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[Matt]

There's an update version of the Media Jukebox 9.0 preview here, but FIRST PLEASE READ THIS:

IMPORTANT-- This is only a preview -- some things don't work, some things crash, and your data may not be safe. Don't use this preview with files that can't be replaced. If you don't consider yourself an expert with Media Jukebox, please wait for a later release. Backup your database (and files) before doing anything else.

You will have to delete your .jmd (database files) from the folder: C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\Data or similar. You will lose your playlists.

If you're sure you want to continue, you can download the preview here:

http://ftp://ftp.jriver.com/pub/downloads/music/MediaJukebox90059.exe

Notable changes:

-New smartlist / search interface (only half finished)
-TV time-shifting (not finished either -- but "Pause" works)
-Added library view scheme grouping
-Tree updating much smarter and smoother
-DVD playback works again
-Many cover art / auto cover art retrieval improvements
-Lots of usability touch ups and crash-type bug fixes
-Album analyzer now also considers album duration when deciding if an album is complete or not
-Double click in the left tree will now always play (or do the configured double-click action)
-Display bars don't pop-up automatically when watching movies, etc in full screen
-Better performance when playing multiple files with the Media Player engine.

Keep in mind that at this stage in the game, we're getting more bug reports than we can fix each build. Please keep a list of bugs you find, and re-report anything that doesn't get fixed each build.

Thanks for your help, support, and patience.

-Matt
JRiver

[DocLotus]

Whoopie... Here we go again.  ?

[bennyd]

Hi Matt,

In the future, are we gonna have the possibility to have our customised (added) fields in the file properties ?
The only way I can fill in a custom field is via the media library view (not via the file properties anymore like the first build of MJ9)

Is the Genre field gonna be a dropdown again in the future so we can select from existing genres without having to type them in (and maybe misstype) ?

[Griff]

Looks good Matt.

Big improvement.

Couple of bugs.

TV:
On scan for tv channels
Error mesg.

MJTV control
get_available tv formats
returned ox603
IT does not include analog video_pal_I
forcing analog video_pal_I

You then get the scan screen again and upon rescan its ok.

TV pause:
changes video size- narrow horz. and larger ver.
also locks up sound card.
(AIW7500 and Santa Cruz)

I dont think Web Media is being work on at this point in time ?
If so , it doesnt work.

Thanks
Griff

[JimH]

Griff,
Start TV.  Go to full screen.  Right click and try changing display options.  Use the option called something like "same as desktop resolution" near the top.

[Skinnyfatz]

;DAll in all, lots of improvement. However, the one thing that hasn't been fixed, but hass been reported several times, is the fact that when you try to convert the bitrate of a file, ie: from 128 to 320 or from mp3 to ape, none of the plugins work. they all do the same thing, they decode and normalize the file, but when it's time to encode, it just hangs and does nothing. Anychance this will be addressed soon?

[Griff]

Thanks JimH

I tried desktop res.
Looks like its working, but sound card gets lock up.
Also pic also is streched vertically.

Thanks again
Griff

[nila]

LOVE the new Media Library seperation of Audio/Video and Image.
Simple idea but one I'd never have thought of.
Little things like that where you have pre-done examples of what MJ can do really help new beginners. They see the feature and use it, then as they get more confident they try work out how it's done and do their own using the examples.

The Wizards great too. Could you add one for: Search Criteria on the View Scheme's as well. It'd make it a LOT easier I think for a lot of users and give people more sense as to what it is.

[Doof]

And on the View Schem Group search criteria!

Guys, this is looking really great! I love the new View Scheme Groups! They're exactly what I was talking about. I'm glad you made it possible to create our own. That's going to create a lot of new possiblities. I just have to think of some. When I first asked for this feature, I was only thinking of Audio, Video, and Image.

I also think the direction the Smartlist Wizard is taking is a huge step! I love how the Smartlist now just shows an easy to read Summary and hides the nitty gritty stuff. I have on suggestion, though. I noticed that if you create a long list of Artists (for example), it only displays so many characters. I wouldn't change that, but I would add a tooltip that would show the entire list.

I also love that it now hides the Playlist ID number. That's exactly the behavior I was pushing for for 8. The whole thing is just so much cleaner and friendlier than it was before. And it still keeps the quick and dirty artist= album= stuff for those who want that.

It's so beautiful... so beautiful...
They should have sent a poet...

[Doof]

Bug

Slideshow : If there is a video in the Playing Now playlist, MJ will play the video but then all of the images in slideshow are cleared.

System Info

Media Jukebox  9.0.59
Install Path: C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\

CPU: AMD Athlon 950 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 261 MB, Free - 52 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106
ComCtl32.dll: 6.00.2800.1106
Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106
Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1106
wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer

[Griff]

Well I dont know Doof

Had 3 beers waiting for my 14 year old daughter to call.

Then I hit your post

Now I feel like I had 40

Goodnight

Griff

[Matt]

Just a few notes:

-Database field adding / customization isn't working yet.  In fact, if you use it, you may goof things up.  Look for it next week.

-The new search interface will be used any place that searches are done including quick search and library view schemes. Just give it a build or two.

-Thanks for any ideas for the new search system.  It's a work in progress, but hopefully with your help, it'll turn out to be a nice improvement.

Thanks everyone.

-Matt

[daven]

the program crashes whenever i click on an album in the media library.  is this a known bug?  using windows xp.

[nila]

Just wanted to say I think it's coming along great with the new Search Wizard Matt. Definitely a step in the right direction.
Not too into the icon but I imagine that's only just a quick put in, not the final one. Definitely going the right way along with all the example smart lists your putting in etc.

GOOD GOOD GOOD AMAZING, INCREDIBLE WOW WORK

[Hawk]

Since it is a bit early in the develop stage I am not going to try it yet. But I am curious how it looks. Could someone post a screenshot?

[bennyd]

- Nothing from WEB MEDIA (or any streaming) works anymore

- My NEO Jukebox is still showing as a Device in MJ but when clicking on it, MJ crashes

- Plating now list doesn't follow the now playing song in the list (the icon follows but you have to manually scroll down to see what's playing)

[sekim]

Got a question:

Why the change to bitmaps from gifs for the Player Display (etc.) in v9? I couldn't figure it out right away when I changed to a display I made for v8. I finally opened both xml docs to see why I was getting static.

Are they faster or just not finalized as of yet?

PS: Isn't this nicer?

[JimH]

doof,
If you post bugs like that, your chances are a little less than zero.  

[sekim]

In the Auto Smartlists' for audio, the Random--one Audio CD worth may have some problems. I think there should be a way to pick which type of file is going to be sent to this list. If you want ape or wav files it would make more sense, I think, then mp3 or some other lossy format.

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer lossless or .wav for this type of thing. Is there a way to implement this?

[Woodman]

This version won't save album art internal and I question if previous versions of 9 did. There is always
artwork(jpg files)  in my /data/cover Art dir, If I delet
the files NO THUMBS. It seems as if the files (which had
artwork internal) have been stripped of images.  

[drosoph]

TINY BUG: TOP HITS uses the Field Name "Number Plays" as its criteria, rather than the numberplays= parameter ... what this means is that if you rename the Number Plays field (as I do b/c that is too long .. I prefer "Plays") the Top Hits list goes away ....

Can you change the search parameter on Top Hits to use NumberPlays= instead of the field title ?? (or whatever is going on there) ...

[Mirko]

Search wizard: It looks quite good; there is a bug:

If adding "or"s between different setting in the text-mode, it switches to the wizard type automatically. If I like to edit these (removing one condition), there seems to be two spaces instead of an expected one

Suggestion:
Let me switch it off, as I worked hard to remember the things, I'm faster without wizards (and as far as I know, I can't switch to textmode without typing all again).

Custom-Fields:
I can add and edit them. But they are not part of the property box, so I cannot fill many files at once but have to edit every file for itself.

[dragyn]

I've been playing with this a lot lately and here are some observations..

I added the Auto Smartlists (music) to the Audio view scheme. This is really cool cause you can see the items in an artist/album type of of way. The only problem that arises is for smartlists that use a ~ identifier.

Like ~s=650. It will show you a limit of 650mb like it should but the artists are different than the ones shown in the tree. Anything that's random shows this type of behavior.

What would be nice is if MJ didn't update anything until a refresh. This would including adding songs to a playlist. Also if any ~sort order could be applied to the current sort when viewing, like "Top hits -- 100 most played".

-

Another thing is if I import a streaming audio file, MJ crashes a lot. Using search features like folder=, filename=, etc will kill it. This is a critical bug on my list

Great work so far.

[SBrandsborg aka Mouseman]

Nice

[Yaobing]

Griff,

MJTV control
get_available tv formats
returned ox603
IT does not include analog video_pal_I
forcing analog video_pal_I

Oops, this should have been cleaned out. It was inserted in an effort to track down a problem encountered by a British user.

TV pause:
changes video size- narrow horz. and larger ver.
also locks up sound card.
(AIW7500 and Santa Cruz)

Try do some configuration before using Pause.
Right-Click within the video window while TV is playing and choose TV Options->Configure TV. In the dialog window double click "Video Capture Pin ..." in the list window on the right hand side. Choose a Color Space / Compression setting (the first one in the list usually is the best), and then click OK.  This may fix your video size problem.

Also in the Configure TV dialog, click "Audio Connection" button on upper left corner. Check "There is physical connection between my TV card and sound card", then choose your sound card from the first combo box, and choose "Line In" or "Auxiliary" or whichever channel your connection is actually made. This way Pausing will only mute that particular channel instead of the entire mixer device.

[nila]

After I rip an album I ALWAYS then create a .sfv file for the album along with a .m3u playlist file.
It just helps me to keep the album organised and be able to check it for consistence.
Right now I have to resort to a different program to do this each time I rip an album. It's really annoying and a waste of time and effort just switching to the other program to do this.
Could you please add the ability for MJ to do this automatically. They're both pretty simple things to do.
The .m3u could even be done with a bat file simply going: dir *.mp3 > playlist.m3u although this obviously isn't the nicest method of doing it.
The .sfv is pretty much as easy again.

Any chance for v9? or even 8 for that matter

[RemyJ]

View Grouping:  Great feature!
Will we be able to customize columns and thumbnail vs list by group?

Problems...

• CD-Text still not being read
  
• Sequence Numbers in CD,DVD & Handhelds are still all zeros.
  
• Still having problems with track entries not being written correctly in Media Library.  Someone else reported this as well...   http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=beta;action=display;num=1032612015
  
• Column resizing still not working.  Auto-resize is off.  Only saves the first of 2 resize operations.  For example, resize a column and change views and the size isn't saved.  Resize a column, then immediately resize it again and the first resize is saved.
  
• Media server is still returning local references I.E.  "c:\usr\music..." instead of "m01p://host/c:\usr\music...".  (no problem for now).
  
• If you select a CD drive and change the artist or album for a CD prior to ripping, the original version is saved in the removables database AND the new version is saved but with (0x00000000) as the volume id.  The result is that if you put the CD back in, you get the old info instead of the corrected info.
  
• Whenver I select a smartlist in the tree, the list draws twice.  For the "Random" lists, there are different items in the list the first and second times.
  
• When you drag and drop Playlists into Playlist Groups any groups that have been expanded and collapsed at leasts once re-expand themselves.
  
• CDs occasionally won't play.  If you send the entire CD to playing now, the player skips to track 2 and stops.  Press play again and it advances to track 3 and stops.  Restarting the app sometimes fixes the problem.
  
• Occasionally, the entire library shows up as "incomplete" in both the Media Library/Album Type view and the "Tasks - Incomplete Albums" smartlist.  Restarting the app sometimes fixes the problem.  Oddly enough, this seems related to the previous problem.  If everything is in "incomplete" I can play a CD.  If everything is split into complete and incomplete, I can't play a CD.  Maybe just coincidence.
  
  

Remy

[Mirko]

Bugs:

• cover-art is not included into the mp3 file, even if I select the apropriate option; it was stored there a few build before, if I remember correctly. I tried changing other fields parallel to this (to force writing of the mp3), but this doesn't help. The checkbox is switched off, if I re-select the files. And the external mp3-tagger I use to check the MJ9-taggins, shows no image added. I also tried using "apply changes" without success
• "Add view scheme" is not possible in a view scheme category (e.g. "audio"). I have to add new schemes at the root and move them to the appropiate category. This is not exactly easy :-)
• Right clicking on an album-tree-item on the left doesn't add the album-songs in the correct order (track #). They are however sorted correctly in the view and if I add them by selecting them and then adding, it works.

[sekim]

More question about the auto smartlists-audio.

1) What are you basing incomplete albums on? I have a bunch that I consider done. Yet this particular list draws the entire library. This I'd actually like to hear something on. If for no other reason then to see if there were more for me to do with the files in question.

2) Favorites-This one may be a toss up as to what a person considers the rating should be. Numerically, in my opinion, should be 1 as the top dog. If it were symbols (read-stars like the new forum), I could see 4 or 5 as being the top rated. Could be confusing if you rated all your albums the opposite way. Yet another reason I have not rated anything until this gets hashed out.

[DocLotus]

Sometimes when playing a list of songs, a song will produce the following error when it is about to be played...

"Playback Engine: Media Jukebox is unable to acquire license for this file.  Windows Media Error: 0x80070020".

However I can double click on the same song & it will always play.

Am using WMA files.

[Quisp]

Regarding cover art. I'm using another utility for getting tag info and it's saving the cover art to the tag. The current build of MJ9 does not display embedded cover art.

BTW: What is the better approach regarding this? Embed the cover art in the tag, or save as an external jpg.

[nila]

Save as a seperate file.
The main reason being, well there's two, one it makes it a LOT easier to change the image at any point which is always nice.
Secondly if you add it directly into the image it means that each image has an overhead for the picture, if the picture is say 500kb then it means each file is this much bigger. For an album of 12 songs this means the album is 12x500kb bigger due to the cover art - which is 6Mb. As a seperate file it's only 500kb for all the songs

It's nice having it inside just so that each song has every all the data to do with itself included in it. Just a big overhead though.

[Mirko]

The current build does not include cover art into the files. I tried that with different ways, no success.
But it displays the included cover art from older builds.

[RemyJ]

More question about the auto smartlists-audio.

1) What are you basing incomplete albums on? I have a bunch that I consider done. Yet this particular list draws the entire library. This I'd actually like to hear something on. If for no other reason then to see if there were more for me to do with the files in question.

2) Favorites-This one may be a toss up as to what a person considers the rating should be. Numerically, in my opinion, should be 1 as the top dog. If it were symbols (read-stars like the new forum), I could see 4 or 5 as being the top rated. Could be confusing if you rated all your albums the opposite way. Yet another reason I have not rated anything until this gets hashed out.

I think "Incomplete" albums are ones where the track numbers aren't  sequential or maybe it's ((lasttrack - firsttrack) + 1 != trackcount) but I also think it's broken.  If you restart the app a few times, you might get them to be categorized correctly.

Yeah, all my favorites were rating 1 and I used 5 to mark the ones I'd looked at.  

[Quisp]

Nila,

Thanks, make a lot of sense regarding a separate file for cover art, however my filesizes tend to be closer to 12K, but still, it all adds up.

"Bug" - If track info is saved in the format xx/xx it will not import.

[Kurt Young]

I had the problem with complete albums also.  Made a smartlist with "completealbum=0" and it drew my entire library.

Also, the built-in auto-smartlists still will not die, hehe.  Every time I launch MJ, the deleted ones are back.  Delete the entire Auto-smartlist group, and it's back the next time I launch.

[sekim]

I think "Incomplete" albums are ones where the track numbers aren't  sequential or maybe it's ((lasttrack - firsttrack) + 1 != trackcount) but I also think it's broken.  If you restart the app a few times, you might get them to be categorized correctly.

Yeah, all my favorites were rating 1 and I used 5 to mark the ones I'd looked at.  

I've restarted numerous times, but it doesn't seem to do much. I'm sure this will get looked into.

So you figure the same as far as numerical ratings are concerned. I'd like to know just how many others view this as well. Maybe I'm just a little wacked, but think this should be switched.

And along these same lines, greater flexibility with regards to the numbers. READ: More number choices. It could useful for making smartlists/playlists.

[Griff]

Yaobing,

Try do some configuration before using Pause

UYVY is what it was set at w/video size prob.

Changed to YUY2 (only other one showing)/go to full screen/ pause and resume ok/ VIDEO SIZE OK.
Go back to MJ desktop /VIDEO SIZE NO GOOD /rt. side of pic cut off (vedio size too big for window, horz. speaking).

So went back to UYVY. Now I get the same as above with the YUY2.
So I exit MJ and rebooted - No change.

This was also done with desktop res.

Also in the Configure TV dialog, click "Audio Connection" button on upper left corner. Check "There is physical connection between my TV card and sound card", then choose your sound card from the first combo box, and choose "Line In" or "Auxiliary" or whichever channel your connection is actually made. This way Pausing will only mute that particular channel instead of the entire mixer device

When I went into this area, these items were blank. So I selected what was needed.

I no longer get a x on the speaker Icon on the task bar.

But now I get:
Still no sound on resume.

When pausing Tivo, line in in the mixer is being shut off.
When resuming it is not being turned back on. (no sound)
If I manually turn it on, then video and sound are out of sink.

Video - I am no great Lip reader, but it looks like the video is resuming from where it was paused.
Also your 3 files (.JTA, .JTS, .AVI) are changing size on pause and resume.

AIW 7500 and Santa Cruz.

Hopes this helps
Griff

[dragyn]

When right-clicking on an artist, album, and/or whatever in the tree view and choosing play, the sort order gets messed up in playing now. Shuffle is off.

From what it looks like, it's being added by filename in ascending order rather than the order specified in the settings. Sometimes it's going by type. Still don't know what it's doing. I'll try and figure it out later.

Clicking on Play doesn't do this (Play visible files).

[JimH]

>When pausing Tivo, line in in the mixer is being shut off.   When resuming it is not being turned back on. (no sound)  If I manually turn it on, then video and sound are out of sink.

That is a bug and it was fixed Friday after the build.  If you e-mail me, jimh @ jriver.com, I'll send you another TV control that may fix it.

Just to be clear, we know this is buggy right now.  We're just excited that it works at all.  We've accomplished something we weren't sure we could do.   It will get better quickly now.

[nila]

I'm getting a lot of bugs.
Just gonna name them quickly with no details cause I know your changing a LOT right now so a lot of bugs are fully expected:
- Album type sometimes shows 3 types, sometimes only shows just sing artist (incomplete), it varies with changing nothing except restarting MJ.
- Playing is often jumpy
- Updating id3 tags works sometimes, not at others
- search isn't always finding stuff
- importing never shows any tracks when clicking on details for what was imported
- title is still showing the file name itself (not including path) for a lot of my mp3's and not showing the title.
- tool tips are huge and slightly overwhelming, it's like a big yellow screen suddely covering everything. Wouldn't mind being able to customise what information shows in them or something, right now they just pop up and are scary
- get properties from file name isn't working properly (I know I'm using the correct syntax because I'm using the syntax provided half the time.

Oh yeah, and before I forget, could you please change the rating from 1-5 to 1-10 or 1-100. Just a bit of varitety and more power to us to really be able to differntiate between songs.
For send to can you also cascade the playlists so that they follow the structuring we create. And can instead of just having a memory of 1 and showing the last playlist we used, could we set the number of 'sticky' send to targets. I think I'd personally set it to arond 5.
If we could customise this so that some of them were fixed and others were just generated by the last used targets type thing then it would be perfect.
I'd make my burner a fixed one, then leave 3 more as auto ones.
A bit like the XP start menu where it remembers what you've used last and you can set how many but you can also make some items stick to the menu and others not show up.

[JaredH]

BUG: every time i have downloaded a preview build of MJ9 the first install crashes everytime i try to go into options. If i uninstall and then reinstall, everything works fine.

Media Jukebox PLUS 9.0.59
Install Path: C:\Program Files\Media Jukebox\

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1801 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 723 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106
ComCtl32.dll: 6.00.2800.1106
Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106
Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1106
wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer

[JaredH]

Maybe this is a bug on my system, or perhaps an option you guys havent implemented yet (yes i know its only alpha so im not complaining). Is there an option to disable the double click action in the left pane. I was much happier with the double click to expand option. If there isnt an option i think you guys oughtta add one in the future. Make the double click action in the left pane operate independently from the double click action in the right pane. I personally use the double click option religiously for the right pane but am accustomed to a double click expanding the tree in the left. Just suggestions.

[Mirko]

A played around a little bit again and have something to complain about :-)

If I navigate through the tree and click on some items, the listview-refresh takes quite some time. I know that it has to shuffle some thousand of rows at this time, but it slows down the whole MJ experience quite a lot. Is it possible to integrate something like the one in search-criteria? I think you don't refresh the list for some time (about a second I would guess) and I would like that handling for the treeitems as well, because sometimes I click on an item by accident and don't want to see the contents.
This is especially important if the clicked at item is a playlist group and has to calculate a lot of sub-playlists (smartlists).

[nila]

Just an idea:
For the whole: complete album, incomplete album, single thing. If these fields were actually stored into the mp3 as a field then songs could be moved between these categories which would definitely help in instances where MJ was making a mistake or just putting some songs in a category we didn't want them in.

[drosoph]

TOP HITS playlist (with the Icon, not the new SMart List Top Hits) has a bug ... it seems to be using the REVERSE order ... Only grabs songs that have been played at least ONCE, but it puts the TOP songs as the songs that have been played the Least ... Ooops ... if you limit it down pretty low (10 songs) you will notice that the songs are only played once ... and the songs played 10 times are not on the list any longer ...

BUT, the Smart List Top Hits (new lists auto-created) Do this correctly ... Using the MOST PLAYED files first ...

[JimH]

about :-)

If I navigate through the tree and click on some items, the listview-refresh takes quite some time.

Hi Mirko,
We know about this and it will be tuned up soon.

Jim

[Yaobing]

Griff,

When I went into this area, these items were blank. So I selected what was needed.

Selecting the correct items tells the program which line you use for TV audio.

I no longer get a x on the speaker Icon on the task bar.

But now I get:
Still no sound on resume.

When pausing Tivo, line in in the mixer is being shut off.
When resuming it is not being turned back on. (no sound)
If I manually turn it on, then video and sound are out of sink.

Line In should remain muted during TiVo session. Most TV cards use audio by-pass method to directly send audio to the sound card. If you un-mute it, you hear the sound of the live show, not the sound of the time-shifted playback.

The silence on Resume is most likely caused by not setting the recording line properly. I forgot to mention this before, but you should do the following before trying to do Pause/Resume, or Record:

1. Go to the system mixer by double-clicking the speaker icon in the system tray.

2. Click Options->Properties.

3. Click "Recording", instead of "Playback", under "Adjust Volume for"

4. Under "Show the following Volume Controls" make sure "Line In" (or whichever channel your TV audio is connected to) is checked. Click OK.

5. Now make sure the "Select" check box under "Line In" is checked, and the volume is not zero. Set the volume to 50% or higher.

Now restart TV and click Pause, you should get no sound because Line In is muted. Resume should playback recorded sound.

I will have to investigate your video size problem more.


Yaobing

[Griff]

Thanks Yaobing,

The min. I seen to Check Recording input, I knew what you were talking about.

Changed it from Mic. to line in and sound works now.

Fine as Wine.

Griff

[Tolga]

If you rename a folder in my computer in MJ9 from music to music1 , a playlist that contained:

C:\music\song.mp3
were updated as

c:\music1\\song.mp3
and were not able to find the song any more.