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[RhinoBanga]

Here's the link:

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


And here's the changelog:

Fixed issue where lastplayed was not being loaded into track grid
Fixed issue where thumbnail caption text was going beyond thumbnail size
Fixed issue where export was dumping out hidden columns
Fixed issue where duration column in track details was not sorting properly
Fixed issue where reorganizing track details columns caused incorrect tooltips info to appear
Fixed issue where albums with different case (but by same artist) were being reported as separate albums
Fixed issue where sometimes the thumbnail scrollbars were not being shown
Fixed issue where switching between the same artist in the completed/library treeviews did not reset the album list

Added !albumpath! as an artwork token ... it returns the albums first track's path
Added wildcard support to the filename part of an artwork rule, so you can now say *front*.jpg and it will pick the first filename that qualifies as the artwork.
Added duplicate album detection
Added ability to resize thumbnails at a granular level instead of small/medium/etc
Added wheel mouse support to thumbnails
Added ability to play albums while in sync mode from the album details screen
Added option to show the selected album position within an artist


I'm now going to make a cup of tea and start on v1.0 which will contain my own database format since many of you have requested it.

The way it will work is that if no database exists it will scan *everything* about your MJ database/images/etc and store all I need in one (or more files).   From then on anytime you access AV it will just query my database.   Obviously this raises some sync issues so for the first release if you add new tracks or change track information, etc, you will have to do a complete rescan of your DB.

The idea behind this is that you take one (very big) performance hit up front and from then on it should all be smooth sailing.   Plus this will allow me to add my own fields to the database, e.g. last album played/album rating, along with some other cool features I'm going to add, e.g. mark an artist or album as a favourite and put a favourites tab in the overview screen.   Also this will get rid of the memory hog issue some of you have been experiencing.



Enjoy and let me know of any issues you find.

[JimH]

Rhino,
> I'm now going to make a cup of tea and start on v1.0 which will contain my own database format since many of you have requested it.

I think this may create a lot of support headaches for both you and us.  Have you discussed it with Matt or Nikolay?

[RhinoBanga]

Jim,

I haven't discussed it with them as I have only just decided I am going to do it ... but why would it be a support issue for you?

All I am planning to do it move my internal tables to flat files (e.g. artists) to save the initial scan time and tag on a few other fields.

[nila]

Rhino - LOVELY!!!
Glad your gonna add those features.
I personally am going to love it when you introduce your own database as it's going to make your plugin hugely powerful and the screen I use most in Media Player.

And Jim - Just make sure you have like a note somewhere warning that you dont provide support for the plugins which should save you guys having to worry about it.

I'd HATE to see a plugin as great as this hindered.

[nila]

Hey Rhino,
Just a favour, for Various Artist albums - right now it says the name of the first artist for the album.
This is kind of deceptive as it's actually various artists.
Also, the album falls into the C category because the first artist is C****.
I personally would like it if it had Various Artists as the name and they all came under V or something.

Thanks!

[Tolga]

THANKS A LOT !
!albumpath! works greaaat!

One next improvement I believe is the addition of genre/artist tree in overview left pane. Alphabetic filter is useful if you know what you are looking for, but I think Album View is best for scanning your albums, if you are not sure what you want to listen. Limiting the search for a particular genre, is the natural choice for me because usually, although you don't know what you want to listen, you know the mood of what you want to listen. Of course, this may be user dependent feature and I believe the right answer converges to reinventing media library schemes.

How difficult is it to use album view in media library schemes. (So that AV replaces the file list on the right pane, on users choise). Even if this requires additional MJ support, I believe that this will be the most important next improvement to MJ.

[Tolga]

an AV icon could be added to the toolbar, because it is used so frequently!

[Tolga]

Options - Thumbnails - Caption Height gives error for value 9 saying that it should be between 0 and 150.

[shelly]

Bug:

Everytime that the scroll bar is used while in properties, MJ crashes. This did not happen prior to installing this version, but immediately following upgrade, it consistently crashed. I uninstalled AV and MJ no longer crashed while scrolling in properties.  

Shelly

[shelly]

As a follow-up to my post above, I reinstalled AV and the MJ crashed again while scrolling in properties.

[RhinoBanga]

Nila:
I will think about putting albums with multiple artists under V in the next release.   I will probably make it an option.


Tolga:
I cannot do anything to MJ's UI ... if/when J River implement a facility to add oneself to it I will implement it.
Re the genre thing ... I will implement it into the overview screen in the next release.   The listview (left hand side of the screen) will be filled with a list of the Genre's for the selected artist (the tab's at the bottom).


Shelly:
I have reproduced the bug and it will be fixed in the next release.

[shelly]

Rhino

This may have been addressed previously so I hope this isn't redundant.  
On various artist albums, I have the actual artist in the artist field and "various [album title] artists" in the album artist field.  However, AV is just picking up one of those artists for each of the albums.  It seems to be random in terms of which artist is captured, it's not necessarily the first alphabetically or by track number.  This is true in all views.  

One request for the next version is to somehow indicate the artist name in album view in the track listings.  This would be really nice when there are multiple artists.  A tooltip indicating the artist for each track would be sufficient.  

Many thanks for all of your efforts to provide a great plug-in.

Shelly

[shelly]

Correction on my last post.

I believe it is the first track that is being picked up in multiple artist albums.  Since I went back to the previous version of AV, I can't verify.  It's the middle of the night and my brain isn't in gear yet.

Shelly

[nila]

Shelly - that's what I already mentioned and he replied to - it does currently do that.

And Rhino - Thanks for all the hard work dude.
Instead of using V as I suggested - it might be far better to have another tab called Compilations or something just to make it fully clear with all compilations not falling under any tab but just going into that tab.

[shelly]

Nila - now I realize we're saying the same thing - lol.

[lee269]

Rhino

1. The 'reorganising track view columns messes up tooltips' problem is still there in 0.3.5 for me Im afraid.

2. AV does not repaint when MJ window is resized: I mentioned this before, and I guess it could be related to my display drivers or something. Would you recommend a driver update?

3. Mouse wheel scolling now works - yey!

Thanks once more

lee269

[RhinoBanga]

Lee,

1)  Can you tell me exactly the order of columns that you have please.

2)  I have seen that if my office machine (W2K with a Matrox card) but my XP Pro machine (GF3) and my W2K server machine (Radeon VE) both work fine.   I think it's a driver issue.

3)  I'm glad you like it but there is a bug ... don't use the scroll wheel in any MJ properties windows ... it crashes MJ

[lee269]

Rhino

Thanks for the response. Will attempt a display driver upgrade. Below is from the default track view headings, where tooltips work initially (I havent tried all (I think) 3628800 possible combinations of headings!). This is confusing enough just to check, so I dont know how on earth you program it, but here goes:

1. With Album, as the leftmost col, moving it anywhere breaks the tooltips

2. Artist: moving the col left or right causes the problem.

4. Just noticed something obvious: the tooltip always shows artist and album details, with a 3rd row displaying the variable in the column where the mouse is. The third row is working correctly - its only the first 2 that are affected.

5. Stop press - grouping the report by any column appears to not affect this at all - you can group by as many variables as you like but it is only moving the headings that affect the tooltip.

Hope this helps - happy to clarify.

lee269

[lee269]

Im on a roll tonight - heres some more I did whilst offline earlier.

Rhino

Two things about Options/Thumbnails/Caption Specifications:

1. Not sure I understand the difference between preferred and other types in the condition dropdown. Presume entire collection refers to overview and completed albums only to album view.  Anyway, as soon as I click on the dropdown scrollbar or use the mouse wheel the options dialog disappears. [perhaps this is related to the scroll problem you mentioned earlier - but MJ doesnt crash totally]

2. I edited the default 'entire collection - preferred' type value to be !album!!artist!. This doesnt appear to change anything in overview, even after closing/restarting MJ and an AV db refresh.

3. Noticed this whilst writing the above. If I have the options dialog open and click on a non MJ application window to bring it to the foreground, when I click on the MJ window behind the active one it does not come to the front as expected. Clicking on the MJ button on the taskbar does bring MJ up as expected (XP home). If the options dialog is visible behind the active window then it also works. This is not the same situation with MJ dialogs, eg file properties, options.

4. OK, so this is a lot more than two things This must have been discussed previously, but can I plead for the return of the thumbnail default sizes (S, M, L, XL, etc) in the options? I think this is more sensible than allowing silly values in the thumbnail size options (I know you validate for really stupid entries here), plus with my level of knowledge I have to experiment to get a picture size that suits my screen size. I appreciate the ability to tune this option to the pixel, but perhaps new users would prefer options of a choice of your sensible sizes or a custom size, or a slider which would change the size whilst retaining the aspect ratio. Guess its obvious this is not a feature I have explored, but for what its worth...

lee269

[RhinoBanga]

Lee,

Unfortunately I can't test the tooltips today as I have "broke" AV ... but I will do so tomorrow.

In AV you can nominate what your preferred media type is, e.g. MP3.   Preferred type/other type gives you the ability to have different captions based on this fact.  For example there is no point in displaying MP3 in an album caption if 99% of your albums are of this type.   It's the 1% that you are interested in so utilizing this feature you can show a different caption for the "odd" albums ... and by default AV shows the media type over and above what is normally displayed for a preferred type.

When you edited the caption did you choose the correct "Entire Collection" entry?   You have two remember ... one by artist and one by artist/album.

Re the options screen I can't test this, see above, but I would take a guess that it's an ActiveX thing.

Finally re the thumbnail sizes ... I really can't win ... people complained that they couldn't size them the way they want ... now someone wants it back the way it was   I will see what I can do but my initial reaction is to re-write the whole section of code and allow you to create named "captions/thumbnail sizes" and allow you to nominate which one to use in what circumstance.   But I won't even think about that till the weekend.

[dick]

After browsing a bit through my collection of 385 CDs with Album View, I get a message from Windows 2000 saying that it is increasing my virtual memory (I assume it means the swap file.) It jumps from about 292MB to about 900MB. It goes back down if I terminate MJ or uninstall Album View. I haven't detected any serious problems when this happens, but I don't think it should be happening.

System Info:

Media Jukebox PLUS 8.0.272

CPU: Intel Pentium III 598 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 392 MB, Free - 106 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows 2000  Workstation 5.0 Service Pack 2 (Build 2195)

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2600.0000
ComCtl32.dll: 5.50.4704.1100
Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
Shell32.dll: 5.00.3502.4718
wnaspi32.dll: N/A

Dick Green

[Tolga]

I keep song files on CDs. if I click on a file name in MJ, it complains saying:
"The volume labeled 'VOLUME NAME' was not found, etc..", then I know to insert the CD
VOLUME NAME. On the other hand, if i click on an album cover in AV that is on a CD (not in the driver), it complains with "Please select file(s) to play" and I don't know what to insert into the driver. Can you change error message to something similar to MJ's so that AV can be used in a similar way?

Thanks,
Tolga

[Tolga]

you enter the CD, the images are with the songs, in !filepath! directory. You scan. refresh, great ! they are in AV. You take eject the CD, scan the second CD, you refresh, oops, maybe as expected the covers for the first CD are gone. I think the solution is to add a switch saying that: if the location of a picture is external and it is not accessible (because the corresponding volume is not in the driver), do not change it in refresh. Since there is no single location for a picture, an approximate implementation could be: if no picture can be found on any location and if some of the locations are on removable drivers, do not change the picture during rescan. This whole idea is similar to "Remove files which do not exists(this will not remove files located on removable drives)" switch under Clean Up - Update Library in MJ.

[RhinoBanga]

Dick:
I think I have isolated the memory problem and it should be fixed in the next build.   It was all to do with objects being copied and not being pointed to.


Tolga:
That message is nothing to do with me ... that's an MJ message ... all I do is pass the track filenames to MJ to play.   Also I am *not* going to do intelligent scanning as it's far too much work ... especially for a free plugin.   I suggest you keep your album artwork on your local machine, on a shared network drive (if you have a network) or on a separate CDRW in another cdrom drive.

[DocLotus]

Lockups...

With AV enabled...
* MJ properties sometimes crashes my Win XP system.
* MJ options screen causes MJ to crash when I try to select any MJ option.
* MJ ripping a CD scroll bars lock up.

Removed AV & all problems are gone.
AV is not usable to me in this state.
Will try next build.

Thanks

[RhinoBanga]

Problems are all to do with the mouse wheel code (which also affects the scrollbars) that people wanted me to put in.

[nila]

Rhino - easy way out for you to save you having to worry about it - put a check box to enable or disable it.
That way people with problems can just disable it.

Just wanna emphasize again, I really do love this plugin!!!
I use it tons.
One problem I have, I put all my random songs that dont belong into albums and give them the album name: Random Songs so that when I use jukeboxes in album view mode I dont get hundreds of entries for all my random songs.
In Album View however when I'm browsing by artist this means I'm having an entry under each letter for the first artist name for that letter with an album of: Random Songs appearing in each entry.
If it's a pain dont worry but any ideas of a way to stop it happening?

[nila]

Yeah baby yeah!!
Software to make Microsoft Jealous!! Wahoo!!

lol - U know I love the plugin Rhino - but Task Manager - Processes - Media Jukebox
With Album View installed: 283 Mb RAM
without A View installed:  25 Mb RAM

Hmm, my maths might not be the greatest in the world but that was a 200 Mb drop just by uninstalling AV.

:*o(
I didn't want to uninstall it cause I love it but that's toooo much memory to spare to one app.
Sorry!

[RhinoBanga]

Nila,

Check around 5 posts up when I talked to Dick.


What I am going to do tonight is suspend what I am doing for the next version and go back to the 0.3.5b code and fix the memory issue and mouse code.

[lee269]

Rhino

re: thumbnail sizes - Im not pressing this, because I dont think I really used the feature the old way; your default size is fine on my display. I only realised it had changed when I was playing with the options on that page, and I realised I wasnt sure quite how big the thumbnails would be without a bit of trial and error. So I thought perhaps the preset sizes would suit casual users more. Ill go with whatever you decide.

Will double check the thumbnail captions later, but first Ive got some ripping to do - 6 CDs delivered today, yippee!

lee269

[MWGilbert]

hi rhino,

thanks for the message. i did get the latest version, which is now working quite well with 8.0.272
i have nothing to add but to say yet again, thanks for the good work.

[Marra]

Hi Rhino

Thanks for a fantastic program - keep up the good work!
One small problem and I hope it hasn't been covered before.
How do you stop the same album appearing twice if songs have been recorded in 2 formats - eg some MP3 some Ogg?
Also how do you stop format type (if not preferred type) from showing?
I would just like artist and album.

[RhinoBanga]

Marra,

> How do you stop the same album appearing twice if songs have been recorded in 2 formats - eg some MP3 some Ogg?

You can't.

> Also how do you stop format type (if not preferred type) from showing?

I don't understand what you mean ... can you explain this question a bit more please.

[Marra]

Rhino

Sorry for not making myself clear-hope this helps.
If preferred type (MP3) not used - it is displayed in thumbnail caption as WMA,ogg etc. Can this be removed?-I'm not really interested in displaying this info.
Also with duplicated albums I guess I have to reformat to 1 type
to only display 1 cover.
Thanks for a great plug-in.

[nila]

Marra,
Just curious - why would you rip an album to two different format anyways?
Just wondering if there's great logic behind it or you were just playing around.

Rhino - Thanks man.
Can you (if it's not too much trouble)
send me an e-mail at: albumview@britcrew.com when the memory leak is fixed so I can hurry and reinstall it.
Thanks dude.
ps - u should charge for this plugin once you get the final version made.
I'd give $5 for it no problem.

[RhinoBanga]

Marra:

You can change the captions in options/thumbnails/caption specifications.   If you want to exclude all non preferred type albums then just use the eclude file types field in options/data processing.


Nila:

I am really having a hard time tracking it down ... I thought I had figured out what was going on but that's not the case now.   I am persevering though and you were the first on my list to contact to test the problem before I release it

Also AV will always be free but thanks for your kind offer.

[Marra]

Nila :

I was just playing around ripping in different formats.

Rhino :

I have set all options/thumbnails/captions to artist & album only - but formats wma,ogg etc still appear in captions.
I still want to display these albums - except with reference to format type. Hope this is clear - no urgency.

[RhinoBanga]

Marra:

I'll check into it later but why wouldn't you want to see what the type is, especially if you have ripped the same album, how would you know what type you were playing?

[nila]

That's probably exactly it though,
she doesn't want to know what type of music it is, just that it sounds good

[RhinoBanga]

Maybe,

But as I said if you had two entries saying "Abba - Gold" ... how would you know which one to listen to?

[Marra]

Sorry, I'm a traditionalist - I just want to thumb thru my "vinyls" to select which one to play - no need to know mp3,ogg etc. BTW I don't have any duplicated albums now as I have converted all on 1 album to 1 type. But I still have ripped CD's in WMA that still show "WMA" .

[jones]

>>Also AV will always be free but thanks for your kind offer.

How come?  Do you have some philosphy about free software?

[RhinoBanga]

Jones,

The reason AV is (and will be) free is that I feel if anyone buys software from me then there is a moral obligation to fix bugs ASAP and to provide immediate support.

AV is something I am knocking out in my limited spare time and if it works for other people then I am happy for them; but if it doesn't then I am under no obligation to work 24hrs a day to resolve it ... but I'll try my best

[nila]

Rhino,
two suggestions for v1 after you fix that memory bug when you introduce your own db.
1. Favourite X albums (user can choose how many). This can be an auto feature where the albums played the most are added or can be manual with the user choosing which ones to add.
2. X Newest albums where the user can see the X newest albums added to their collection. The user should be prompted to see if they want to add any new albums found into this list as I sometimes re-rip an album just to replace the version I have with a better quality rip and I dont consider it a 'new' album as such. Just do something like: I found these new albums: check the ones you wish to add to your 'new' list. type thing.

We love you dude!!

[thankful]

>>The reason AV is (and will be) free is that I feel if anyone buys software from me then there is a moral obligation to fix bugs ASAP and to provide immediate support

Ok, fair enough.
What about donations?
$5 or $25 is not a huge sum these days!!
Some might want to have some way to support your efforts.
I would.
Without any implications about your sleep rights.

Got me thinking.  With this Shareware pricing model being $5 or $10 or $25 or $50 these days.  Not much per unit revenue.  And perhaps a lot of headaches (i.e. confused moral obligations?) for both user and provider.  So why not a model called DONATE-WARE?

You donated your software and best efforts.
We would have a way to freely express and donate some monetary appreciation and support thereof.
DONATE-WARE might even produce more revenue than the SHAREWARE MODEL.  

Wonder if there is anyway to run a test?  Maybe with your plugin.
Lets say that $5 freely donated for your plugin, meant (for the sake of the experiment) that $25 would be freely donated for MJ's DONATE-WARE releases.  I predict MJ would have more revenue (maybe), and certainly good will, switching to a DONATE-WARE MODEL.

JMHO ... probably not worth ####.

[RhinoBanga]

If people are so keen to push money my way I'd rather you went here:

http://www.nspcc.org.uk/donate-4-free/default.asp


And clicked on the donate button once a day for a week or two (it's the UK's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children).

It doesn't cost you anything and every click earns this worthy cause 4p ... I just hope it works internationally

[thankful]

>>It doesn't cost you anything and every click earns this worthy cause 4p ... I just hope it works internationally

Yep, it worked for me from the US.
Thanks for the opportunity to donate and suport your, and their, efforts.
Now I wonder if some nice music or music playing software on the site would help raise revenue!
I see the amount of dollars raised from voluntary, corporate sponsored DONATIONS is many time what MJ claims it need to feed it children, aka programmers

Perhaps, with a corporate sponsoring Click Button, a DONATE-WARE revenue model would work for JRiver?  Maybe the RIAA could be a corporate sponsor .  Seriously, wonder what the revenue realized from personal and corporate donations would be for a product that is appreciated by its users?

JMHT (just my humble thinkings, aka ####), oops...JMHS

[lee269]

Re the 'preferred/other type' caption question I posted earlier - Ive checked it now and I think I did get it wrong. Sorry.

But - at the risk of seeming really stupid here - Im still a bit confused. I have 'Entire collection - preferred type' (!album!!artist!) which I see in overview sorted by album and 'Entire collection by Artist/Album - preferred type' (!album!-= !artist! =-!bitrate! kbps) which I see in overview sorted by artist. All my files and my prefeered type is mp3. Are your caption descriptions wrong, is AV broken, or am I still being stupid (and please be gentle )?

Re payment ideas etc.: To follow on from thankful Im very grateful that you are donating your efforts for free, even though I too would pay for AV. I am not qualified to comment on pricing models, but suggest you put a link to the NSPCC site in the AV about dialog and/or prominently elsewhere in the completed plugin documentation along with a gentle recommendation to the user to visit there. A very worthy cause.

lee269