Andrew Luecke's dashboard

I agree something is needed, but DAAP is a proprietary Apple protocol, whose current version hasn't even been reverse engineered yet even.

I agree something is needed, but we could never support DAAP well. POTI's best option would be to support a more open protocol. If Songbird claims to have iTunes compatible sharing, and Apple change the protocol (which, from experience working at an Apple Premium reseller, they have done so at least once), people will expect POTI to fix it on the spot (which could adversely affect development), and the protocol may not be easily reverse engineered anyway.

And Songbird certainly isn't aiming to emulate iTunes. iTunes is a pretty basic player overall (compared to others). And you'll find that there aren't too many ways of making a media player anyway.

Many features such as concerts, feathers and plugins already strongly differentiate it from iTunes I feel, and features which will be inherited from firefox eventually, will certainly widen the gap.

Just my opinion though...

G'day,

You must be a madman to use Trunk currently anyway (1.5 and 1.4 aren't even out yet) :P

G'day Jezik,

Support for MTP and MSC exists in the version which is about to be released (1.4).

In fact, POTI have taken it a step further and have added transcoding too, and even a way for hardware manufacturers to upgrade the firmware of MP3 players in Songbird (as iTunes can do with the iPod, but much more open).

In which case, you could give 1.5pre-beta a try if you are feeling risky (wouldn't recommend it though still).

Its available from: http://developer.songbirdnest.com/bui... – Andrew Luecke, on November 24, 2009 18:40

G'day,

I'll just add a few things:
1) The current means of storing ratings apparently isn't compatible with other players yet. For that reason, I haven't turned it on myself. Alfred could clarify better, but apparently they are working on implementing a standard common with other players slowly (something such as the POPM standard I'd imagine).

2) 1.2 has issues with metadata writing to ogg, m4a and wavs.... That's why its better to use 1.4. In fact, if you are using even older, you'd be crazy not to upgrade.

G'day Alex, actually, its in the current builds (Mac support is in 1.5/led zeppelin due early next year, and Windows support is in 1.4, expected to be release hopefully soon (it was due yesterday apparently, so hopefully soon, but I guess it will be released when its done :P)

If you are downloading it using firefox, try again using IE. The cache in one of your browsers may be corrupt, and using another browser will guarentee the cache is clear forcing a redownload.

@billchpln, what do you mean exactly? Are you saying you can't uninstall Songbird 1.3 or 1.4 betas? Because that can be fixed using info from: http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Getting_...

G'day,

Just wondering which version of Songbird you are using, and which OS. If you are using Vista, ensure you are using the latest service pack. Also, ensure you are using the latest drivers (some drivers, in particular the creative ones it seemed to cause skipping everywhere).

Or are you referring to the end of the songs getting cut off?

G'day,

I'd probably recommend posting some to bugzilla.songbirdnest.com, so that the developers can take a look at them.. – Andrew Luecke, on November 22, 2009 23:55

Firstly, I should reiterate, I'm community.. Not part of POTI at all.

Its easy to say "lets support the iPod's" when you don't have a broad support experience, except:
1) iPod's are supported in Songbird, just not the newer versions. Find me a popular player 3rd party player though that does support the iPhone. It sucks, but players such as the iPhone and iPod touch realistically need ITMS to work well.
2) Its hard not to run into corruption issues. Yep, they are rife in the 3rd party world.
3) Apple can sue Pioneers of the Inevitable for trying to support the new iPod's, because apparently encryption is used to store the ipod database. I'm sure if POTI pours tens of thousands of dollars into iPod support, and they get shut down, it is a waste of money.
4) You will notice MANY media players are slowly discreetly winding down iPod support. They don't talk about it, but its getting kind of obvious ;)

You are assuming iPod development is free. Remember though that it takes many developers, and months to support the latest ipods to a substandard level. Instead, POTI can work with media players such as Sansa, and be shipped WITH their products (and maybe even provide new types of media syncing methods). Such collaborations would grow the Songbird market possibly a lot quicker then half broken ipod support, and since such companies might work along with Songbird, reliable support could exist.

In terms of MP3 encoding:
1) Last I checked, Pioneers of the inevitable never said anything about MP3 encoding actually.
2) In fact, in Linux, Mp3 encoding probably already works if you install the Gstreamer MP3 plugins with the OS.
3) I don't really see the difference between having media players which support Mp3 encoding only after downloading LAME manually, between having to download an extension possibly from the songbird addon's website.
4) Last I checked, POTI WAS investigating MP3 encoding actually. They never said they wouldn't. They are investigating using encoding codecs shipped with Windows, and I'd imagine possibly using quicktime, which would eliminate the need to pay for licencing costs.

But yeah. Having worked in an Applecentre, I know from experience people are using iPod's as primary storage devices (despite being advised not to), and the last thing POTI should risk is lawsuits filed by useless lawyers who think POTI should be held responsible when their iPod messes up.

If you need iPod support, the best option for everyone, would be to find and use programs which allow you to treat it as a USB drive to copy music on, or MSC/MTP (this would allow existing plugins to be used).

Anyway, as mentioned, I'm not a rep, not hired by POTI, or a Songbird developer, so everything I say is entirely my opinion. Like I said though, no comment seems to have been made about MP3 encoding yet, and iPod support is disappearing from a lot of players..

G'day,

This problem has now been added to the First Aid page: http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Getting_...

Xvid is a Video codec (basically, a way of decoding certain video types). Without it, some movies wont play.

Its not included with windows, and most people install it as part of a codec pack which includes it (such as K-Lite). It may just be a bug in the version of codec pack you had, and upgrading happened to fix it..

I have updated the Songbird First Aid Wiki to include this problem too now.

Good to hear that your problem is fixed...

This idea has also been posted to the Ubuntu Brainstorm page, which is originally what it was written for.

G'day,

Just wondering which OS you use? Is it all oggs, or only some having issues?

PRL...

1) What good is supporting iPods, when Songbird CAN'T support them reliably. There are actually MANY media players now doing the same, and discussing dropping official iPod support. Now that apple upgrades the iPod's, new versions of the iPod software can break support.

Any company (other then Apple) which claims it can support the iPod's well, is simply claiming so to compete. But unless they use iTunes, they will find that support for the future iPods will constantly break! That's the facts, and they are only starting to become obvious now.

It would make more sense for Songbird to focus on android support and other devices first (which can be WELL supported). Apple owns a lot of the market, but, if the rest of the market can be supported with 1/2 the effort of basic iPod support, then overall, more users will flock to Songbird.

2) Winamp and iTunes are the only free players which seem to offer MP3 encoding support out of the box. And, only 2 players were mentioned here that require it. iTunes is useless though to anyone without an iPod (making Mp3 support on iTunes mostly useless). Nullsoft seems to be competing directly with Songbird now, based on the timing of their announcements and such, but with the introduction of the Audio and video HTML tags (everyone seems to be supporting ogg), its likely that ogg support will become more popular.

Either way, MP3 support can be added using an extension, and one only need to compile the Mp3 LAME Gstreamer component. Hopefully someone will do so soon..

Just my opinion though. Mp3 encoding would be nice, but long term, its hard to say if it will be required. I don't mind if its supported by 3rd party only, because almost every other player requires a manual download of something (the Lame library) anyway.

G'day,

Not sure about mepis, but in any linux, you need to mount the /dev/XXX first to a proper directory (normally in /media/xxx or /mnt/XXX). The best way of doing so varies between distribution, and you would probably be best off asking the MEPIS guys how to do so.

After setting the device to automount, you simply go to tools, options, media importer, watched folders and set the directory to the folder selected (/media/whatever, or whatever MEPIS recommends).

However, one thing I should point out, is that if the USB device isn't connected whilst opening songbird, Songbird sees an empty directory, and so erases all the songs from its library (and after you plug it back in, it re-adds them), which takes ages. So unless you are sure an external drive will be connected when using songbird, I normally recommend you import it instead.

G'day,

There are a few extensions that seem to do it, but not sure if they are up to date. However, whilst I have never tried it, its worth noting that the notification panels aren't actually designed to be used this way. Programs like pidgin do it, but its actually a flaw in the way Gnome is designed (its the only way of getting stuff done). So you should also post a bug with Gnome and demand something such as jumplists, which would fix the problem completely!

What you are actually looking for, is a "tray" extension. So you could try simply going to addons in songbird, and searching for "tray". (or simply open: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/search... in songbird ). If no extensions are shown, then unfortunately there probably aren't any compatible with your version of songbird/linux combination :( Hopefully some do though.

Hopefully that helps :D

G'day,

Its likely caused by an ancient version of xvid. Try upgrading Xvid and seeing if it fixes it:
http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.15.0.html

Hope that helps ;)

G'day,

Btw, is your music stored on an external harddisk?