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[RhinoBanga]

I just spent ages creating a CD for one of my kids to listen in his stereo.

Here were my issues:

1)  Everytime I choose right-click and the CD burner MC kept asking "Please select CD writing mode" until I went to "CD, DVD & Handhelds" and clicked on my CD player.   Annoying to say the least.

2)  As I was adding tracks there was no visual indication as to how many minutes was left on my CD (I was doing an audio CD) so I had to keep going to "CD, DVD & Handhelds" and click on my CD player in order to find this out.   Unfortunately it takes MC over 10 seconds to display this screen

3) After burning MC wiped out the playlist so I could not create a CD cover ... why??   Could it not keep the list (so you can decide if you want to print it or do something with the list with the right-click menu) and the next time you send a track to the CD burner it popped up a box saying "Do you wish to append or overwrite the current list?".


I don't think it's as fluid/user friendly as it could be.

What are other people's experience/views on this?


Media Center Registered 9.0.143 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2831 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 607 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920)
Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer

Ripping /   Drive E:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Drive F:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:IDE   Read speed:Max
 Drive I:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: No /  Calc replay gain: No /  Copy volume: 32767
 Eject after ripping: No /  Play sound after ripping: No  

Burning /  Drive E: LITE-ON  LTR-32123S         Addr: 2:0:0  Speed:32  MaxSpeed:32  Use MJ Engine:Yes
 Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: No
 Use playback settings: Yes /  Normalization: None

[JimH]

Want to moonlight, Rhino?  

[ZRocker]

Agree, Rhino.

Try doing a data CD and setting up & renaming folders during the process...painful.

If MC just didn't take so long 'to do something' everytime you click on the CD-RW drive node and the folders it'd be worlds 'better'.

I agree that having to go to the CD-RW drive node everytime to see how far you are and how much you have left is not 'cool' either (cumbersome).

[dragyn]

When I do it...very seldom. I just add everything I want. When I go to the CD, I remove songs that don't fit. I don't have the problem of the tree being slow though. It's instant.

Sure enough, I do agree there should be something that shows the progress when adding stuff.

Listening to: 'Cumbersome' by 'Seven Mary Three' on Media Center 9.0

[JimH]

If MC just didn't take so long 'to do something' everytime you click on the CD-RW drive node and the folders it'd be worlds 'better'.

Z,
I think there is something different about some machines or drives where this is happening.  You could help a lot if you would start a new thread on the problem and see if you can get people to post enough info on their setups that we have a chance of finding it.

[MachineHead]

I'm in the middle of a rip right now, so I can't check this. But if you drag files to the sticky target and use the previous and next arrows, if added to the toolbar, is it any faster?

I agree that it should be a little easier to use though. I have not used it in some time, but Easy CD Creater has a simple and easy (no pun) to use drag and drop method. Showing both the target disc, with time and size remaining, and the directory, or cd, where the files are coming from.

I understand that this is a feature that will not be added at this time to MC. But given the amount grumbling over the interface in the past couple of incarnations of MJ-MC, this should really be thought about for the next issue of this MC.

Could just be me, but MC has so many features now it is hard to keep track of them. I know a few people still have wants and wishes that were left out. But would an interface overhaul be much trouble for the next version?

PS- Not being overly critical here, just having random thought or two...

[dragyn]

But would an interface overhaul be much trouble for the next version

I would think so. I like the new features but everytime they redo everything, more bugs show up, longer it takes, etc. I'm not dissin' you guys. I know it's hard to do this stuff. Just look at v7 to v8. That was a reworked. Then from v8 to v9, they did more rework...unicode, images, etc.

I'm hoping that v10 will be packed full of new features based on v9. That would rock. There are tons of features this program could use. Just look at the wish list.

[MachineHead]

Just how many features does it really need though? It is starting to get close to the 'Jack of all trades, master of none' when so many are features added, and issues with current bugs are being bypassed.

I really believe it should be hammered out much more thoroughly before release now. Just look at the release thread and see what is in there.

Then again, if Jim and company split this into two distinct products it may be a moot issue. For what it's worth, I still think this would be viable option. There are so many people who do not need , or want, the video, Tivo, photo options now standard in MC. Just the data handling that it does so well.

[RhinoBanga]

Want to moonlight, Rhino?  

LOL ... just email me the code Jim and I'll see what I can do :D :D :D


Seriously though I would have thought #1 and #3 are minor bugs that would take an hour or two to fix but would improve usability no end.

Number 2 is the tough one.   The best idea that I have would be that if you add something to a cd burned a floating popup window appears showing you how many tracks and the current time.   The quick'n'easy solution however would be to change the menu text, as an example:

  CD, DVD & Handhelds - CD Burner (E:)

Becomes:

  CD, DVD & Handhelds - CD Burner (E:) - 12% / 2 Tracks / 9:45 used / 70:00 left

[nila]

Fully agree with this point - both the burning and the GUI re-do for v10.

First point - the GUI.
For v10 I really think the biggest enhancement that could be done would be to make the main screen so it could permenantly be two screens.
Make it so it looked lilke the playing now screen with a top half and a bottom half where users can select what geoes in either half totally independantly with no restrictions in a similar manner to how we can do: Visualisations, Track Info etc in the playing now window.
The options for the screens (both top and bottom one) would be:
- Library
- Playlist
- Playing Now
- Portable Device (burner, etc)
- Track Info
- Visualisations

They're the main ones I can think of now.
Would increase the useability and amount of info available no ends.

Another big GUI change needed is the CD Burning screen.
It's great being able to see exactly what order every single track on the disc is going to be burnt in but I think is a VERY specialised way of wanting to be able to see the data. Most people want to see the folders that are going to be put on the disk and then be able to go into these to see their contents, just like in Nero,etc.



As for the burning issues mentioned, I agree with Rhino bigtime.The other day I spent 3 hours going through all my music choosing my all time favourites and sending them to the burner. I finally went to the burner screen and discovered I'd gone way over the limits and so had to spend another half hour choosing which songs to remove. If I could have seen it was full or nearly full before I filled it then it would have saved me at least an hour.


One possible way of doing this would be so to add an extra screen to the 'properties' pane that automatically appears when people start using the cd burner. It would display the number of tracks, time used, time left etc.


The wiping of the playlist after a burn is the BIGGEST pain and the most non logical feature to me. Every time I burn a CD in MJ and forget about this it drives me crazy. I want it to auto save the burn playlist, not remove it totally not even letting me be able to manually save it after the burn.

As for the time delay in the burner screen updating, viewing etc this is a HUGE pain. The burn screen should update and display just as fast as ANY other playlist and any checking of the hardware etc should only be done when we click on the 'start burn' button. At this point it can do any checks it wants on the hardware to tell us of any problems. Possibly maybe doing one single check at the very beginning only as well. Not as we're using it. It's VERY slow and a big let down of MJ's burning capabilities.

[10sne1]

Anyone else notice the tags placed with the burned tracks are off?  I set the order of tracks and the CD burn was correct, but I couldn't tell.  When I placed my new audio CD into my DVD drive it read the tags in the wrong order!  

[JeffB]

Why not just have the little CD Burning dialog box pop up whenever you add music to the burner?  You can use it no matter which window you are in, be it Media Library, Playing Now, etc.  You can switch windows and still have access the the burning options.