can't play music in Music Library

[chud]

for some reason i have never been able to play music using the default music library so i have used the My Music plugin. currently i no longer have this plugin installed and have just been using Winamp, but would like to revisit the issue to get it working.

possibly this is a case of me just not understanding what the default plugin can do. i can play a single file fine. if i go down into a folder, highlight the track, hit play, it plays. should i be able to go up to the parent folder, highlight the folder i was just in, then hit play and get the whole album queued and playing? when i do this nothing happens, and there is no message in the log file.

[sub]

possibly this is a case of me just not understanding what the default plugin can do. i can play a single file fine. if i go down into a folder, highlight the track, hit play, it plays. [b]should i be able to go up to the parent folder, highlight the folder i was just in, then hit play and get the whole album queued and playing?[b] when i do this nothing happens, and there is no message in the log file.

No, you shouldnt be able to do that. Its not a feature of the built in Music Library.

If you're in that directory, you can use the 'Play All' button to do this.

[chud]

ah, i see. so, is there a way to queue up and play one album, then go to another album and add all those songs to the queue?

i guess there is also no way to see the current queue?

with My Music being dead, is there any interest in pumping up the default plugin to grab the best features from My Music? i think it was quite popular. i would think there would of handful of enhancements that would make it all i would ever need...

[sub]

To be honest, I'm not that interested in music, which is why I've only provided a fairly simple file based music player. Music is also one of those things that can be pretty complex, with several potental ways to do things, and if I attempted a full featured music plugin I'm sure half the users would prefer it worked a different way - so I thought it'd be better to leave it to others that are more passionate about it.

There are other plugins like MusicLibrary2 etc, where developers more interested in Music have spent more time on these sorts of features: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/MusicLibrary2

[chud]

gottcha. i guess with 23.2 hrs per day spent developing / supporting the features that you have, something has got to give.

i have tried ML2, but i prefer the folder view of My Music and Media Library to the mp3 tag listings of ML2.

maybe a new view can be added to ML2, or someone else will step in to fill the void.

thanks for the info.

[HtV]

ML2 is using a database with id3-tags, so I don't think it will give you a directorybase look. Because it's using a database it's a lot quicker with large collections.
What's your "problem" with id3-tag-based? (just curious). I guess you have your music organised in folders per artis etc. I don't see a big difference.

[chud]

yes, i've got my music well organized in a directory structure. dbase approaches are only quicker if you need to know about every file for sorting and filtering tasks, and of course have to be continually synced with the underlying files. i do fine with my 60GB+ collection just navigating the tree structure.

what i don't like about ID tags is that some of my music does not have tags, or the tags are incorrect / inconsistent. i also have music organized into some sub-groupings like Christmas, soundtracks, dinner music, etc. sort of a combination of genre and album. i find this makes it easier to maintain my collection and quickly find and export music to portables.

of course i could edit tags and get at least half of the way there, but i would prefer not to rely on them.

i figure there are certainly benefits to both systems, which is probably why both My Music and ML2 are popular plugins.

[rscheller]

Have you tried Music Player?

Might want to see if it works for you and AFAIK it's still being supported.

[HtV]

@ Chud,
I see what you mean. It can be a pain to get all the id3-tags right.
I must admit when I use my computer/server to play music I often use the explorer .
wrt portable players: They are apain in the $%#@^, because there are so many different kinds of software. Sony e.g. makes very good/nice mp3 players but their software, which you have to use, really sucks.
Creative does a lot better in that area.