Andy's dashboard

Andy replied on June 04, 2009 12:21 to the idea "Drag songs from Library to another app (like in iTunes)" in Songbird:

This is a must have functionality for SB. Especially when using external audio devices like mp3 players. This will also be very useful for compilating music CDs. If SB is supposed to be the central music DB, it will have to provide this feature. Otherwise, you'd fall back to the plain old folder administration (which I personally hate).

Andy started following the idea "Drag songs from Library to another app (like in iTunes)" in Songbird.

Andy replied on April 01, 2009 03:31 to the problem "Watch folder on Windows SMB seems to scan the entire share on startup" in Songbird:

Hi.

5 minutes is no exaggeration, though this is definitely not the average. Rephrased, it's never faster than 3 Minutes, far too long.
Locally syncing is no option for me because of size reasons.
I think users can live with the initial scan doing gracefully in the background as long as the program closing does stop the scan.
While this is not fixed, I tend to fall back to import the files manually again.

Andy reported a problem in Songbird on March 31, 2009 19:38:

Watch folder on Windows SMB seems to scan the entire share on startup

Watch folder on Windows SMB locations seems to scan the entire repository on each start.
I don't know how the notification mechanism works for SMB, but it seems to scan the share for changes on startup.
If it is behaving this way, either this might be improved, or the interrupting of this process has to be optimized.
Scenario: I use a NAS (running Linux) for my songs that make up about 15000 titles in a 100MBit network.The songs are structured in folders for each artist and folders for each album. This is mapped on my Vista client by drive letter.
When starting SB, it takes about 5 Minutes scanning until all changes are in. When the user closes Songbird within this timeframe, songbird is still acting in the background for the remaining time until the scan is done. If the user would try to restart SB during this period, an error pops up that SB is still running.

If this scan (or whatever is being done) is really necessary, let's say because of API restrictions, it should be made sure in my opinion, that this process is interruptible properly.

Andy shared an idea in Songbird on March 31, 2009 18:46:

Keyboard shortcut for switching Mini and Main Player

It would be very helpful to have a keyboard shortcut for switching between the Mini and Main player

Andy shared an idea in Songbird on March 31, 2009 18:40:

Optimizing MediaFlow pre-loading or caching

Isn't it possible for MediaFlow to load and display only the 2*n relevant albums before and after the current one?
When sorting by different filters e.g. title or year, MediaFlow seems to load the entire cover collection even though only a very small part of it is displayed. This leads to the effect that when listening to a title (you get the correct CoverFlow album displayed for), and sort by a different filter, MediaFlow does not display this cover until loaded amongst the entire collection in the order just sorted. This may seem to take ages according to the size of the lib.
Wouldn't it be possible from a performance aspect, to just take the 2*n covers around the selection depending on the filter?

Andy replied on March 31, 2009 16:29 to the problem "too much ram !" in Songbird:

Would it be an option to dispose all unused stuff when the player is in Mini mode? I've noticed that there is no difference in memory usage to the Main Player. For me SB consumes about 140MB with CoverFlow and 15000 Songs at 4GB RAM with Vista 64

Andy reported a problem in Songbird on March 31, 2009 16:15:

Birdtitle 0.4.1 does not scroll with Mini Player in task bar

Birdtitle 0.4.1 does not scroll with Mini Player in task bar even though the appropriate setting is ticked in Birdtitle preferences.

Andy reported a problem in Songbird on March 31, 2009 14:04:

Disabled context menu when selecting a NEW song by double clicking (playback)

In Hendrix, double clicking a NEW song (not already selected or playing), then right clicking it will pop up a context menu with disabled menu items.


This is annoying because the user always has to single-click this song again to operate in the context menu.

Andy reported a problem in Songbird on March 31, 2009 13:21:

Error when sorting filter view by 'genre'

When sorting the filter view by 'genre' in Hendrix, for a subsets having also empty genres, this produces a broken list. When clicking on that list, this results in a JavaScript exception.
Note that this is no problem if all of the titles have genres, or neither have.

Andy started following the problem "Album art displaying multipe times for same album." in Songbird.

Andy reported a problem in Songbird on March 31, 2009 12:29:

Request album art dialog does not show up immediately

Request album cover dialog 'requesting album art ..." takes too long to appear.
If requesting an album art in Hendrix, the download dialog takes too long to appear. Sometimes this can take up to 8 seconds where the user does not know what's going on. While this is happening modally, the user has the impression the app is locked.
I'd suggest showing this dialog immediately as soon as the user has invoked the action.

Andy asked a question in Songbird on March 22, 2009 11:22:

Is there a reason why fetching album art in 1.1.1 has to be modal?

Is there a reason why fetching album art in 1.1.1 has to be modal?
As the fetching process takes quite a while, this prevents the user from toggling the playback or anything similar.

Andy asked a question in Songbird on March 22, 2009 11:04:

where does 1.1.1 store the retained album covers?

Where does 1.1.1 store the retained album covers?
It's not quite clear. Usually I would expect the cover to be stored in a straight forward way in the same location as the album it stands for.
I feel a bit confused about this.

Andy reported a problem in Songbird on March 22, 2009 10:53:

Album cover recognition in media-flow

When fetching album art in 1.1.1, the media flow view does not refresh the respective album with the received cover. This is only reproducible if the user has multiple titles from within one album.
Lets assume you have an album with ten titles and select the second (presuming a sorting) to acquire an album cover, this has no effect on the media flow.
Only if you select the first title and fetch, this works.