For Xt7 to become the one stop audio-video solution

[burak]

1. Gapless audio playback. There're many gapless albums and those gaps are really gaps in the middle of the music in those albums. Mplayer2 is bragging about having this, but seemingly (in SMplayer/2) it hasn't made it possible for the clients to implement this.

2. Cover grid view of albums (not tracs) sorted by album-artist and of video files/folders (but not the ifo or vob files) in library and tree view in playlist mode. Without a cover grid view (like iTunes' for music and the latest VLC's for movies) a media player is not really functional, because one cannot remember all his/her albums/tracks or movies, so needs a visual clue to browse and find them (more so with classical music where album titles are rarely meaningful.)

Are these things possible?

On a side note, Xt7 is very slow building a library of 12000 FLACs (and at the end can see neither the embedded covers nor the ones inside the album folders; and can't load album info in the info view except for the track title). That two pane layout seems needlessly bulky to me. SMplayer2's implementation is better in my view. And finally, volume's habit of constantly setting to a predefined level in every next song is annoying. I couldn't find a way to change this, but this should not be the default behaviour in the first place.

Best regards.

[kokoko3k]

I appreciate you post, now let's go to the points:

1)Gapless audio playback is somehow problematic because of
-mplayer(1) doesn't support it
-mplayer2 does support it, but xt7player manages the playlist by its own (it doesnt use any of the playlisting function built into mplayer)
That may change in the future, i've to see it it is possible.

2)
While i don't see the need to orgainze albums into a grid view (showing them into a column is more friendly to me), just showing albums in the library is a good thing and could be done with little work, but what should happens when the user double click on the album? Here I'm open to suggestions.

Side notes)
12000 FLACs !? Good for you!
Are they on a local disk?
How much time does xt7 toke to analize them all? Tell me that so that i can estimate if it is an expected time or if there are some troubles.
Also, if you execute xt7 by console, maybe some debug message could help me understand what's happening.

Covers inside the album folder are not supported (yet?), but embedded jpg covers are.
Are you sure those flac files have embedded covers?
Have you enabled the relevant options under general options -> style?

The fact that you cannot see any album info means that xt7 failed to read tags from that files;
that could explain the slowness of the initial library sincronization.
Do you have taglib (or libtag) installed?
How did you syncronized your library? the correct way is to add the folders you like to watch (recurse is automatic) under general options -> library and then issue a sync command by the library menu.
As a last resort, could you please upload a flac file somewhere for me to test?
As I'm against piracy, i promise i'll delete as soon as i reproduced any bug.

About two pane layout, i honestly prefer it over floating windows, if you don't need the right panel, just expand the left one, if you don't need playlist and so on, just do the opposite; considering that wide screens are taking places more and more, I can't see any problem here.

Finally the volume control, mplayer added that functionality (-volume) some time ago, i've still to add it to xt7 because... well i forgot it! and last time i checked not all distributions shipped that mplayer version yet.
But as a temporary workaround (that is what i do) assuming you use oss or alsa as audio output drivers, you can just choose a relative mixer channel (under generel options -> audio), so that the volume will be controlled by the system, and not by mplayer.
I think that it to work, software volume control has to be disabled.

[burak]

Thanks for the detailed response.

While i don't see the need to orgainze albums into a grid view (showing them into a column is more friendly to me), just showing albums in the library is a good thing and could be done with little work, but what should happens when the user double click on the album? Here I'm open to suggestions.

You surely may like column view and choose to implement it, as its your app and work. I don't want to force my argument, but can again only say that grid view is (in my humble opinion) better for browsing, as a visiul clue, as column view shows much less items (albums/movies).

"When the user double click on the album", it can either

behave like iTunes or Cantata (a great MPD client) and open a new window with the contents of that album;
or a pop-up window shows the album contents like Beatbox or Guayadeque;
or the album starts to play and in that case for other operations like adding to playlist the user right click on it instead of double clicking.

12000 FLACs !? Good for you!
Are they on a local disk?
How much time does xt7 toke to analize them all? Tell me that so that i can estimate if it is an expected time or if there are some troubles.
Also, if you execute xt7 by console, maybe some debug message could help me understand what's happening.

They're on a WD network drive. Not sure, but I guess it's taken a couple of hours for xt7 to analyze it. If you like I can rescan by starting xt7 from the console?

embedded jpg covers are.
Are you sure those flac files have embedded covers?
Have you enabled the relevant options under general options -> style?

Yes and yes.

Do you have taglib (or libtag) installed?

I've installed libtag-extras-dev, libtag-extras1, libtag1-dev, libtag1-vanilla, libtag1c2a, but there're other libtag packages.

How did you syncronized your library? the correct way is to add the folders you like to watch (recurse is automatic) under general options -> library and then issue a sync command by the library menu.

As you said.

As a last resort, could you please upload a flac file somewhere for me to test?

I will.

[kokoko3k]

"When the user double click on the album", it can either

behave like iTunes or Cantata (a great MPD client) and open a new window with the contents of that album;
or a pop-up window shows the album contents like Beatbox or Guayadeque;
or the album starts to play and in that case for other operations like adding to playlist the user right click on it instead of double clicking.

I'd like to keep browsing into a single window (no popups, no other windows), so what about:
(on double click) a popup message showing the tracks and asking if you want to append the album to the playlist.
-a tooltip showing the tracks when you hover it with the mouse pointer?

They're on a WD network drive. Not sure, but I guess it's taken a couple of hours for xt7 to analyze it. If you like I can rescan by starting xt7 from the console?

even for 12K items, and even if they're not on a local disk, assuming your wd runs at least on a 100mbps link,
even an hour seems too much to me;
Please, attach some logs even from a small subset of your library, but make sure it is scanning the files that gives you troubles.

I've installed libtag-extras-dev, libtag-extras1, libtag1-dev, libtag1-vanilla, libtag1c2a, but there're other libtag packages.

seems ok; still a log from the console would be helpful.

[burak]

I'd like to keep browsing into a single window (no popups, no other windows), so what about:
(on double click) a popup message showing the tracks and asking if you want to append the album to the playlist.
-a tooltip showing the tracks when you hover it with the mouse pointer?

Fine.

I'll rescan and send you the terminal output. Have sent you the links to the flac files.

[burak]

Well, though I've deleted the watched music folder and then re-entered it, this time it's taken just a few minutes. Yet there are some funny messages in terminal (lots of the same):

Taglib.Init.90: Error while initializing, is taglib installed?
PlaylistClass.AddFile.1049: TagLib doesnt support /home/burak/Shares/Music/Hair/Hair 2/2-29 Did _Hair_ influence your later work, like _Two Gentlemen of Verona_.flac,fallback to mplayer routines...
Taglib.Init.90: Error while initializing, is taglib installed?
Taglib.Init.90: Error while initializing, is taglib installed?
PlaylistClass.AddFile.1049: TagLib doesnt support /home/burak/Shares/Music/Hair/Hair 2/2-30 _Hair_ was controversial with critics and the public. Did this affect you at all_.flac,fallback to mplayer routines...
Taglib.Init.90: Error while initializing, is taglib installed?
Taglib.Init.90: Error while initializing, is taglib installed?
PlaylistClass.AddFile.1049: TagLib doesnt support /home/burak/Shares/Music/Hair/Hair 2/2-31 On writing music for the theater, and what makes a popular song.flac,fallback to mplayer routines...

[burak]

Last words about column-grid views, just for your consideration: Cantata (http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Ca ... ent=147733) launches with two panes. Right side pane is a column view of artists, but you can choose album view and when you enlarge it you get grid view, that is, best of both worlds --if easy to implement.

[burak]

To clarify:

2. Cover grid view of albums (not tracs) sorted by album-artist

Here I definitiley mean sorting by album-artist tag, instead of the artist tag. Sorting by album title is the most absurd thing I've only seen Banshee.

[kokoko3k]

just a quick question:
do you have /usr/lib/libtag_c.so* ? xt7 needs taglib "C" bindings, not c++, on archlinux taglib package provides that, what's your distro?
And also, where did you sent flac links?

[burak]

Lubuntu 12.04. There's no such thing in my /usr/lib/. Just these: libtag-extras.so.1.0.0; libtag-extras.so.1; libt1x.so.5.1.2; libt1x.so.5; libt1.so.5.1.2; libt1.so.5.

Have sent the links to the email provided under your avatar. Will try again now.