would like some people opinions on what they find useful and what they would like in a jukebox front end, as I have no real experience in this.
I would also like to know what sort of file structure people usually use for storing their music. ATM Im using    artist>album>song
Thanks

[gonzo90017]

Well since you asked. A genre function would be nice. My collection is currently set up like this: Genre>Hard Rock>Artist>Albums. I have a large collection so navigating by letters is nice. Also a search function.

[Lilwolf]

What I find useful is pages that can work with low resolutions on smaller monitors.  (IE, I have a 14" touchscreen that only works at 640x480).  So skinnable to some degree would be great! 

videos would be nice...  especially if it can be minimized / maximized nicely by touching the screen (ie, start one, then you can touch the screen, it minimizes to some other locaiton, then you can select the next songs).

a way to reset all your songs in queue.  And possibly turn off repeats.  This is if you have kids who LOVE one song from kidsbop and will play it over and !@# over again.

touch pads for numbers is nice, but it takes a lot of space.  it would be cool to have them as an option only.  It takes up a lot of room.  Some love them...  Some would rather just press on a start button.

But the ability to increase the size of the buttons is a big thing. 

Random of course.

Launch outside application.  Then stop it later with another command when starting another song.  Almost like a screen saver.  Why?  Well, Rhapsody has a radio function which is GREAT, and you can launch it from the command line.  Turn it off from the command line.  ect..  I only wish that I could tell when a song was finished playing.  Then you could also launch any song out of the millions...  (well, you can, you just don't know when to play the next song)

Also, source... Since I have been playing with Flex a lot recently, I would love to see it!  Especially the auto art download!

[AussieJuke]

Launch outside application.  Then stop it later with another command when starting another song.  Almost like a screen saver.  Why?  Well, Rhapsody has a radio function which is GREAT, and you can launch it from the command line.  Turn it off from the command line.  ect..  I only wish that I could tell when a song was finished playing.  Then you could also launch any song out of the millions...  (well, you can, you just don't know when to play the next song)

This part can be achieved with the recently developed Jukebox Plugin System (JPS) standard. There's a quite a few threads about it on this forum.

[Barry Barcrest]

Launch outside application.  Then stop it later with another command when starting another song.  Almost like a screen saver.  Why?  Well, Rhapsody has a radio function which is GREAT, and you can launch it from the command line.  Turn it off from the command line.  ect..  I only wish that I could tell when a song was finished playing.  Then you could also launch any song out of the millions...  (well, you can, you just don't know when to play the next song)

This part can be achieved with the recently developed Jukebox Plugin System (JPS) standard. There's a quite a few threads about it on this forum.

JPS Uses DLL's for plugins i don't think you can interact with those from flash can you?

[browndog1978]

yeh   no chance for DLLs.
I am making it for a 15" screen and will be trying to incorporate support for different resolutions.
I am storing all the tracks in a database so there will definitely be searching.
I will probably not be supporting videos in the first release.
There will be a screensaver system where the juke will contact a server (if online) and search for new screensavers stored on my server and allow the new ones to be downloaded (hopefully this will go according to plan).

What I really need to know atm is if it would be better to organize the tracks according to the folders they are in, or by reading the ID3 tags.
Doing it by the ID3 tags would be better in that it will easily allow for searching and listing according to the tags.
The downside is is that mp3 files dont necessarily contain ID3 tags.

I'm leaning towards the ID3 option.
What do you guys think?

[gonzo90017]

NO WAY. Most files i've "ripped" have no ID3 tag info. I have them setup up by Genre>Hard Rock>Artist>Albums

[nipsmg]

If you can, I'd say to give the option between Dir structure and ID3.

browndog:  Take a look at something like Tag & Rename.  It'll allow you to fill in ID3 tags based on filename/directory structure.

  (i.e., if you have something like c:\Metallica\S&M\1-The Ecstacy Of Gold.mp3, you can define a mask like c:\%1\%2\%3-%4.mp3, where %1 is artist, %2 is album, etc, and it'll autofill your mp3's).

[browndog1978]

It seems allowing for everyone different file structure is not going to be easy.

The way I have it is musicDirectory/artist/album/song.mp3  , but my songs do not have track number in the title ...silly me, but all my songs do have ID3 tags.
This means that when listing by folder/filename the track can not be ordered by track number, hmmmm, though I could write a program to add the track number to the beginning on the filename.

[AussieJuke]

Assuming the tag contains the track number data, use TagScanner to add them to the filename. It's free and very good.

[Barry Barcrest]

It seems allowing for everyone different file structure is not going to be easy.

Welcome to the world of developing jukebox software for more than just yourself.

I just went with requiring correct tags. At the end of the day it was to much work to spend trying to support every different file structure. You can use something like how tag and rename does it's tagging from structure to make it flexible but i didn't want to spend hours if not days on developing that.

[browndog1978]

Thanks for the tip on tagscanner, made life easier.

I have decided not to read ID3 information.
I have also decided to only develop it with my file structure in mind.
it will be musicDir/artist/album/trackNo_trackName
eg. c:/myMusic/The Prodigy/Experience/01_Jericho.mp3

Im moving house over the next couple of weeks, so an update in a few weeks

[Space Fractal]

I think many/some users c:/myMusic/The Prodigy/Experience/01 - Jericho.mp3, so keep that in mind. Some even might have 01 Jericho. You could let users tell with "stop sign" it use, like " " or " - " or something like that, and then remove it a lone with tracknumber to get the correct title.

In MultiJuke recently I just added a Mixed File Format feature, which can search where the difference start between 2 tracks (typical spaces, - and _ should been same places as the start of the filename.

[browndog1978]

Just to let you all know....I am still working on this and plan to have it done by Christmas.
Im also waiting for version 1.5 of adobe air so I can make an ipod like album browser without using papervision.

[gonzo90017]

Nice to know.