Topic: Album View: Version 1 is now available (Screenshots Enclosed) (Read 3068 times)

RhinoBanga · « **on:** May 20, 2002, 11:13:10 am »

At long last here's version 1 of Album View:

http://www.zippy.eclipse.co.uk/mjav/av1.exe

Here's the changelog since the last version:

Fixed issue where grid tooltips were not being calculated correctly
Fixed issue where sometimes coming out of sync mode wasn't resetting the last state
Fixed issue where completed overview screen was not filtering out incomplete albums when viewing by artist
Fixed another issue where scrollbars were not sizing properly
Speeded up initial scanning of MJ database
Can now specify a caption height of 0 to disable captions (usefull with tooltips)
Compilation albums (albums with more than one artist) are stored under the artist "(Various)"
Added !genre! keyword to caption thumbnails
Added an about dialog box
Added tooltips to options screen
Added tooltips to thumbnails
Added genre support to the overview page

Finally here are some new screenshots. These may take some time to download:

nila · « **Reply #1 on:** May 20, 2002, 12:32:38 pm »

About to install this.
THanks dude for all the hard work.
Cant wait to try it out!!! Next Page

shelly · « **Reply #2 on:** May 20, 2002, 12:59:36 pm »

It's fabulous!!! I love what you did with the tooltips.

I have a problem, though. About 1/2 of my albums no longer have art, including all the "various." All of my coverart is external and in it's own folder. 'MJ External Image' indicates 'none' on all albums. The coverart I can view, shows the correct path to my art in 'Thumbnail Filename'; the remaining show the path to the installation directory in 'thumbnail filename.' I was able to view all of my art in the last version.

Many thanks,
Shelly

nila · « **Reply #3 on:** May 20, 2002, 02:44:12 pm »

Nice work.
Been playing with it and the tooltips are definitely appreciated alot.
I changed a lot of boxes once I realised what they did.

The Genre is also hugely welcomed.

Great plugin. The main feature I want is one you cant give. MJ has to give it. I wanna be able to right click on an album and choose properties and have it open the properties dialog with all the songs from that album selected in the dialog and be able to edit the id3 tags.

I definitely see AV needing to be integrated into v9 as one of it's main new features. Next Page

Marra · « **Reply #4 on:** May 20, 2002, 03:13:37 pm »

Fully agree with Shelley's comments - fabulous changes - but I have also lost artwork.

Tolga · « **Reply #5 on:** May 20, 2002, 03:57:49 pm »

I have been thinking about the problem with images that are stored on a removable driver. (If you scan the second cd, the thumbnails from the first cd get removed because they are not on the path anymore.).

I have this problem because I store the images externally on CDs. I am guessing that people that store pictures internally in CDs will have the same problem.

The following, possibly simple, hack might help to scan images on multiple CDS.

If you can add a switch such that when turned on:
a refresh refreshes a thumbnail only if there is a picture anywhere on the path. If non is found, the old picture is kept.
and another button to clear all.

This way,
one could first clear all, and scan cds one by one.

Of course, if this is difficult to add to your algorithm, it may be not worth working on.

JimH · « **Reply #6 on:** May 20, 2002, 04:02:31 pm »

Rhino,
Congratulations! You've done something extremely non-trivial. I have an idea of what it took.

Thanks,

Jim

Marra · « **Reply #7 on:** May 20, 2002, 04:21:51 pm »

Rhino

Not only lost some images but alphabetical order incorrect in overview.

Doof · « **Reply #8 on:** May 20, 2002, 06:33:50 pm »

It seems as though AV is only displaying images that are (for some bizarre reason) in the Cover Art folder that's specified in MJ's options screen. How they got there to begin with is beyond me since I always store images internally. Even though many of my files have internal cover art, AV isn't displaying any of them.

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #9 on:** May 20, 2002, 10:51:21 pm »

Friends,

It seems I broke internal image scanning ... which I have fixed ... but I really recommend (just like J River themselves) that you transfer your images externally. Internal image scanning is soooooooooo slow Next Page

Use the link at the top of this thread to download the new version.

As far as those with external image issues can you send me examples please as I cannot reproduce any problem here. I have all my artwork in "D:\My Music\Cover Art" which is also setup in MJ as the default cover art directory. I renamed it to "D:\My Music\Cover Artx", changed my AV directory scan settings accordingly and it all worked.

Also can anyone else confirm Marra's comments that it's not sorting properly ... as again I can't see that.

Finally Nila I may have a workaround for you which I will investigate tonight. In theory I should be able to scan the MJ treeview for the artist/album you want and send the ALT|PLS|ENTER keystrokes to bring up the properties screen. Unfortunately though that will take you away from AV so I am not 100% convinced of it's viability. What do you think?

Marra · « **Reply #10 on:** May 20, 2002, 11:39:44 pm »

Rhino

Update v1.1 on 1st appearance - alpha sorting problem fixed. MJ crashed and restarted computer and re-processed AV - this time sort wrong eg AC/DC then Atomic Kitten then Area 7. This is only on overview images.
Not all images are appearing still - and all are stored in one directory.

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #11 on:** May 20, 2002, 11:49:07 pm »

Marra,

I am really surpised that the sort sequence is out as the overview screen is actually populated by the sort order in the treeview in the Album Details screen. For example if you choose to sort by album then I go thru the "Album" treeview node and dump it into the overview thumbnail control.

Can you post a screenshot so I can see it, ideally I would like two ... one for the overview screen and one showing the album node in the album details screen.

Also regarding the images issue, can you produce a trace file so I can see what is going on. Instructions and my email address are in the README file.

nila · « **Reply #12 on:** May 21, 2002, 12:01:24 am »

HEy Rhino,
If u wanna give it a shot I'm all up for it.
It'd be a pain to be dragged away from the AV window but might be worth it.
In order for this to work properly thought MJ would have to do a little bit of extra work to give u more access to it's functions.
If you dont mind trying it that's cool but I dont wanna be taking up all your free time with it.
It's up to you if u wanna give it a shot or not.

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #13 on:** May 21, 2002, 12:42:16 am »

Nila,

MJ wouldn't have to do anything. As far as it would be concerned it would be as if you manually navigated to that point in the treeview and hit ALT|PLS|ENTER. I'll see what I can do tonight.

This lunchtime I'm investigating the next way forward for AV.

I've been playing with C|PLS||PLS|/ATL and although it would definately be faster the problem is that I recon it will take a month (around 11 man days) just to reproduce the UI Next Page

Therefore I am thinking about staying with VB since I don't think the UI is at fault ... it's the DB processing ...

So my next choice is whether or not to create an external database or stick to scanning and just tag on a small ini-based DB to the side that provides the features that I want/need.

The good thing about sticking with what I've got and using an INI file is that I can quickly add favourites/ranking/last played and I don't have a big sync issue to deal with. The downside is that people with large databases (or internal images) will be stuck with the slow scanning (yuck).

The bad thing about using my own DB is that it's a one off *big* performance hit and it's effectivly duplicating what MJ already has. I'll just be reformatting it to a more natural album based view. But (in theory) if doing the DB creation in VB is slow I could just create it via C|PLS||PLS| which should speed things up.

Tough choice Next Page

nila · « **Reply #14 on:** May 21, 2002, 02:52:01 am »

Hmm,
I'm personally for you making your own db.
I know there's the sync issue but for people like me with big collections it'll make it all sooo much faster and nicer.
ALso, because it'll be your own db it means you can do what u want with it a lot easier.
The sync issue is obviously a problem but it is the same as Album View is normally, it stays outdated until we resync it.
I dont think this should be too big a problem as people dont add too many albums that often.
What would be nice, instead of having to fully resync with Media Jukebox every time we add an album, it'd be nice if we could just specify which album was just added and it would just then re-sync with that album. Same for updating info from MJ.

Most people wont care about the db size as no one these days noticing 20Mb here or there.
After all, that's not much more than some windows .dll's these days Next Page

lol.

I say just stick to VB for now, it'll let you just get on with making it have all the features you want.
If it's open source maybe someone else who's a natural C programmer will port it.
People in general prefer features though and especially if you introduce your own db you'll clean up a lot of the performance issues just by doing that.

I'm hoping MJ is gonna try work with you for v9 and try to integrate AV into MJ along with the whole concept of Albums and singles as two separate things like they are in real life.
I treat them both differently in real life and so it'd be nice to do it in MJ too - sometimes I wanna listen to an album from an artist I like, other times I just wanna listen to some good songs that are out.

One feature I'd like to see is the ability to add album names to ignore as I personally name all my random songs album tag to 'Random Songs' so that when I'm using the album browse tree in MJ or any other jukebox I dont get thousands of entries for each random song. Instead they all fall under one big branch called random songs.
In AV however, for artists with alot of random songs I'm getting alot of entries appearing like this: Random Songs -= 2 Pac =-, Random Songs -= Destiny's Child =- etc. which is a bit annoying.
I'd imagine adding a filtering option would be really simple and for the code you could just slip it in so that when it was sorting the albums into each screen or whatever it could just check to make sure it wasn't in the filter list.

Here's a screen shot to show you what I mean and how much of a pain it's causing me Next Page

Just an idea Next Page

Lovely screen shots, lovely filter, lovely work! Next Page

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #15 on:** May 21, 2002, 03:29:46 am »

Nila,

Tonight I'll add in the facility to point AV to an external file that contains a list of album names to exclude. The reason I want to use an external file is that when you uninstall/install your registry entries get wiped. This way will preserve your config and ensure that there is no issue with album name spearators as each album name will be on a separate line.

Also FYI I have been programming in C/C|PLS||PLS| for 16 years (my main job is actually cross platform C|PLS||PLS| programming) ... it's ATL which is the big learning curve for me at the moment. It's a time/returns tradeoff. I knocked up AV in VB since I wanted something quick. Now the project has gone way beyond what I ever imagined and now VB is really showing the strain ... but can I really justify spending a month or so on re-writing it in C|PLS||PLS| when:

a) There would be no gain for me personally as AV works just fine as it is
b) J River will probably implement their own AV in v9 in which case my AV becomes redundant.

nila · « **Reply #16 on:** May 21, 2002, 04:09:17 am »

Cool

Glad to hear your a C|PLS||PLS| programmer. It's a much better language to know. I plan to learn it when I get a bit more free time.

I personally say it's not worth the extra effort.
If you were going to do AV commercially then yeah, re-write it in C or C|PLS||PLS| but not when it's just for fun. It's not worth your effort.

It might lagg a little with guys like me with huge collections but the words your looking for for guys like me is: Shut up and stop whining Next Page

.

I found a bug though, like some of the other posts have mentioned. Some of the covers are being found.

I have TCL - Fanmail album and it's not showing the cover (just one album I noticed, there may be more).

The Rules I have set up for thumbnails are:
!albumpath! - *Front*.jpg
!albumpath! - *front*.jpg
(not sure if it's case sensitive or not).

Anyway, the cover is called: Tlc - Fan Mail - 00 - Front.jpg
and so should meet the first rule as it's in the same dir as the album tracks.
It's not finding the cover however though.
The cover is also set in the id3 tag info within MJ.

shelly · « **Reply #17 on:** May 21, 2002, 04:18:21 am »

Rhino,

My brain probably isn't in gear yet this morning, but what exactly should I send you to demonstrate the cover art problem? Is there a specific file that you need?

Shelly

Marra · « **Reply #18 on:** May 21, 2002, 06:18:15 am »

Rhino,

Sorry for asking about basics - but how do I post a screenshot?
Also tried to produce a trace file but no debug.txt file created.

Marra · « **Reply #19 on:** May 21, 2002, 06:34:14 am »

Rhino,

Solved sorting "bug" - I was simply processing data incorrectly album vs artist.
Image problem still exists.

nila · « **Reply #20 on:** May 21, 2002, 07:22:38 am »

To post a screen shot save the image on a website somewhere then do this:
(img=the image url goes in here)
except use [] instead of ()

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #21 on:** May 21, 2002, 08:47:02 am »

Nila,

I cannot reproduce the problem.

I have set my rule to be:

Directory: !albumpath!
Filename: *front*.jpg

And I moved one of my covers to the album path and it found it.

Can you email me a trace file so I can see what is going on.

Also FYI all Window filenames are case insensitive.

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #22 on:** May 21, 2002, 09:46:40 am »

Nila,

Just to let you know I have added the exclusion facility you wanted.

You create a file like so:

;---------------------------------------------------------------
;
; FIRST LINE IS ARTIST FOLLOWED BY THE ALBUM
; WILDCARDS ARE SUPPORTED, E.G. *LIVE*
; SCANS ARE CASE INSENSITIVE
; (ANY LINES PRIOR TO AN ARTIST BEGINNING WITH ; ARE COMMENTS)
;
*
*Random Songs*
;
;
*Carey*
*

And tell AV it's location in the data processing section of the options screen.

Then on a scan I read it and exclude any artist/album that matches.

I won't release it until I get to the bottom of this missing artwork issue that everyone else (except me ... lol) can see Next Page

lee269 · « **Reply #23 on:** May 21, 2002, 09:56:59 am »

Rhino

I want to add my thanks here. Downloaded v1 and it adds so much to MJ. Like you I suspect that MJv9 will include this functionality, but even making AV redundant will be a tribute to the way you have put this together. Until then AV completes the picture.

lee269

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #24 on:** May 21, 2002, 10:07:52 am »

Thank you Lee.

DocLotus · « **Reply #25 on:** May 21, 2002, 11:25:01 am »

Version 1.0... GREAT JOB.

Question...
I currently have 2400 WMA files loaded on MJ 8.0. This is just a fraction of my total CD collection. Will end up around 10,000 files. Have noticed that the initial loading of the AV database is somewhat slow & is getting slower as I add files. Also it does this each time I load MJ. Can the database be cached to a single cache file like a lot of graphic programs I use do (ACDSee & Thumbs Plus for example)? This would make loading AV database very fast no matter how many files I have.

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #26 on:** May 21, 2002, 12:30:56 pm »

DocLotus,

If you read around 12 msgs back you will see my comments on this.

Pinner · « **Reply #27 on:** May 21, 2002, 12:42:22 pm »

Help!!

Are there any help/instructions for the AV plugin?

I cannot get any album images to appear, anywhere within AV. They all work fine in MJ (until it decides to lose them, but that is a separate issue).

I keep all of my JPG images in a directory structure that matches my files, other than the album folders are replaced by jpgs with the album names. I can set the proerties in MJ to point to this file, and the image duly appears in the playing now image (Dirt Simple). However I can rescan in AV, or restart the whole of MJ, and not see any image in AV. Within the Album details tab, the 'full details' pane shows the MJ External Image to be '(None)', but MJ thinks (and shows otherwise).

Should I be doing something special for AV in addition to setting the file properties within MJ?

PS. what is 'prefered type'? I use a mixture of ogg ape and mp3. (mpc usually crashes when ripping/converting). Are files/albums excluded if they do not match this type?

Thanks.

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #28 on:** May 21, 2002, 12:51:39 pm »

Pinner,

There is no help as it's a freebie app ... but if you move your mouse over the text labels in the options screen then tootips will appear giving you an idea of each one's purpose.

My first guess is that you haven't told AV what your naming structure is for your artwork.

Can you post some physical examples and I can tell you the exact tokens to place in the options/Artwork Rules screen.

Also the preferred type is there just to tell AV which thumbnail caption to use (options/Thumbnails). Only the stuff in the "Filters" section will prevent albums/tracks from appearing.

Marra · « **Reply #29 on:** May 21, 2002, 01:49:17 pm »

Rhino,

New day - new thought. I have checked missing images further and perhaps have a solution. Files containing images don't exactly match the artwork rule of artist - album (eg a missing hyphen, a missing "The" or no "/" as in AC/DC) yet they all appeared pre version 1. Has something changed as I haven't altered any of the artwork rules? Thanks again.

nila · « **Reply #30 on:** May 21, 2002, 02:48:48 pm »

Woa dude,
that debug file sure is a THOROUGH debug file.
All 9megs of it.
I e-mailed you the link to download it, lemme know when u've got it so I can delete the file.
It's 9 megs long.

Hope it helps.

From looking at the log though, from what I can see, it looks like it's just repeatedly just checking the same dir over and over again.
Filename=C:\Program Files\Media Jukebox\Data\Cover Art\TLC - Fan Mail.jpg
It tries to load that same file a lot of times and doesn't seem to be checking any other dir's.

Hmm, just managed to get it to work.

I changed the ordering of the rules and put the one to check the !albumpath! *front* first and it suddenly found it.
I dont think it was trying the later rules or something.
Anyway, u can check out the debug file for urself to work it out exactly Next Page

.

JimH · « **Reply #31 on:** May 21, 2002, 04:18:06 pm »

Rhino,
I'm still thinking about your e-mail. I don't have a clear response yet.

Thanks again for your work.

Jim

RhinoBanga · « **Reply #32 on:** May 22, 2002, 06:09:29 am »

That's fine Jim.

Also to let everyone else know I have identified the problem with the external images and I will fix it tonight.

Finally I have been playing with the notify messages of the MS listview and I will be getting rid of my scroller/scroll bar controls in the near future and use it to handle the thumbnails (I have become an "expert" in IPicture/IStream overnight). This has several advantages, most notably being the fact that it will only request/paint what it needs so it's pretty quick. It also means that my time estimation of getting an C|PLS||PLS|/ATL version of AV has been shortened since these were the two that I was "scared" of converting!

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Album View: Version 1 is now available (Screenshots Enclosed) (Read 3068 times)

nila

shelly

nila

Marra

Tolga

Marra

Marra

nila

nila

nila

shelly

Marra

Marra

nila

lee269

DocLotus

Pinner

Marra

nila