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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:

ftp://ftp.jriver.com/pub/downloads/music/MediaJukebox90055.exe

Some of the major changes in this preview:

- "General" file properties makeover -- grouped properties, can optionally show all fields, and several other enhancements
- "Image" file properties layout updated
- Image dimensions, import date, and a few other database fields added
- Search strings can now specify sort orders (for smartlists, etc.) -- documentation to follow
- Added several preset "Auto Smartlists"
- Lots of internal database improvments, like data-type validation, lists of "accepted" fields, editing for extended fields like lyrics, etc.
- Added ability to clear some database fields like replay gain, play count, etc.
- Playlist importing works again
- Track #'s weren't being saved / loaded properly from the file tags
- BPM saved / loaded properly in mp3's now
- Shuffle works again
- Added slider for image slideshow change frequency
- Column autosize messed up the first column
- Playback output settings wouldn't save

Keep in mind that at this stage in the game, we're getting way 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 all of your help, support, and patience.

-Matt
JRiver

(note: Old version 9.0 preview Media Libraries will not work with this preview. The library data format will not be finalized for a couple of builds, so be prepared to erase and re-import with each new preview)

[DocLotus]

Matt;

You guys rock!!!

[KingSparta]

>> You guys rock!!!
No, I think He Likes Bubble Gum Music.

When he gets older he will Rock

[JimH]

He has gotten a lot older since he started at JRiver.  He can grow facial hair now.  He owes us.

[sekim]

YUKYUKYUK. Geez Matt, what's it like to be all growed up?

[DocLotus]

Hi guys;

MJ 9.0.055

Love the direction ‘Properties’ is going.  Perfect.

Track number importing problem seems to be also resolved.

BUGS…

When closing down MJ then re-open MJ, all the play lists are gone!  The database is still on the hard drive.  Have to re-import DB to get the play list back.  Close MJ & same thing happens all over again.

[sekim]

Auto Smartlists for duration aren't showing anything. Tracks longer than ten minutes draws a blank. So does less than one minute.

[DocLotus]

Seems to of resolved the disappearing play list on close of MJ.  I did a complete un-install of MJ 9, then re-installed MJ 9 & rebuilt the play list.  Is working now.

Would recommend that anyone installing this build un-install your current build before installing this one.

[RemyJ]

Getting better!!

Playlists are still resorting themselves.
Track numbers are importing but now replay gain isn't.
Column resizes aren't being remembered.
Auto track advance isn't working with ASIO output.
-   Next track just buffers permanently.
Track selection in thumbnail mode with the shift key pressed
-   still selects more than it should.
Grouping on artist places all artist names starting with numbers
-   into Unassigned.
Encoder options missing from main Options dialog.
-   Only shows when you take options from rip dialog.
Track list writing is off by 1.  
-   Select an album with 10 tracks.
-   9 entries are written to the details window:
-   2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,9
-   Select 2 and it changes to 1.
-   Select the blank line after the 2nd 9 and it becomes 10.
-   Tried multiple systems with different video cards.
-   Tried both skinned and unskinned.
Media Server is returning references to it's local file system.
-   I.E.  "C:\Music\..." instead of "m01p://server/c:\Music..."

[phatrabt]

Well guys, I can say I DO like where v9 is going, but to me the file properties took a BIG step backwards.  I think the file location at the top of where I'm editing (which helped me since I have to use the filenames', or change them) was a great thing.  Also, The order of the rows in the properties box is different now.  I know I'm nitpicking, but it's what I'm used to.  One more tiny annoyance...  the Properties window always stays on top, even when I don't want it to!  Dialogs get hidden behind it, which is a pain.  Also, when I size it so that i can see all the info, it NEVER statys that way.  It always defaults to that small size, so I have to resize it every time.  Just my thoughts!

[DocLotus]

MJ 9.0.055

All builds of MJ9 have been crashing. The following error message comes up just before MJ9 closes.

AppName: media jukebox.exe  AppVer: 9.0.55.0  ModName: wmvcore.dll
ModVer: 9.0.0.2799  Offset: 00053c44

Also, all builds... if a selection is playing & I double click on another selection, MJ will often crash.

[drosoph]

RFE:  The Continuous ON/OFF button ... could it have a third toggle that include CONTINUOUS ON (Random) ... that would add random songs once the current playlist is empty ?

[Doof]

Really quick observations:

I like where the Properties box is headed. I told you guys that I trusted you.

However, the Fill Track Numbers from List Order tool is useless unless you first add the tracks you want to edit to a playlist.

And even then...

Playlists refuse to be ordered by anything other than the (apparently) whatever sort order I have specified in options.

So the Fill Track Numbers tool is completely useless right now.


One other thing. I like the Auto Smartlists. Aren't you guys worried that MS might sue?

[Doof]

One more thing. Audio Analysis doesn't seem to be analyzing Replay Gain at all. And for some reason, a much higher percentage than I would expect are getting a 100% peak level.

[RemyJ]

Yeah, Replay Gain isn't working.  It analyzes but doesn't seem to calculate the gain.  Files still show queued after they are analyzed.

[Mirko]

(note: Old version 9.0 preview Media Libraries will not work with this preview.

Oh no... but... you warned me. So I have to export all my images and videos again (and will reimport them for testing purposes) :-)
Is there an easy way to not loosing the information I entered into MJ for files, that don't support tagging yet (Videos, Pictures)?

Bugs:

the loudness of the played songs is unstable. Sometimes the songs begin very silent and suddenly the loudness turnes up _very_ much (I use headphones, not so funny...). I think this only occurs with un-analyzed files

the com-interface of playlists doesn't deliver the files in a playlist. I can enumerate the created playlists (so I have objects for all of these), but I cannot enumerate the contents.

view schemes with custom made fields doesn't filter correctly

mass-update of tags (e.g. rename from properties) does take much time (so far, so good); the status window sometimes disappear and I can only see that MJ is not hanging using task manager (it takes about hours sometimes, but this might be quite normal)

canceling audio analyze sometimes doesn't react but hangs MJ

Suggestions:

add the db-fields to the jpeg-header. As far as I know the jpeg-standard allows custom fields there (I know of one field in detail: The authoring software (e.g. "Photoshop"); maybe you could find a way to export the fields into this).

create a seperate info-file for files, that don't support tagging, e.g:
 - filename: MVC100.GIF
 - infofile: MVC100.GIF.MJINFO
The advantage of this would be, that you can clean the DB and reimport all files and you loose no (hand made) information.
I think that could be made possible with a plugin

support "streaming" slideshows over LAN

[Marty3d]

No saving sort order in 'Playing Now' yet?

[nila]

Hi,
Just gotta say, Matt, your doing great work.

Couple of points though,
Thanks for adding, date Imported - hugely welcomed by a lot of people I think. I noticed however that it's displaying the time in minutes and seconds and updating all 7000 songs of mine every second, this has got to be using up some CPU and memory I'd imagine and so I'd like an option for it to not update dynamically like this.

Also, I'd like to be able to specify the format that: date modified, date created and imported date are shown in.

For me personally I only want for instance the number of days a song has been imported for. ie: 4 days. I'm not too bothered about seconds or hours etc.

I found that I could edit column names - Thanks, another feature that just took time to discover. It'd be nice if it was possible to right click on the column headers and choose 'properties' or 'rename' or something there to make it easier to find, not for me as I now know where it is, but for newcomers.

Aaahh,
Just discovered a bug in this. Tried to rename Track # to just # and suddenly lost all the info for all the track numbers. I presume it's saving the tags into the mp3's using the column headers and then just doing a look up for the column headers inside the mp3. It's not keeping any cross reference though if the column headers are changed. Not good

Also, would it be possible to assign the alignment of each column. left, right or center.

Thanks

[nila]

Keeps crashing all over the place on me.
Did a full uninstall and reinstall, data files included and still no luck.
It'll open, then I click on Media Library and boom, it dies instantly and disappears with no trace.

Oh yeah, another nice feature would be the ability to say do this:
NewColumn = Track #

and then have MJ copy all the data from Track # into NewColumn.

[Scronch]

>He has gotten a lot older since he started at JRiver. He can grow facial hair now.

Only problem is, it's already turning gray.  Although, that's probably not all due to JRiver.  Could be those Vikings .  I see Moss is under 10 yds/rec, tsk tsk.  But at least he's such an upstanding young man.

Scronch

[DocLotus]

MJ 9.0.055

BUGS…

* When I reorder the play list headers, I loose most of the new properties, File Info data.

* Should be able to reorder the play list by dragging the play list items in the ‘Options/Tree & View Settings’ window.

[Matt]

Thanks everyone.  Just a couple of quick notes:

- We'll add view specific sorting / column ordering / etc. eventually, but it may be a while...

- Nila, don't rename the preset fields -- it's a bug that it's letting you.  Once the database format is done changing, we'll make the GUI for customizing the DB.  The current GUI doesn't really work.  (note: you better erase your *.jmd files and start over)

[nila]

ALOT of my songs no longer have the correct title showing.
They now display the full file name instead.

This is a pretty big bug and is really effecting me being able to use MJ9 properly at all, any chance of putting this as a priority to fix and releasing a new version soon with it fixed?

Also, I LOVE the way the properties box is comin along. Nice job.
Would it be possible to seperate the different sections with something like a cell padding like the info inside each header has?

Also, maybe next to say Replay Gain have: Calculate as a button.
Little things like that, just to give us easy access to tools related directly.

Also, I love the way the commands button has all the options, but this might be a bit confusing at first for new users (alot of users will be won or lost in the first day. If it isn't self explanatory they might leave). It might be worth while putting two extra buttons ontop of the two there. One saying Apply, One saying discard.

[Mirko]

As you might know, I did like the "old" property box. But I'm getting used to the new one.

But... I nearly cannot play any song, because of missing replay gain.

Thanks a lot,
Mirko

[nila]

I like to keep all my albums in their own folders and in each folder along with the songs I keep a .sfv file so I can check them at any point to make sure they haven't been corrupted, and a .m3u file.

I'd LOVE it if MJ 9 had an option to keep this for me and to recreate the .sfv file any time it modified any of the songs and the same with the .m3u. It's starting to now use the idea and concept of albums as an entity instead of just songs and so this shouldn't be too hard. It would be very useful though

I think MJ can organise the songs into folders by album by doing stuff like:   Artist - Album\Artist-Album-Track#-Name as the naming rule but this doesn't exactly jump out at beginners,
a tool specifically labelled: Physically organise mp3's or something like that might be something new users would find HUGELY useful.

[Mirko]

Bug:

WebMedia doesn't work: It plays the first song in "playing now" or gives an error "Please select file(s) to play." if there is no.

[Woodman]

Bug: "Store images inside files when possible" box keeps unchecking itself and will not allow storage.

[drosoph]

.... Renaming a View Scheme sub-category on numerical values causes the tags to be removed.   Quick Example: I use BPM View Schemes (to categorize Techno Music) .. If I select "180-200" and rename it "Really Fast Stuff" it tries to save that to the tag and clears all the BPM calculations ...

I can understand this for Artist, or Album ... but BPM ? or YEAR ? If I create a DECADE View Scheme and want to name a sub-group "80's" instead of "1980-1989", it tries to replace all the years with "80's", errors (text vs numerics i guess) and removes all the years ....

Is there any way to correct this action that is the field is Numeric Only (ie BPM or YEAR) and the user renames a sub-category in the View Scheme with TEXT, that is will not try to replace the Tags ?

Or is there some way around this that I'm missing ?

[drosoph]

For the last few version, I thought it may just be my slow system .. but, if I add a playlist filter (Play ONLY, or SKIP) it locks up MJ.  As if it were trying to work too hard to implement the filter ...

Also, why is it that a user can only select ONE filter?  Personally I have a few that I would like to implement (ie, Christmas Music Playlist, My Son's Music Playlist (he's 1, and sesame street isnt for me), Comedy Playlist) ....

The filters are very important if we were able to Random Add Song To Playlist when Complete.  My one & only big request.

[Matt]

Also, why is it that a user can only select ONE filter? Personally I have a few that I would like to implement (ie, Christmas Music Playlist, My Son's Music Playlist (he's 1, and sesame street isnt for me), Comedy Playlist) ....

Just make a smartlist that combines everything into one tidy package, and use it as your filter...

[drosoph]

Matt,  That's what I currently do, but it would be really nice to just be able to select multiple filters ... if you want to add a filter you have to edit a smartlist ...

Do you have problems implementing Filters ? Does yours lockup ? That is the more important question here.

[Mirko]

Just a little report of my recent notices about MJ9.

Sound
I noticed, that played mp3-songs are "random" in loudness. Sometimes they sound right for about 10sec (sometimes longer, sometimes shorter), then suddenly they get louder (I think I have heard a small click when that happens); then it stays at that loudness.
I don't think this is specific to special songs; I tested about 50 (a mix between electronical (Daft Punk) and pop (Elton John)) and all had the same problems. Playing them with another player I hear no difference (so I guess they are not damaged).
All songs encoded using VBR and Joint Stereo. They show up like "512kbit" in MJ (that's _sure_ not true, max is 320) :-)

I'm not sure if that comes from missing replay gain values. But I noticed this behaviour with the last alpha-build and it vanished after analyzing audio (if I remember correctly). So I would _guess_ it's missing rg. I have analyzed some songs with MP3gain, which does replay gain also, and then played them using MJ. The same problem.

Analyze audio is not working in (this) MJ9-build. All songs get tested, no replay gain value shown in the column, and shortly after testing they are shown as "queued" again.

Prior to installation I uninstalled the older MJ9-alpha (and, of cause, the ver8). But I have the WMP9-beta installed (which can't play MP3s, by the way).

Ripping
Then I did a rip of one songs from one CD using external encoding (lame 3.93a2). The lookup in yadb did find two entries, but I couldn't determine which one is "better" because both showed up the same ("Daft Punk / Homework"). But the one I choose was very qualified :-)
The ripping did a very good job. Only a little bit slow (3.2x on a >40 CDR) using secure ripping. No clicks and pops and so on. MJ was stable and the system did work parallel. Very good job!

Auto Smartlists
The new Smartlist "Recently Imported - Today" is uncomfortable, I think. I had to import all my media again (because of the new installation). Then after importing, I decided to rip the CD. Because I'm somewhat possessed by detailhandling, I work over every file I rip (e.g. "rename from tags", "genre", "audio analyze" and so on). And I do (did) that using "recently imported". So I had to clean up the smartlist (because I don't want to look for the file; the playlist is not ordered by "last imported", but by name or something; and it's not very handy to work with a list of 10.000 entries). Yes, you're right: The whole library was emptied, but the one new song...
I don't think I like that ;-) Could you please do a second "recently imported"-playlist that works like the one I had in 8?

But I like the idea of these smartlists. I had to work over some of them ("one audio cd worth" (I like 80mins, not 74) and the like), but they are a very good starting point (and I usually did them by hand anyway).

Comparism to WMP9
WMP9 looks nice, has a very good interface, I think. But after importing some hundred MP3 and noticing, that I had to tag (in WMP9; it didn't change the MP3-file itself) all of them again and didn't finding a "tags from filename"-option, I closed the testing session. For a _very_ long time I think ;-)
And it doesn't rip (got an error -> will be better in release version) and doesn't encode to mp3 by default (you have to _buy_ an encoder -> why is lame free, again?). Ok, the visualization is nice to see, but really useless to me.

[nila]

Choice to disable generic drive is greyed out which means I cant burn cd text on my cd's which is something that is a huge disappointment from a program that is meant to be all about organising music and getting my songs info right.

I'm gonna have to stick to Nero till this is fixed which in itself is a pain. I loved doing it from MJ with older builds of v8.

[Marty3d]

Matt & Co,

I thought some about MJ9 (and am of course SO excited!) and I know some of the critiscism you got from MJ8 and maybe MJ7 as well was user friendliness.

Suggestion to help newbies: Throw in some optional wizards to help them through the first thresholds. MS began doing that it and it works like a charm! Even the most ignorant people can use Word, and thats much thanks to the various wizards around the program.

Even if I've been working with computers at a technical, educational  and programmatical level, I'm beginning to have a hard time finding all cool functions!

Just a thought,
/Martin

[nila]

Importing Media: - When you click on details after an import it's never showing anything.
It's always messing up the Name field and just putting the file name instead.
The tool to fill in fields from file name isn't working properly either and is doing all kinds of random stuff.

[nila]

Another feature request
The find and replace tool is a great feature, thanks.

It'd be nice if it was made a bit more powerful in terms of features though so that we could also do things like: trim X chars starting at B, or TRIM LAST X chars, or INSERT at the Beginning/End/Position X 'Blah'.

Make it more of a field re-namer rather than a find and replace.

[nila]

Hey Matt,
I mentioned before about possibly including some kind of file verifier to MJ.
I just found this:
http://www.morgothtools.com/mp3crc.html
It's exactly what I was talking about pretty much in terms of functionality. It's really simple, it just inserts the CRC into the mp3's and then checks them, it can also check the .sfv files found too against the mp3's.

Any chance of anything like this for v9??

[thumbnail suggetsion]

How about a menu option to hide images to songs with no thumbnail?

I kove the thumbnail in playing now mode, but have many blank spaces.  It would look much nicer to have only album art and not blank boxes or MJ icons placed in between.  
ABout 60% of my library has album art, and I would love to be able to hide that other 40% (not exclude it from the playlist, just hide it from view)

[Doof]

Nila> Are you sure MJ isn't just displaying the filename column where you think the name column is? I noticed that 9 so far defaults to ordering columns alphabetically. So Filename comes before Name, and you get the Filename column where you'd normally expect to see the Name column. That threw me at first, too.

[Matt]

How about a menu option to hide images to songs with no thumbnail?

Make a smartlist named "My View Filter" like this:

mediatype=[audio] imagefile=[]

Then, pick "Hide->My View Filter" from the "View Filter" toolbar button.  It'll hide all the audio files without images

[Eaglesfan]

Matt,

thanks for the smartlist tip...

Again, I'm in the camp that advanced SmartLists are good for many advanced users.  For beginners or average computer users, it is a lot easier to have a menu option to check or uncheck...

But I'll give it a go!  Its amazing what you can do with MJ

[Matt]

Again, I'm in the camp that advanced SmartLists are good for many advanced users. For beginners or average computer users, it is a lot easier to have a menu option to check or uncheck...

Actually, that smartlist already exists, so it is just a menu check in the view filter menu. ( Hide -> Auto Smartlists (music)\Tasks -- no images )

I think the problem is that everybody wants to be able to do something different, but it's just not possible to make everything somebody could dream up a simple "menu option to check or uncheck".

Still, MJ has a lot of room to grow in the areas of usability and simplicty.  Any specific ideas are very welcome.

Thanks.

-Matt

[Mirko]

Still, MJ has a lot of room to grow in the areas of usability and simplicty. Any specific ideas are very welcome

Ok. Wizards using a template interface, so that we can help you build wizards.
I have some ideas here, so you can get more details if you like.

[nila]

About the naming problem,
it's definitely a bug because I sorted all the columns into the right places. It's definitely just displaying the file name.
And it's JUST the file name, not the path or anything too that it's displaying. Only the actual name of the file itself.

I want my track titles back

[JimH]

Nila,
Please start a new thread on this.  There are a lot of possible problems.  WMP 9?  Import settings?  Right click on title bar at top of content window to customize.

[Eaglesfan]

Another thing that both Winamp does and WMP is it flashes the title and artisit on the screen briefly when a track is played.  WMP does this at least in the taskbar view (suprised me and pleased me when it happened), Winamp has been doing this awhile.

The Auto Smartlists are a cool thing

I do agree that it is hard for you guys because
1)every user has a different level of computer knowledge
2)everyone wants different features
3)your "niche" is for advanced users rather than beginners... if you make MJ too easy ten you may lose your faithful following...

[Matt]

Nila, your tags may have gotten messed up from renaming default columns.

Sorry...

-Matt

[nila]

Matt,
some of these are new mp3's since I did that foolish move.
It's a random collection of old and new songs that this happens for.
Just checked some of the mp3's in winamp3 and it's showing the correct titles for the songs. This is a fresh db for v9. I deleted the old one and did a nice fresh install.

And Jim, I haven't touched WMP9, MS stuff is dodgy enough final, beta is dangerous.
Plus, why would I wanna touch that when I love MJ?

[Cmagic]

Hi,

I've been playing with MJ9.0 preview (buidl 51) for the first time yesterday night.
I was quite impressed !
I like the new layout of properties with the addition statistics.
I was also impressed by the overall stability, no crash in more than an hour of testing ! And its only build no 51 !
I could not check all the new features but the one that I'm really keen on is the addition of images. Now, maybe this will require a little thinking about the kind of organisation needed for music files and image files.
For example, we are used (well, I am at least) to organize music files by artist/album and the filenames like "artist-title.ape"
but for my photos I use a year/month-day/topic directory scheme with
a "date-topic.jpg" filenaming convention. This can be tricky if we want the library to be compatible with both organization schemes at the same time !
Also, for image files it would be great to have access to the EXIF data that most digital cam now write in the files. Likewise some images (TIFF, JPG) have IPTC information embedded. IPTC and EXIF are ID3, APE tags equivalent for image files, n'est ce pas ?
I bet you thought about that, didn't you ?

If MJ can manage photos like it already manages music, you'll end up with "product of the century" award !

Anyway, all this to say that MJ9 preview shows a lot of promises for the future.

Bonne soiree a tous et a bientot,

Christian

[bennyd]

Few bugs I found:

- When retrieving coverart from the internet from an "assorted" album, it looks for the artist "assorted"

- Drag & Drop a music file from within MJ to an external application (like MP3GAIN), doesn't work anymore, it worked in preview I.

- Using Filter, crashes MJ (hangs)

- New fields I add are not possible anymore to fill them in (in file properties, the field does not show up)

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

- My NEO Jukebox is still showing as a Device in MJ but does not show any files anymore and when keep on clicking on subdirectories, MJ crashes