Music Box 4 - Version 9.1

[mvallevand]

Comment.....doesn't work for me.... If I look at artists I have tons to look at......if I switch to compilation then I am missing most of my music.....I think there needs to be an album view.

Ok, are your "missing" 261 albums registered to their artist correctly?

Martin

[Jaggy]

Comment.....doesn't work for me.... If I look at artists I have tons to look at......if I switch to compilation then I am missing most of my music.....I think there needs to be an album view.

Yeah that was part of the reason I just made a new database. I now have my normal albums & compilations split apart in two different collections. I have defaulted it to have "normal albums" as the startup collection (many less artists by far to sort through) then if I want compilation I select that collection from the options menu & if I want to see all albums/artists I just select "system" from options.

[mvallevand]

Opened Music Box tonite and there was nothing there. Tried to run a scan and got nada. Then I tried the 'Nuke Library' and get an error.
The same problem on system #2. Checking the database, I see it and the Music Box directory on both have disappeared. I'm missing the directory entirely. It defaulted to the C drive but I had changed it to D which was working yesterday. I've not rebooted since then.
Users\Public\NPVR\Plugins\MusicBox4\MusicLibrary.db3
I must have done something but don't know what though I've not touched system 2 at all.

I was able to change drives for the database simply by moving it and selecting it, when the prompt to replace came up. However I did notice a problem on creation of a new database, if you didn't change the default collections you wouldn't be able to scan. I have uploaded a fix for this.

Also if you change the database you will need to exit NextPVR and restart to load the new database. The config problem and the plugin are quite different, I am not sure I can notify the plugin about the changes but it's something I can check.

Martin

[mvallevand]

Comment.....doesn't work for me.... If I look at artists I have tons to look at......if I switch to compilation then I am missing most of my music.....I think there needs to be an album view.

Ok I think showing all albums, (as illogical as I find this) will be relatively easy to change, I just have to find a way to toggle it. I can't ever remember seeing a physical record/CD collection sorted like this except for compilations that didn't belong by artist.

I appreciate the comment that there are a lot of artist in compilations and I will see if I can filter artists who only appear in compilations, that might be a tad tougher.

Martin

[gEd]

[I like the idea of not including the 100's of artists from VA albums listed in the artists listing.]

Is there a way of having a genre down the left so, genre, artist, album?

When the playlist window is open, pressing the back button takes me back to the main menu. Is this behavior by design?

I confess I am struggling to get to grips with how ML4 operates atm. I need to play around with it some more.

[Jaggy]

I have found setting up collections has made a HUGE difference to the usability from my point of view anyway. (setting up & setting the default collection is documented on the wiki)

[mvallevand]

[I like the idea of not including the 100's of artists from VA albums listed in the artists listing.]

Yes I do too, that was right out of ML3, so I hadn't thought of it before UJB's comment.

Is there a way of having a genre down the left so, genre, artist, album?

No, it doesn't fit the overall screen layout change and I don't expect the old view to return. Instead, it is a filter in Options on the menu bar. There you will find the genre in sorted order by decreasing frequency in the collection.

When the playlist window is open, pressing the back button takes me back to the main menu. Is this behavior by design?

It's not really by design rather it is that it is not defined. Navigation between screens is via the menu or Green/Alt-G and (assuming you mean what I called the Jukebox screen) you can switch back and forth from the Jukebox to the previous screen with Yellow/Alt-Y if you don't use the menu.

I confess I am struggling to get to grips with how ML4 operates atm. I need to play around with it some more.

I used ML2/3 for years and one of my annoyances was that I still had to rely on the colour key info at the bottom of the screen to figure out what to do. I switched this to using menu choices.

With the move to the menu I decided to become a little less reliant on colours. Instead of Red randomizing artists/album etc, you use OK. The Play key queues selections. These can be swapped in config by ticking the Play Queries choice. I have a major design constraint because the Play key is not available to me while music is playing, since I had to leave that as a key to restart from Pause, sub doesn't provide a method of detecting Pause state. When sub gives this back I will rethink Play/OK use, but I think the move from Red and Yellow is a move forwards.

Maybe if you give me a specific example of what you are struggling with I can give a better explanation, and I might rethink how I am doing it now.

Thanks very much for the feedback, that is why this in beta.

Martin

[martint123]

I'm not in a position to try this at the moment, but can I ask a general question regarding it's architecture?

Is it server based and able to use clients like NMT/MVP/PC ? or installed on each client separately ?
If not can NPVR clients use a shared network database rather than one on each ?

Just trying to picture how I will be using it when things get back to normal at home.

[Jaggy]

Is it server based and able to use clients like NMT/MVP/PC ? or installed on each client separately ?

Do you really think Martin (or myself for that matter) would spend all the time we did developing & testing this if it didn't work on the NMT??

Yes it works fine on the NMT, I just find it a bit (quite a lot sometimes) slower to open & navigate around with my setup than it is on the PC.

[gEd]

No, it doesn't fit the overall screen layout change and I don't expect the old view to return. Instead, it is a filter in Options on the menu bar. There you will find the genre in sorted order by decreasing frequency in the collection.

Where my head is at:
I am currently messing around with 7MC, J River and even itunes to optimise my music requirements for my main stereo, 2 ipods, an mp3 player and a couple of android phones (streaming and remote control using gmote). So I am still experimenting atm and certainly don;t have a clearly defined or rigid idea in my head as to what I need from a music app.

What I want to be able to do is

Easily select a genre and then browse genres by artist and then album. (I am generally more likely to want to listen to a style of music that a certain artist or album)
Regarding random play, I would like (love) the ability to have the application/jukebox randomly play a selected genre or artist within a genre (I have 56 Miles Davis albums) so I might want to just "listen to some Miles"

Whilst certainly a neat idea, I am not *yet* convinced on the merits of ordering genres based on quantity. I *may* prefer to stick to alphabetic (could this be configurable?)

So I think before I provide any more feedback , I need to go an play some more with collections (to ape genres perhaps) but....

When I go into options, collections has the tag @optionvalue and when I right arrow I get

System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index
at System.Collections.SortedList.GetByIndex(Int32 index)
at PsycikProductions.MusicLibrary.SetOptions.changeOp tions(KeyEventArgs e) in C:\Users\Martin Vallevand\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\ML9\MusicBox4\OptionsPopup.cs:line 364
at PsycikProductions.MusicLibrary.SetOptions.OnKeyDow n(KeyEventArgs e) in C:\Users\Martin Vallevand\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\ML9\MusicBox4\OptionsPopup.cs:line 281
at NextPVR.ControllerForm.OnKeyDown(Object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnKeyDown(KeyEventArg s e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ProcessKeyEventArgs(M essage& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ProcessKeyMessage(Mes sage& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmKeyChar(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Mes sage& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Mess age& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
at NextPVR.ControllerForm.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.O nMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.W ndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
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Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4959 (win7RTMGDR.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
NextPVR
Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/NPVR/NextPVR.exe
----------------------------------------
NShared
Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/NPVR/NShared.DLL
----------------------------------------
NUtility
Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/NPVR/NUtility.DLL
----------------------------------------
System.Data
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_32/System.Data/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Data.dll