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[RhinoBanga]

Here you go people:

http://www.jda-ltd.com/freeware/mjav.exe


And here's the changelog:

Re-wrote hottracking to be more efficient
Re-wrote thumbnail code ... should be flicker free now
Re-added track view ... it now hilights when albums have mismatched bitrates
Added option to show the albums bitrate in the thumbnail caption
Added caching of images
Added complete collection view where it just shows the album artwork thumbnails, you can just dblclick to play an album


Also I'd like to thanks Nila for helping me solve a stupid mistake on my behalf.
I forgot to include an OCX (duh) so that's probably why half of you were getting the "plugin must implement IUnknown interface" msg.


Tomorrow I will get the fonts stuff finished ... I promise Mike


Also if you have any enhancement requests get them in now ... I start my new job on Monday so I won't be full time on this as I have been over the past week or so.


Have fun and let me know of any problems you find ... that aren't in the readme file of course

[nila]

Wahey!!!
That's me he's thankin there - YOU HEAR ME!!! THAT'S ME!!!
lol


Wahoo - I'm famous!!

[nila]

K - Bug report time - VERY slow at loading with my number of mp3's (7500).
Also - defaults Media Jukebox to it every time I load media jukebox which is a pain as it then takes ages to load - You need to introduce some kind of data caching.

It's not drawing properly: http://nila.dyndns.org/images/delete.jpg  <-- notice the two random column headers at the top which aren't in place and dont move when asked politely.

It'd be nice to be able to set the minimum number of matching album names that have to be located before anything in classed as an album (I'd set it to be around 8 songs or more by the same artist are considered an album).

When scrolling up and down Track Details pain the scroll bar disappears.
It's basically not handling a large collection too well

[ZRocker]

See Posting Help above...if you want to show images (using img command) in your messages.

[dragyn]

Using the scroll wheel doesn't work in "Entire Collection" and "Track Details". Also, no images are display in mine. All shows the Surfboard Jukebox image. When double clicking on this, only the first track is loaded in Playing Now (Album Artist Set). When scrolling down, the last row of thumbnails is unviewable, less than half there for big icons, bottom text cut off for small icons.

I have multiple formats for the same Album (mp3/apl/ape). When double clicking on an album, entire colloection, all the formats are loaded into playing now. It goes in track order so songs would be played twice in a row. Maybe an option to pick the default format or something when more than one exists.

When clicking on the scroll bars in "Track Details", it flickers and hides when letting go (Mega-Me skin). Probably a MJ bug.

In Track Details, it shows last played time but number of plays is 0...which is impossible I would think.

Icons are using the "old" MJ8 ones.

Track Details don't keep the previous view when refreshing. "Artist" and "Album" come back on the top when removing them. Also, all the albums are expanded. Anyway to have an option to only expand mismatched bitrates.

And would there be a way for this plugin (or any) to be windowed. Any word on Internal Images?

[RhinoBanga]

Nila:

1)  You be surprised to hear that there is extensive caching in there already, for example images are shared between tracks so a completed album's image is only loaded once.   Also when AV starts up it gets the image of the first track of every album.   It has to do this or else the entire collection view would be blank.   I'll take that out for just now until I can decide on how to speed it up (probably write an on-demand fetch of the data).

2)  Re the starting up in album view... that's an MJ thing ... go to settings/options/startup settings and check out the startup page frame.   You'll probably have "Last Location" defined.

3)  Are the two columns you are refering to artist/album in the dark gray box?   If so then that box is known as a "Group By" box which indicates what the current grouping of the grid is.

4)  Sorry I don't understand: "It'd be nice to be able to set the minimum number of matching album names that have to be located before anything in classed as an album (I'd set it to be around 8 songs or more by the same artist are considered an album). "

Album View sorts the entire MJ database by artist then album ... then I just scan thru pulling out the data on a change of artist/album.   The only real decision making is when AV considers an album complete ... and that's when each track has the same external image name.

5)  Re the scrolling issue in the track details pane.   I can't reproduce it at all.   Is it in the "External Image" view or the "Full Details" view?



Dragyn:

1)  Scroll wheel does work ... I use an Internet Explorer mouse and use it all the time.   The only proble I have found is when dragging the vertical scroll bar then the scrolling doesn't work (probably a focus issue).   Is this what you see?   What mouse are you using?

2)  I'll add the default format option for you today.

3)  I noticed that too but that's the number MJ has given me ... if you have a look it matches the "Seq" in "Top Hits" ... I recon it's an MJ bug ... I'll ask Nikolay/Matt.

4)  I quite like the old icons as it differentiates the treeviews when both are on the screen at the same time ... but I'll add an option.

5)  I use track details internally for sorting ... that's why it keeps getting reset ... I'll fix that today.   Also I'll do the expanding business ... it was going to be in there anyway ... I just never got time to do it last night.

6)  A windowed plugin ... I'll look into it.

7)  Internal images are going to be a big no-no for just now ... far too slow to say the least.   When I ask MJ for the internal file image it has to open up the file and scan it ... for example scanning my 3000 mp3 collection for internal images took 5 minutes ... so you could imagine how slow that would be for a large library.   I could easily write a function that will extract all your images to external images (keeping the same name as MJ would apply as if you scanned on the internet and saved externally) and store the external name in the track if you want tho.   You could do that as a "one off".   You want me to implement it?



I really appreciate the feedback people and I will get onto the isues above straight away ... look for a build l8r.

[RhinoBanga]

Dragyn ... I've just had a thought.

In the track details screen I use the grouping of artist/album to work out when there is a bitrate mismatch.

If I preserve your grid changes over a rescan of the MJ database then I will not be able to hilight when there is a mismatch.

Therefore what I will do is implement a "reports" view that shows any exceptions in the data and allow you to sort/group the grid as you see fit.

[nila]

Regarding the sorting columns - if you look at the screen shot, you'll see what I mean. They aren't sitting parallel. One is higher than the otherby a few millimeters.

Also, it's in Track Details view that it has problems when I'm scrolling up and down. The screen is basically having problems redrawing itself as its trying to work due to the large number of files I have.

[RhinoBanga]

Nila,

They're supposed to be like that ... it shows you the heirarchy.   Drag and drop a column from the grid to the box and you'll see what I mean.

I am re-writing the track details screen as we speak ... it is now going to be virtual and will only request data as needed ... although I am suprised that it is having painting issues as it's a 3rd party grid which I use all the time in my commercial applications.

[Mike]

IT WORKS !!!

Great Job Rhino !!

Is there anyway for MJ to open up to your plugin's entire collection when I start MJ ?

Mike

[Mike]

Rhino,

Bugs:

Removing the bitrate "check" from the option checkbox does not remove the bitrate info.

My mouse wheel will not allow me to scroll down.

When in Album details I can click on the first album and then use the "down" arrow to go to the next artist and album....but it won't let me use the "up" arrow to go .... (drumroll) ...up

Is there anyway to allow for the rightclick menu from MJ to be available when using the plugin? the quickplay function to access the library etc is very handy.

Mike

[RhinoBanga]

Yeah that's not a problem Mike ... out of interest how fast is it loading for you?

Also how many albums/tracks do you have?

The reason I ask is because Nila has 7000 tracks and it's slow loading the data up
I forget I only have 3000 tracks on an oc'd AMD 1.4ghz (running at 1.55ghz) with 640mb memory so loading only takes 3 seconds.

So I have to make a design decision on how best to cater for everyone's situation.

Also I may have to back out on my promise of getting the fonts stuff sorted today ... the performance issue takes precedence I'm afraid.

[RhinoBanga]

LOL ... we're both on the ball today ... I just saw your bugs posting

Re the bitrate check ... for the moment you have to re-view the page ... I need to refresh the page.

Re the up/down issue ... It works here and it sounds like an MS issue since I only respond to the events passed to the treeview ... what version of IE do you have installed?

I don't have access to the menu of MJ ... but why not ask Nikolay/Matt for it as an enhancement ... if they expose it I'll put it in.
If they say no then I'll see if I can emulate it.

[dragyn]

The mouse wheel didn't work because I had "Use MS Office Compatible Scroll Only" checked in Mouse Properties (Logitech). The wierd thing is that it works in the rest of MJ just fine. So would this be a MJ bug or do you have to write that part in? Not a big deal, just wondering...

-> Also noticed that I have "6 lines" set in Mouse Properties and that also works in MJ but not in Track Details.
--> And if I move around in MJ and come back, the mouse wheel doesn't work because I think it loses focus...even clicking on a row in Track Details. If I click on the Track Details Tab, then it works again.

How is the default format gonna work? Just scan a specific type (mp3) or would it be possible to use the "Type" format in Album View just like Artist/Album?

An image extractor would be really helpful as I don't use the download thing because I want at least an 800X800 image. I would assume it would leave the internal image intact and just put a copy in the Cover Art directory for use with AV?

Keep up the great work!

[RhinoBanga]

Dragyn,

The reason it works in MJ is probably because they trap the specific scrollwheel messages sent to the window.   The control's I'm using don't recognise them and just responds to normal scroll messages.   I could implement it with a bit of subclassing but I've got fair few items on my plate at the moment so it's on the back burner for just now.

Re the default format ... I am in the middle of this code just now so I can tell you how it works
The default format for AV will be MP3 ('cause that's all I use but I may allow you to override it l8r).
When scanning the MJ database I sort by artist/album/type/tracknum, therefore each album of different types will be shown as a new album entry.
The captions of all non MP3 albums will show their type, here's a made up example "Amarok - (WAV 160kbps)", if you have the show type check on.

The image extractor will not touch the internal image ... all I would do would is get MJ to tell me the filename ... it will extract it and give me a filename ... I will rename it/copy it according to MJ's rule's and then tell MJ to set the external image to that filename only if it doesn't already have an image.   Very easy really.

Does that sound ok?

[nila]

I tested and tried the sort columns like you said and they do go in a heirarchy. The only problem is, to move one and for the display to then update takes around 10 seconds after I move the column for it to then display as moved and unfreeze.
Same goes with adding a new column

[RhinoBanga]

Nila,

What spec is your machine ... it just sounds like a simple performance issue ... especially if your sorting/grouping 7000|PLS| rows.

[nila]

700Mhz AMD Athlon,
756MB RAM.
Matrox G400 Max Dual Head with 32Mb,
Anythin else?
If that's under spec'd I think you're gonna have to include a big warning with the plugin

[RhinoBanga]

Mike:

I found the up/down problem ... it's to do with the code I put in that says if you click on an artist "automagically" select the first album for the artist.   I'll code around that.



Nila:

I'm not surprised it's taking so long then ... sorting/grouping 7000 rows is no small task and probably equates to at least 21,000 data fetches.
I'll see if I can speed it up.

[Mike]

Rhino,

I have only tested your plugin on a computer that has a list of about 70 mp3's.

Tonight I will try on my home computer...3000 mp3, 866 mghz, 128 ram.  If it's ok on that it should be ok for most users.

[RhinoBanga]

Cheers Mike.

Let me know if the whole thing is slow or just that screen.

If it is just that screen I'll add an aoption to hide/show it.


Also I have fixed that up/down issue


Do you want me to upload the 0.2.1 I have just now so you and Nila can play with that to see how it "feels" now?

[Mike]

Rhino,

Fire away...I'm always ready for an update

Mike

[scub]

7) Internal images are going to be a big no-no for just now ... far too slow to say the least. When I ask MJ for the internal file image it has to open up the file and scan it ... for example scanning my 3000 mp3 collection for internal images took 5 minutes ... so you could imagine how slow that would be for a large library. I could easily write a function that will extract all your images to external images (keeping the same name as MJ would apply as if you scanned on the internet and saved externally) and store the external name in the track if you want tho. You could do that as a "one off". You want me to implement it?

This sounds like what I need.  All my images are stored internally.  After the extraction will the images still stay in the mp3s.  I hate the redundancy but I like the simplicity of having it saved in the music so I would prefer it to be in both places until it can be set up to read the internal images.  

Also you said it took a long time to read the internal files.  Is this the first time you start album view or every time.  If it is just the first time I would be willing to wait.

[RhinoBanga]

Scub,

It would be the first time you access AV from within MJ as I then cache all images.

I'll start on the extract/import next as that is what most peeps need to get the best from AV at the moment.

[RhinoBanga]

Friends,

Version 0.2.1b is not available at:

http://www.jda-ltd.com/freeware/mjav.exe


Here's the changelog:

Hottracking now only works when the thumbnail window is on-screen
Fixed use of arrow keys in treeviews ... by product of this was that I had to remove selection indicators
Fixed sync issue where it would lock up on exit
Removed scroll bar tips on track details grid as was causing some people mouse scrolling issues
Now sort by artist/album/type for people who have the same album in the MJ database but as different types
Removed the bitrate groupings in the track details screen
Added thumbnail prefetch option (default off)
Added reports view


Let me know what you think.

[Mike]

Rhino,

I have just loaded the latest version into my Comp at home....it takes about 8 sec to sort.

The thing that I found to be a problem is that I have a large number of compilation CDs.  When they are ripped there are a number of artists that are created or added to.

The problem is that the albums are shown by artist....I need them to be shown by album. In other words I do not want to see the album cover multiple times if there are more than one artist on the album.

Also....is there a way to only show albums that have an image?....this would fix the unassigned problem.  You see I only use the ALBUM feature in MJ when I have a COMPLETE album....if I only have one song then I just make sure no album is assigned to that MP3.

Mike

[RhinoBanga]

Mike,

Is it 8 seconds to load AV or 8 seconds when you sort on a column in the track view screen?

Also re your request to breakdown by album only ... I'll look into it.

Finally are you after a "completed album's only" version of the "entire collection" view?
If so then I'll just add a flag ... that should be no problem.

[Mike]

Rhino,

8 Sec to load AV
------------------------------------------
Also re your request to breakdown by album only ... I'll look into it.
------------------------------------------

This is a must...at least it is for me.  I want to be able to see all the albums once....if not I would end up having 3000 thumbnails....when in fact there are only 200 or so albums.

------------------------------------------
Finaly are you after a "completed album's only" version of the "entire collection" view?
If so then I'll just add a flag ... that should be no problem.
------------------------------------------

A checkbox would be great....that would limit the thumbnails that exist only on completed albums.

Mike

[jimmy]

Nice idea, but...

This latest version (.2.1b) drains my system resources to less than 10% free while doing steps three and four. Tried uninstalling older version, reinstaliing new and restarting, but got the same problem. I am using MJ 8.0.257.

System Info: (with AV uninstalled)

Media Jukebox PLUS 8.0.257

CPU: Intel Pentium II 264 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 163 MB, Free - 17 MB
Resource Info: System - 58 %, GDI - 83 %, User - 58 %
OS: Microsoft Windows 98 SE

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2600.0000
ComCtl32.dll: 5.50.4704.1100
Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
Shell32.dll: 4.72.3812.600
wnaspi32.dll: 2, 0, 0, 0 , ASPI for WIN32 DLL, Copyright © Adaptec 1995
Aspi32.sys: N/A

---

Also, are you planning to make AV's tree work like the standard MJ trees, i.e.: appear on the left pane?

[RhinoBanga]

Jimmy,

Switch off the prefetch option in the thumbnails tab ... that will definately help but to be honest I think your asking a lot considering AV is a graphically intensive plugin ... the Win9X kernel is just not that efficient at maintaining a lot of graphical handles.   I'll see about adding an option to switch off image totally but then I recon the app would be way too slow to use anyway.

Also I can't embed myself in the left hand side as J River have not exposed a mechanism to do it ... but Matt did mention that they are considering it for a future version.

[RhinoBanga]

Mike,

Download 0.2.2b which is there now as it has the "overview" screen with the option you wanted of what to view.   I'll add an option so you can specify to always start in that page tomorrow.

Here's the changelog:

Progress bar was not being shown when prefetching thumbnails
Issue where AV was causing MJ to stay in memory (darn object reference counts!)
Issue where track view/full details grid was not being repainted properly on some machines
Renamed "Entire Collection" to Overview with menu option to switch between all albums or completed only

[jimmy]

too bad, if AV won't work with Win98. The old 0.1b version worked.

[RhinoBanga]

Jimmy,

AV does work ... it's just that you have now seen why MS are keen to get everyone away from the 9X kernel .. It doesn't handle resources very well due to it's legacy requirements.   No amount of additional memory or CPU power can get over that limitation.

Did you try switching off thumbnail prefetching like I suggested?

[dragyn]

This is way better now.

Only things I see (for me) would be the icons (unless I missed it somewhere), the internal image extractor, ability to hide certain file types (ram, asf, etc), and have "Album Artist" entries in the Album Details/Completed area. Those albums are spread out all over the place. Maybe someday a type tab for the thumbnail view would be nice (Overview).

Mine takes under 4secs to load which isn't bad at all (1,666 files of varying types).

Great job again Rhino!

[dragyn]

Would it also be possible to edit song properties from the Track Details page? Maybe have a pull down thing in the upper right to either edit/play, like with the other tabs. Have it do all the songs that are listed. That would be cool too.

One other thing I noticed is the column order at the top (Type, Artist, Whatever) in Track Details doesn't remember what you had before when refreshing.

[RhinoBanga]

Dragyn,

I'm glad you like it.

1)  I'll get the icons and exclude file types sorted for tomorrow morning when I release 0.2.3b before I start on the image extractor.

Unfortunately "Album Artist" is not exposed in the MJ interface:

http://www.musicex.com/mediajukebox/DevZone/MJAutomation.html#CMJFileAutomation

Ask for it in this forum ... if they put it in I'll implement it.


2)  Can you explain a bit more of what you want for a type tab.

3)  I'm way ahead of you on the editing side ... it has been in my mind from the start ... that's why the grid.   I just need to enable the fields for editing and update the appropriate MJ field when you exit a field.   Sounds simple but I don't want to release it yet until I get viewing sorted out.   As for updating multiple tracks at one ... we'll that's what MJ does ... why reinvent the wheel

4)  Remembering the track view grid settings is a big issue as I use it internally for sorting the data.   Since I may have to redesign that section of code again (for the third time) to handle album grouping instead of artist/album grouping I'll see what I can come up with.   Although I have just had an idea ... watch this space ... I may have literally just thought of a way around it



I'm off to bed now ... cya tomorrow friends.

[Cmagic]

RhinoBanga,

First of all, congrats for the really impressive work.

One thing I've noticed, version 0.1.0 or so worked very well with internal
images (I have a lot of those) but version 0.2.0 does not. I Only get
the default surfing MJ image for files with internal images.

Anyway your plugin is looking really promising

thanks.

[RhinoBanga]

Cmagic,

I disabled internal images for the moment because of the performance issue ... it takes MJ 5 minutes to scan 3000 files on my machine to get them.

I may re-enable them in a later build if enough people complain enough but today I am going to implement an export/assign facility, which you run once, that will extract the internal MJ image, save to a file and assign this new file to the MJ external image.   That should get you going in the short term.

As for long term ... well I'm already thinking about v2 (I know I haven't even got v1 out yet) but I will be developing it in C|PLS||PLS|/ATL so I will probably implement my own extract facility using memory mapped files.   It should fly along.

[Fretwalker]

RhinoBanga,
cool, very cool Plugin - this could be worked out as an an serious alternative for the Playing Now - Tab!!!

· But I'm waitin' desperately for the return of the internal images and that it remembers the window-states for the detail-view (would be nice to have an 'maintain aspect ratio'-option for the images when resizing them).
· AV still doesn't let MJ quit (XP)
· Context Menu for File Properties would be nice

And (this is meant actually for the builders of MJ):
· A Shortcut / Favorites option (self-configurable)in the toolbar for every postion in the application to get with a mouseclick where I want to...

Happy greetings from Germany,
Take care... (and please don't get tired in making this plug-in just perfect in what it's meant to be

[Cmagic]

Rhino,
the export/assign facility that looks once for internal images seems a good alternative in the
meantime. But I was thinking : I use the traditionnal "ARTIST/ALBUM/" directory scheme and together
with my music files I always store a copy of the cover art "Artist - album.jpg" in that same directory
wether they have internal images or not. Given that, do you think it would be a good strategy to
scan the album directories for image files assuming they represent cover arts or any picture related to
the music in the same dir ?
thanks

[RhinoBanga]

Cmagic,

That is a good idea ... but I would implement it differently.

I would scan:

1)  The MJ cover art folder (in case MJ had problems importing but you already had the image on disk) then
2)  The track folder then
3)  The track parent folder

Looking for:

1)   - .jpg/gif
2)  .jpg/gif


And use that ... but this would be a beta 3/4 thing tho.

In the meantime I'd suggest you copy your images to the MJ artwork folder and assign them or wait for the export/import.

[Mike]

Rhino,

Completed album tab works great.....the problem is that some of my MP3s are saying that they are a completed album when in fact they are not.

Where can I fix this?

and don't forget the overview by album ( instead of by artist )  

Mike

[RhinoBanga]

Mike,

Email me a trace file ... instructions are in the readme file ... but email me direct at jamie@jda-ltd.com

Also I *definately* haven't forgotten about your spanner in the works

As to how I fix it I'll worry about that for beta 3 or 4 ... I'm pushing to get 0.2.3b out this morning then I'm going to look at the internal images extract/assign.