Music Library 2 Issues

[TuckerTFT]

Just installed and configured Music Library 2 ... what a really cool plugin :o

OK ... so now I have some issues that maybe someone can help me with:
(NOTE: All of these issues were noted running ML2 from GB-PVR running on the PC .. I haven't checked out MVP operation yet.

(1) In the wiki is stated: >>A random playlist can be generated by pressing the Red Button (Ctrl-R). On the left hand screen it will choose from all tracks from the collection.<< ... I don't find this to be the case. Rather I find that if I highlight something on the left and press CTRL+R I get selections added to the playlist from ALL things that appear on the left side of the screen (so, as an example, if I'm looking at the list by GENRE and the left screen includes Blues, Rock and Jazz as genres, when I highlight BLUES and press CTRL+R the random play list generated is from all 3 genres, not just blues). What am I doing wrong.

(2) I have my Random time set to 300 minutes. The first couple of times that I pressed CTRL+R it did, in fact generate a length playlist that enumerates to 5 hours of play time. But subsequent to that it changed to creating only a 1 hour play list, but I hadn't changed anything.

(3) Is there any way to "shuffle" a play list once it is created from adding selections to the queue, or loaded from a saved playlist? If this feature existed this plugin would be SUPREME over all others.

Unbelievably terrific work !!!!!!

[TuckerTFT]

OK ... now some really BAD news ... much of the functionality doesn't seem to work on the MVP

(1) YELLOW - will only add single tracks to the list (i.e., stuff from the bottom right list). It has no effect when pressed when something is highlighted from the title list (top right) or left side list.

(2) RED - I can't seem to get a random list generated on the MVP .. period.

I have seen that others are having some issues with the MVP, but nothing like what I'm experiencing. What could be the issue?

[TuckerTFT]

I played a bit with the MVP and found that if I started the MediaMVP Server manually from the shortcut in the GB-PVR start the functions worked well. However, if I have it start "automatically" by the recording service (by setting "number of servers to autostart" on the MVP tab to "1"), sub recommends, then I get the anomalies described in my last post regarding the MVP.

In fact, I find that none of the music plugins work right with the MediaMVP Server started automatically.

I will report this to sub in a separate thread in the support forum ... BUT, in the meantime could you tell me if you experience the same (I'm using GB-PVR v96.12)?

=================

I do, however, find that I have the same issues that I have seen reported by other MVP users ... specifically:

(1) The playlist screen does not refresh when a new song starts playing. While this doesn't hamper the primary functionality of having it play music, it would be great if this worked so one could refer to the TV screen if there was a question on what tune or artist was currently playing. But, it's easy enough, for now, to hit GREEN twice to achieve that objective.
(2) When in RANDOM play mode, the play list doesn't play all teh way through.

[HtV]

(1) The playlist screen does not refresh when a new song starts playing. While this doesn't hamper the primary functionality of having it play music, it would be great if this worked so one could refer to the TV screen if there was a question on what tune or artist was currently playing. But, it's easy enough, for now, to hit GREEN twice to achieve that objective.
(2) When in RANDOM play mode, the play list doesn't play all teh way through.

Afaik Psychik is working on this, I mentioned this to him about a week ago.
About the refreshing: I think pushing the blue button also works.
I hope something comes up for your other problems:confused:

[psycik]

(1) In the wiki is stated: >>A random playlist can be generated by pressing the Red Button (Ctrl-R). On the left hand screen it will choose from all tracks from the collection.<< ... I don't find this to be the case. Rather I find that if I highlight something on the left and press CTRL+R I get selections added to the playlist from ALL things that appear on the left side of the screen (so, as an example, if I'm looking at the list by GENRE and the left screen includes Blues, Rock and Jazz as genres, when I highlight BLUES and press CTRL+R the random play list generated is from all 3 genres, not just blues). What am I doing wrong.

I think for version 3 I had it set to what was selected was what random came from, and from a suggestion from another user it might have been reverted later on, and I may have missed the wiki entry.

I'll make this a configuration item for the next release, i.e you can either take random from All, all (which I think it is always now...although if you hit random from the top panel what happens then?? I can't test as I'm actually out of my home country....), or from what is selected with the left screen.

The reason it was reverted was for the random playlist starting after a current one finished, it would only select from the left selected tracks (so if was an album for example you'd get the same music).

(2) I have my Random time set to 300 minutes. The first couple of times that I pressed CTRL+R it did, in fact generate a length playlist that enumerates to 5 hours of play time. But subsequent to that it changed to creating only a 1 hour play list, but I hadn't changed anything.

This is strange, this should work, I dont know why is would revert from 300 mins to 60 mins.

Could you try posting a log it may give some clues...also have a look at your config file and see if it's changed there, if it does the 300 the first time maybe I have screwed up the new playlist function.

(3) Is there any way to "shuffle" a play list once it is created from adding selections to the queue, or loaded from a saved playlist? If this feature existed this plugin would be SUPREME over all others.

Unbelievably terrific work !!!!!!

Yeah you should be able to do this?? Have you tried and failed, or not tried?? I'm sure I had this functionality.


As for your MVP issues, yes i know about that, it had been reported previously. I have not yet got into my one to look at the problems. I know there is one with the playback position, and i think i have always forced that off for MVP, since it doesn't, and will never work.

I'll have to check the update playback song one. My MVP is in the bedroom, so i don't to use it for music, so I would have missed all of these.

Forgive me for the responses, as I've said I'm not in the country, and I can only really respond to from memory rather than from looking at the code.

[psycik]

(1) The playlist screen does not refresh when a new song starts playing. While this doesn't hamper the primary functionality of having it play music, it would be great if this worked so one could refer to the TV screen if there was a question on what tune or artist was currently playing. But, it's easy enough, for now, to hit GREEN twice to achieve that objective.
(2) When in RANDOM play mode, the play list doesn't play all teh way through.

Afaik Psychik is working on this, I mentioned this to him about a week ago.
About the refreshing: I think pushing the blue button also works.
I hope something comes up for your other problems:confused:

Htv, I can't remember seeing that post....I'll send myself a reminder for when i get home, and have a look at it....it may be the same sort of thing as the playback indicator (play time) that with the MVP it doesn;t ask GBPVR to update the screen. If this turns out to be the case I'll try to find a way around it, or make some sort of keypress that can instantly update it.



Your second one I'm not sure about. Although again i haven't run a full random playlist myself to test it, but I;m sure it went through more than one song, then at the end it of the playlist because the "start new" option was set, it started a new, stopped after about a second, then started a new one and off it went.

tkgafs has reported this, and I'm not really sure how i'm going to fix it. I may have to write MVP specific code to get this random stuff working.


Thanks anyways for you support and comments, and if there's anythiing else that can be added let me know, and I'll try my hardest to accommodate.

[TuckerTFT]

psycik ... Thanks for the very speedy reply.

I'll make this a configuration item for the next release, i.e you can either take random from All, all (which I think it is always now...although if you hit random from the top panel what happens then?? I can't test as I'm actually out of my home country....), or from what is selected with the left screen.

By top panel, I'm assuming you mean the top right panel (the one that lists albums when the left panel displays artists OR displays artists when the left panel displays albums or genres). If so, then I can say that this DOES indeed create a random playlist only from the item selected in the top panel.

So, then, now that I know that I can randomize from the top panel, I can accomplish my goal by making my selection from the left panel and then choosing (ALL) in the top panel and then hit RED at this point. ... That works for me. Problem solved !!!

(But, if you want to create a config item that allows the user to choose whether to make the left panel randomization work for the selected item rather than defaulting to the left panel "ALL" then go for it. While not necessary in view of what I discovered, as stated above, there may be some other benefits of doing this that I'm not thinking of ... like maybe avoiding dumb questions like this from users like me :o ).

ISSUE: The playlist screen does not refresh when a new song starts playing. (from MVP)

REPLY: it may be the same sort of thing as the playback indicator (play time) that with the MVP it doesn;t ask GBPVR to update the screen. If this turns out to be the case I'll try to find a way around it, or make some sort of keypress that can instantly update it.

I would agree that they are related issues. If you can find a way to get it to happen that would be great. But, I wouldn't suggest you go crazy over it. Again, if I (or another user) needs info on a currently playing track the simple workaround of pressing the GREEN button twice (once to toggle away from the playlist and a second time to toggle back to it) works just fine. After all, not many folks are going to have their eyes fixed to the screen every time a tune changes ... in fact, I would suspect that most folks would switch their TV sets off once they have there music selections setup and playing.

ISSUE: When in RANDOM play mode, the play list doesn't play all the way through.

REPLY: I'm not sure about. Although again i haven't run a full random playlist myself to test it, but I;m sure it went through more than one song, then at the end it of the playlist because the "start new" option was set, it started a new, stopped after about a second, then started a new one and off it went.

tkgafs has reported this, and I'm not really sure how i'm going to fix it. I may have to write MVP specific code to get this random stuff working.

As I just installed MP2 last night and haven't used it enough yet to be sure, don't take this issue as a "for sure" problem yet (unless, of course, you are getting more reports of the same). IAE, clearly you would have to reproduce it in your environment or get log entries from users experiencing the issue to even know where to begin. So, if I run into it again I will send a log snippet.

ISSUE: I have my Random time set to 300 minutes. The first couple of times that I pressed CTRL+R it did, in fact generate a length playlist that enumerates to 5 hours of play time. But subsequent to that it changed to creating only a 1 hour play list, but I hadn't changed anything.

REPLY: This is strange, this should work, I dont know why is would revert from 300 mins to 60 mins.

Could you try posting a log it may give some clues...also have a look at your config file and see if it's changed there, if it does the 300 the first time maybe I have screwed up the new playlist function.

Actually, I think I have discovered what went wrong here. Somehow after my initial setup my "Collections" had dropped pointers to paths and my paths had duplicate entries. Not sure how this happened, but after correcting it and re-scanning I haven't been able to duplicate the issue described above.

ISSUE: Is there any way to "shuffle" a play list once it is created from adding selections to the queue, or loaded from a saved playlist? If this feature existed this plugin would be SUPREME over all others

REPLY: Yeah you should be able to do this?? Have you tried and failed, or not tried?? I'm sure I had this functionality.

So, the method I used for re-shuffling the songs is when I'm in the "playlist" screen I hit the RED button (or CTRL+R from the PC). It seems to be working correctly now. When I first tried it though, I experienced an undesirable behavior (I probably just did something wrong though as I can't reproduce the behavior).

Just in case you want to know what happened that first time ... I queued 4 albums from 4 different artists that I wanted to shuffle to play in random order ... instead of re-shuffling what was currently in the playlist, it generated a brand new random list based on the (ALL) selection from the left panel of the "library" screen (even though I was choosing random from the playlist screen).

Again .. I can't get it to exhibit the aberrant behavior again so let's just forget this one. If it happens again I'll capture the log snippet and send it to you. ... So ... FANTASTIC !!!! ... with this feature working, Music Library 2 reigns SUPREME !!!

Sorry for the long post ... but, I think we covered it all. Thanks again for the terrific work on this.

========================

Oh ... almost forgot .. regarding the issue I reported where ML2 only worked if I started the MediaMVP Server manually, you may want to take a look at this post by me in the GB-PVR "Support" forum. Apparently, ML2 needs both READ and WRITE permissions to the location where the music files are stored in order to play anything. No big deal, but, out of curiosity, any particular reason why.

And .. finally (really ) ... do you intend to support WMA files and PLS playlists at some point?

[psycik]

psycik ... Thanks for the very speedy reply.

You're welcome....not much else to do when sitting in a hotel room

By top panel, I'm assuming you mean the top right panel (the one that lists albums when the left panel ... like maybe avoiding dumb questions like this from users like me :o ).

You're assumption is correct. And the reason it was changed to this method was because of the start new random playlist when current finishes. I will still investigate making it an option.

.. in fact, I would suspect that most folks would switch their TV sets off once they have there music selections setup and playing.

Correct this is how i use mine, and the MVP is really a secondary system to me. But I do realise that some users have it as their primary interface to GBPVR. Would be interesting to see what VA panel does in this situation since it displays the current track. When I get home I'll investigate any options for forcing a screen update.

Apparently, ML2 needs both READ and WRITE permissions to the location where the music files are stored in order to play anything. No big deal, but, out of curiosity, any particular reason why.

Not sure on this one at all, it shouldn't, unless the ID3 library I'm using for reading the tags requires this....but i can't think why. I never make ANY calls to write tags.

And .. finally (really ) ... do you intend to support WMA files and PLS playlists at some point?

There has been some other work with WMA but that uses Windows Media Player to play tracks. We don't actually write the code to play stuff, just use the calls that sub allows us to...essentially all we do is repackage everything into a different interface.

And the PLS they should be supported. In where you set up music paths, you can set a directory to where your pls files are, or have them included with your music, and it should read and import them.

[TuckerTFT]

Thanks for everything ... I'm really enjoying this plugin.

BTW ... I played a random generated playlist for 5 hours straight through with the MVP yesterday. No repeat of the issue I had 1st reported where it stopped before reaching the end.