THC Jukebox

incoronado · Post by **incoronado** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 4:42 pm

Thanks for the props. I have to give credit to Richard Naninck for helping me and giving me really good ideas, too. I might have even stole a couple of them. OK a lot of them. Seriously, he really is a very good asset to this group. I wanted to make this available to give something back, and his personal contributions have inspired/compelled me to do so.

As soon as I have time I will make available my new version. Improved Backgrounds -- Cleaner look and interface. I've also added a feature that indicates the progress of an import. Worked around a bug in id3.exe where (NN) shows up in the genre. Added song count at the bottom of the library. Fixed sorting bugs where albums will sort by tracks instead of by song name. Added Shuffle feature - I forget if that is in the version I've already posted. I still have a couple of issues with the vbscript mid function acting really strange and getting data mismatch errors on occasion. Makes no sense to me, but I'll figure it out.

For the most part it works pretty reliably and fast and seems to really help manage fairly large music libraries. My kids love it and have created a multitude of playlists--too many-- largely in part to the simple and intuitive interface. I kind of measure success by that.

Anyway, I will keep working on improving it and making it better and welcome anyone else to help me do that. I welcome constructive criticism if it helps make it better/easier.

Future Versions ....
* Internet Radio integration
* XM Radio Integration

Other Idea's... Building on the use of SQLite and my Keyboard Input Script

* Schedule/Reminder application/Alarm Clock
* Caller ID management

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 5:57 pm

In, (I can call you 'In' can't I?) - some of the things you mention I had already thought of: the sorting, the 'Mid bugs' I've run across periodically. Shuffle already works I think, although I used it last night for the first time and Winamp was playing several tracks twice in a row. Dunno whether that's a Winamp issue or a THC Jukebox issue. I thought about drill-down though. Don't know whether I've mastered the interface yet - it may already allow drill-down. That is, Pick an artist from the library, then select the desired album from the resulting list for that artist. Further, maybe select a track from the selected album. Basically a compound Select/Where statement. Also, a way to import to the library without having to rebuild the entire library each time. That is, an easier/faster way to add 1 album to the library for example.
Other than those issues or wishlist items I love it! It even presents itself reasonably well in 800x600 format. Have added an audio control pop-up panel to allow volume, EQ, speaker zone selection.

incoronado · Post by **incoronado** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 9:12 pm

If you could help me isolate what is going on with the shuffle. It might be getting confused if you're already playing something and it shuffles the list. Try stopping playback before you shuffle and see if you still have that problem.

The Drill down works like this. As it stands, if you select Artist and double-click/drill down on that artist it will list all titles for that artist sorted by title. I will place some thought into having it show albums instead. I think Meedio worked this way. Off the top of my head, this seems logical. I could probablly find a way the thumbnail the album, too. Right now libraries only show thumbnails when the songs are listed.

Drilling down on an Album will list all the songs on the album by track -- (in the latest version--not the one you have)

Post by **Richard Naninck** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 3:37 am

incoronado wrote:I have to give credit to Richard Naninck.

Other Idea's... Building on the use of SQLite and my Keyboard Input Script

* Schedule/Reminder application/Alarm Clock
* Caller ID management

Thanks!

As for the Scheduler, I already built such a thing, but that was before I figured out the SQLite stuff so it is based on a text file to hold the schedule data. I have been meaning to port this to SQL, but it works so well that I actually never saw a need to. If you wat to take a look at what I did with it to get some ideas from it, we can discuss this over mail again.
Attached a screenshot which doesn't give away all of the features.

Richard

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 7:47 pm

I'll work with the shuffle - from a dead stop - tonight. On the drill-down, yes it works as you describe. But I'm in the 'old camp', in that I relate titles/tracks/songs to albums, whereas most younger folks today skip the album step of the hierarchy, since they can download specific songs and not buy the CD. I didn't work enough with Meedio to remember how their interface worked (other than I didn't like it and liked it less when they wouldn't support Housebot.).

Later...

Playing with the shuffle now - once an album is selected from the library and sent to the queue I selected shuffle and the list was shuffled. But first the track played is the first track of the CD (i.e. track 01). Looks like the list in the queue is shuffled but the play order does not start at the top of the new list but in the middle - wherever track 01 ends up, then follows the shuffled list until it reaches the end of the list - it does not jump to the top of the queue. Does that make any sense at all? I was able to duplicate it twice.

I also noticed that the track number listed below the library "follows" the track number displayed under the song queue. I thought it would reflect the highlighted track in the library list. But the property is the 'Now Playing track'; I don't see a property that would allow us to reflect the track number of the selected (single clicked) track in the library list.

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 7:18 pm

Richard, your scheduler looks like it would be very useful - to me anyway. Currently I am using Google Calendar outside of Housebot - I Alt+Tab to it from HB. But putting all that functionality, preferably in English

Would be a lot simpler. Thanks for offering it up.

Post by **Richard Naninck** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 3:29 pm

Putting it in English is no problem at all.
If you like it to be textbased, I guess it should be ready to implement. If you want it sql based, the script needs to be changed.

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 4:36 pm

Other than the more exotic/elegant way of storing and retrieving the data, I don't know if there is any advantage to the SQL-based method. Like you earlier said, if the text-based method works, why go to the effort to convert, unless you wanted to use it as an learning exercise.

Post by **Richard Naninck** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 4:52 pm

You are right of course and I don't need the learning curve after interfacing all of meedio's databases into housebot.
Maybe this should be ported to a different thread.
It is very much customized to my own needs, but the script is very open and events and repeats can be changed to meet your own.

Below is a line from my data file

0#2006#5#14#00#00#Feestdagen#Moederdag#0#1

ItemNr -> starts at 0 and ends with last entry 1, 2, 3 etc

Year
Month
Day
Hour
Minute

EventItem -> 8 different events (Alarmclock, birthday, appointment, appointment at home, trash outside etc)

Comment -> Any text to go along with the event. So and event can be a birthday and the comment would be; Richard

Repeat -> none, hour, day, week, 2 weeks, month, year

Acknowledge -> a flag which is set to 1 if an item is acknowledged. I will be deleted from the missed items list and rescheduled if it has a repeat set

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 6:01 pm

Agreed - this needs to be a thread all its own, if only to make it easier to find. A suggestion: post your text file based script(s) as-is, assuming they are in English (Can vbscripts be coded in Dutch - I never thought about it.) and whatever panel might depict your UI. If folks want to use it and have a translation question, I'm sure they'll ask. Minimal work effort on your part hopefully. Thanks,

Post by **Richard Naninck** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 6:12 pm

All coded in (standard) english. Only textlabels are in Dutch and maybe some comment lines in the script.

lots of images, lots of null device properties, 2 panels, 1 script and I guess some tasks. I see what I can do to create a hbx export tomorrow.

incoronado · Post by **incoronado** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:06 am

Steve,

About your THC Jukebox comments. I have already fixed the proper track shown on the library view. That was just an oversight.

I will look at the shuffle issue. I think it plays by the list position number and since the list is shuffled it plays the next song wherever it was in the list.

I will change the the drill-down to work as you suggest. I think that makes sense regardless of the camp. I, too, have mostly albums.

BTW. I did experience an issue with a song playing twice at the beginning--but is barley noticeable. This was related to the script outrunning the Winamp playing status. I merely added a delay.

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:29 pm

The shuffle problem is a hoot. If the first track (preshuffled) ends up as the last track in the shuffled list, it will as I see it, play only that one song then stop. Not sure how you can reset your pointer to the top of the post-shuffled list (but I have not delved into your code yet).

The playing-song-twice problem did it again tonight I could have sworn that it played it 3 times but I wasn't paying close attention. I cannot recall how I got there either. It could be that the list started playing then I shuffled. Maybe if I STOP, then shuffle, then PLAY it would correct it. Hmmmm....

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 10:37 pm

Incoronado, I'm getting strange entries in my Genre list. The script and the underlying program is picking up the ID3 info, but I have lots of genre entries that are preceded by a number in parens. For example, I have "POP' and also "(13)POP". Ditto for other genres. I've looked at the selections for the affected genres but cannot see a pattern. The number does not agree with the number of albums in that genre or the number of songs/tracks. Ideas?

incoronado · Post by **incoronado** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 9:01 pm

Yes. This is a bug with the tag software. I have developed a workaround in the next release. I will try and get this posted.