Which musicplayer ?

[libelle109]

Hi!

Just started using GB-PVR - what a great piece of software - thx SUB!

At the momemt I'm looking for a plugin to play my MP3 musicfiles through the MVP-box, but I haven't found the right one...
I'm having app. 9000 MP3, and I need a easy way to search them (like iTunes). I found a plugin called JukeBox which had that possibility, but is it still being developed ? Can't see it anywhere in the Wiki.

I know I can make m3u playlist in iTunes, but I need the search option from my MVP-box.
Any suggestion - or should I develop YAMP

Best regards
Martin
Denmark

[nightwalker]

I also have a large mp3 collection. I use a combination of Jukebox for standard and random play(available on the old wiki) and the standard music library for playing a whole album when i feel that need.

[tkgafs]

I also have a large mp3 collection. I use a combination of Jukebox for standard and random play(available on the old wiki) and the standard music library for playing a whole album when i feel that need.

I have a large music collection, and have tried pretty much all the music plugins the one I'm now using pretty much all the time is music library 2 which builds a db of all your music.

its easy to play random tracks or play an album by a particular artist

its main failings most of which are being quickly ironed out by the plugins author, are as follows

it does not currently do continous randon play you need to reselect more randon tracks as reqd [ the time length for randon playing is specified in the config]

it does not currently deal particularily well with compliation various artist albums

it cant have multiple dbs or collections so different members of the house can listen to different music when they are using the system

I used to use jukebox all the time and it was what originally brought me to gbpvr in the first place

I also use musicplayer as it has the ability to have multiple collections, so its easy to have say all the christmas music in one folder, or different childrens music in different folders

If you go down the musiclibrary2 path you will of course suddenly discover quite how many ways you can spell "the beatles" in the mp3 id tags

tkgafs

[nightwalker]

Your Beatles example brings to light exactly why it drives me crazy to have music sorted by tag. Aside from the mispellings it doesn't do well with compliations, like you say, or even things like my wifes soundtrack and musical collections. Unless you can get the tagged db to sort everywhich way a user can think of it's a very very long list of artists you may never have heard of. I keep my music in genre/artist/album/songs order for a reason. it's easy to drop a noindex file in the christmas music so it doesn't play in july, or keep the kids music out of adult parties. etc.

someday someone will write the perfect music app but i'm thinking probably not. too many ideas on what makes it perfect.

[LilY0da]

A tag based plugin requires you to have perfect tags indeed.
But that isn't as hard as you think. I use MediaMonkey, and it's as easy as selecting groups of songs and drag and drop to a tree on the left to retag correctly. It can also auto tag from the filenames, auto tag from amazon, etc...

Retagging all your beatles files to have a common name would take about 1 minute of work in mediamonkey. I mention that tool cause that's the one I use, but I think there's a ton of others out there.

The good side of tag management applications is that once all your files are tagged correctly, you can make complex searches and create playlists accordingly. Like search all rock music of the 90s for when you're in a comatose mood and have the playlist generated. Or have all music you rated 5 or higher, etc...

Regarding compilations, ID3V2 tags have 2 tags for artists. The track artist and the album artist. This allows you to set a album artist to "Various", or "Soundtrack", and set the correct artist on each track. Not supported by our GBPVR plugins yet, but maybe someday it will.

EDIT: been reading about it, iTunes also stores a specific bit in a ID3V2 frame called TCMP to flag a track as part of a compilation. All you need is a player to read that bit and group the tracks under "Various Artists" instead of the track artist flag...

[nightwalker]

So right you are about ID3v2 tags. I wish more would use them. All my compliation directory and albums have embedded cover art in the file. the only plug in that is able to read them so far is the jukebox and that's in dire need of updating. The ID3v2 does in fact have album artist and song artist within. It does make it nice.

As a side note the search feature for most that i've seen are fine and dandy with a keyboard, you can get turough pretty quick to find what you want. On the MVP it's dog slow trying to type using either the onscreen keyboard or the remote. It's far faster to scroll thru and pick music as you go.

Sounds like we're all waiting for that perfect music app to be written yet.

If course all this doesn't help the poor person who asked the question in the first place about what music player.

All i can say to them is there isn't all that many so try them all and stick with the one or two that work best for you. Everyone seems to have just a little different view or different take on how music should be played, cataloged and searched for.

[LilY0da]

MusicLibrary2 can read the album art tag.

And to help the poor soul that started the thread, I'd say:
- if you use a file structure, MyMusic version2.
- if you use tags, or are willing to get the tags cleaned up on your MP3 library, MusicLibrary2. MyMusic3 will be both tag and file based, but it's not out yet.

And regarding the playlists, I agree, creating playlists on the MVP is a nightmare. But, what's good is to have link to m3u playlists in your MVP. Calmly build your playlists with a good tool outside of GBPVR, and then the MVP can play those playlists. I have 6 or so playlists that mediamonkey keeps updated. Depending on the kind of mood I am in, I select one of the playlist on the MVP.

I am not waiting for a PVR app to manage playlists and tags. I believe it will never be as efficient as a dedicated application, running on a PC with a keyboard and mouse. What I'm waiting for is a PVR app that dynamic imports m3u files generated by one of those dedicated apps.

[Jeff]

What I'm waiting for is a PVR app that dynamic imports m3u files generated by one of those dedicated apps.

The Music Player plug-in should do this. As they get created on the PC should they should pop up in the list on the fly on the MVP. The Music Player is best suited if you have your files orgnaized in some sort of meaningful dircetory structure.

Jeff

[spyder40]

Jeff,

Are you still actively developing musicplayer? It works great and is the only one I use. The only thing I find missing is the ability to download album art. Unfortunately I use iTunes now and it puts the album art in the tag instead of a jpg in the directory. Or is there a way/utility to strip the art out of the tag and put it in the directory?

[psycik]

tkgafs, just been looking around based on a comment that you made about ML2. That tag you mentioned, TCMP, if you look in the ID3 specification it doesn't actually exist, it's apparently an Apple itunes thing.

I was looking at supporting this tag, but the library (UltraID3) that I use doesn't recognise it.