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Author Topic: Lalittle's List  (Read 2453 times)

lalittle

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Lalittle's List
« on: October 16, 2006, 05:58:30 pm »

I'm still seeing a lot of the issues I saw in build 93:

1)  mp4 files do not show any thumbnail art over Media Server (you just see a gray square for these files in the TW.)

2)  Some mp4 files do not display thumbnails on the server.  I can see no patter to why some do and some don't, and this was not a problem a little while back.

3)  After adding album art to files on the server, the client refuses to see the art, and continues to display the gray box in the TW (and the blue note icon in the track window.)  The "build missing thumbnails" process does not fix this.  Note that the art DOES show up when clicking on the "gray box" image and bringing up the AW "Image" window, but the main Tag Window still shows just a gray box, as does the track pane if you have it set to display thumbnails.

4)  "Filename (path)" and "Filename (name)" fields have problems over Media Server.  They display the server info rather than the client info, and when you click on these fields, the file is suddenely considered "missing" from MC.  You have to re-load the library to get MC to see and play these files again.

5)  When starting the client using Media Server, the client shows the "Playing Now" icon on the last song the SERVER played.

6)  The green "Playing Now" icon does not display on songs that contain album art.

7)  When doing a search, the "imagefile" field is missing from the list of available choices.  You can still type it in, but shouldn't it be included in the list?  People that don't already know about this field will not realize it's available.


I have not yet had a chance to test the iPod gapless issue I was seeing in 93.

Larry
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lalittle

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Lalittle's List
« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2006, 09:48:55 pm »

Request:

For "List" type fields, the Pane View includes a very useful "Unassigned" checkbox that allows you to uncheck all the highlighted tracks with a single click.  The TW window that pops up for "List" type fields, however, does not include the "Unassigned" checkbox, making it difficult to quickly "clear" the fields if you have more than one file selected that have different values.  It would be helpful if the TW "List" field popup ALSO included the "Unassigned" box so that we had the same functionality in the TW as we do in "Tagging mode."  This would effect those of us who prefer to tag in the TW.

Thanks,

Larry
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lalittle

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Lalittle's List
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2006, 12:18:49 am »

4)  "Filename (path)" and "Filename (name)" fields have problems over Media Server.  They display the server info rather than the client info, and when you click on these fields, the file is suddenely considered "missing" from MC.  You have to re-load the library to get MC to see and play these files again.

This is proving to be a problem with one of my view schemes that uses "Filename(path)" as the first pane.  On the client, this pane lists only "unassigned" rather than showing all the file paths.  The View Scheme DOES work fine on the server.

Larry
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Matt

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Re: Lalittle's List
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2006, 08:58:45 am »

1)  mp4 files do not show any thumbnail art over Media Server (you just see a gray square for these files in the TW.)

2)  Some mp4 files do not display thumbnails on the server.  I can see no patter to why some do and some don't, and this was not a problem a little while back.

3)  After adding album art to files on the server, the client refuses to see the art, and continues to display the gray box in the TW (and the blue note icon in the track window.)  The "build missing thumbnails" process does not fix this.  Note that the art DOES show up when clicking on the "gray box" image and bringing up the AW "Image" window, but the main Tag Window still shows just a gray box, as does the track pane if you have it set to display thumbnails.

For performance, thumbnails are cached locally.  However, the system won't stay in-step with complicated changes on the server.

Erase the thumbnails on the client and let them rebuild.

Quote
4)  "Filename (path)" and "Filename (name)" fields have problems over Media Server.  They display the server info rather than the client info, and when you click on these fields, the file is suddenely considered "missing" from MC.  You have to re-load the library to get MC to see and play these files again.

5)  When starting the client using Media Server, the client shows the "Playing Now" icon on the last song the SERVER played.

These are both as designed.  Filenames are changed when connecting to the server, so you'll have to account for this in advanced view schemes.

Quote
6)  The green "Playing Now" icon does not display on songs that contain album art.

Correct.  The text will be bold in either case.

Quote
7)  When doing a search, the "imagefile" field is missing from the list of available choices.  You can still type it in, but shouldn't it be included in the list?  People that don't already know about this field will not realize it's available.

By design, only fields that can be edited by the user are shown in that list.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

glynor

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Re: Lalittle's List
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2006, 10:11:23 am »

6)  The green "Playing Now" icon does not display on songs that contain album art.

I too would like this.   ;)

It just makes it easier to visually find the currently playing track.  On my low-res TV (maybe one day I'll have a big enough pile of money to go high-def, but not today), it's difficult to discern Bold vs. Not-Bold.
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lalittle

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Re: Lalittle's List
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2006, 06:28:47 pm »

Thanks for the detailed response Matt.

For performance, thumbnails are cached locally.  However, the system won't stay in-step with complicated changes on the server.

Erase the thumbnails on the client and let them rebuild.

This doesn't address two of the three issues I listed.  It addresses #3, but not #1 or #2:

"1)  mp4 files do not show any thumbnail art over Media Server (you just see a gray square for these files in the TW.)"

In other words, I see NO thumbnails for these files on the client -- it just doesn't build them at all.

"2)  Some mp4 files do not display thumbnails on the server.  I can see no pattern to why some do and some don't, and this was not a problem a little while back."

This is referring to the SERVER, not the client.  Some of the mp4 files on the server did not receive thumbnails, while others did.  In earlier versions of MC, they ALL recieved thumbnails on the server.  I'll try deleting ALL thumbnails and rebuilding them on the server to see if it works.


Filename(name) and Filename(path) issue:

Quote
These are both as designed.  Filenames are changed when connecting to the server, so you'll have to account for this in advanced view schemes.

But is it by design that clicking on these fields makes MC stop seeing the files at all and list them as "missing" until re-loading the library?  This seems like a bug.  Also, the "Filename" field doens't have any problems -- this field correctly shows the network path and filename.  It's just the "Filename(name)" and "Filename(path)" fields that misbehave.  Aren't they all based on the same informaiton?

I could understand the "Filename(path)" field getting confused over Media Server, but it seems really odd that the Filename(name) field wouldn't be correct.  The "name" doesn't change over MS, just the path does, and the "Filename" field gets the name right as well.  Are you sure this isn't a bug?


Playing Now icon issue:

Quote
Correct.  The text will be bold in either case.

This was actually rectified with the recent "icon column" changes in build 95.


Search field issue:

Quote
By design, only fields that can be edited by the user are shown in that list.

But there are other non-editable fields in the list, such as "Bitrate" and "Duration."  That aside, why not be able to search based on criteria that's not editable?  "Imagefile=[]", for example, can be a useful search tool to find files with missing cover art.

Thanks again,

Larry
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glynor

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Re: Lalittle's List
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2006, 07:54:18 pm »

I too would like this.   ;)

It just makes it easier to visually find the currently playing track.  On my low-res TV (maybe one day I'll have a big enough pile of money to go high-def, but not today), it's difficult to discern Bold vs. Not-Bold.

(That was regarding the Green "now playing" icon for the file that is currently playing.

Nevermind.  I'm happy now that we have the multiple image type columns.
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lalittle

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Re: Lalittle's List
« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2006, 04:12:27 am »

Okay -- I've had a chance to test this stuff a bit more.  I deleted all the thumbnails from the server and re-ran the "build missing thumbnails" function.  After it was done, #2 was fixed -- i.e. ALL the mp4 files on the server had their thumbnails.

I then deleted all the thumbnails from the Client and ran "build missing thumbnails" on this system.  When it was done, #3 was (as Matt predicted) fixed -- the mp3s that had been updated on the server now had their art.

HOWEVER, #1 was still occuring -- i.e. mp4 files still showed NO art over media server.  I also noticed that this same issue applied to both Audible files (aa) and "log" files, neither one of which displayed any art (image OR thumbnail) on the client.

When I investigated further I found that MC was not showing art for Audible files at ALL -- i.e. not even on the server.  I have a lot of Audible files that previously displayed artwork, and even though these files still say "inside file" for their images, they don't actually display this art.

On this subject, it seems like having to completely delete and rebuild the thumbnail database on the client is a LONG way to go just to get some missing artwork.  Is there possibly a way to just scan for files with "new" art?  The entire process took a little under an hour, so this is not something that I'd want to do that often, yet I'd want to make sure I had the latest art on the client.  It seems like "build missing thumbnails" should be building the thumbnails on the client for any songs that have had art added to them.  At the moment, none of the new art gets thumbnails on the client, and you have to remove ALL thumbnail art just to add a SINGLE song's thumbnail art to the clients library.


Please see my previous post for my followup responses to the other issues -- especially the "Filename(name)/Filename(path)" issue.

Thanks,

Larry
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lalittle

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Re: Lalittle's List
« Reply #8 on: October 20, 2006, 04:45:43 am »

I just wanted to bump this thread since I feel the issues above are important, especially:

- Clicking on the "Filename(name)" or "Filename(path)" fields on the MS client causes MC to completely stop seeing these files until it's restarted.  The "Filename" field, which shows the entire path and name, does not have this problem.

- If you add art to a file on the server, you have to completely delete ALL the thumbnails on the client and "rebuild" them just to get MC to build a SINGLE thumbnail on the client.  This takes over an hour on my client, which just seems like a waste.  Can't the client somehow be made to build the new thumbnails without having to rebuild ALL the thumbnails?  At the moment, the client will not build the thumbnails unless you re-build ALL of them.

Thanks,

Larry
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