Chris S.'s dashboard

Chris S. replied on October 26, 2009 18:46 to the idea "Playlist size displayed [KB/MB/GB]" in Songbird:

It's a great idea. It could be as simple as "(size MB/GB)" appended to the playlist name showing in the list. I use the playlists with FolderSync to update my player so being able to see the size helps immensely with deciding if I can add more file to that playlist, prune it down or need to start a new one.

Chris S. replied on October 26, 2009 17:15 to the idea "Poorly Worded Warning about Installing Add-ons" in Songbird:

Unfortunately I'm no expert so I don't know what would need to be done to check them. Does someone have to visually look through the code?

Chris S. shared an idea in Songbird on October 26, 2009 06:45:

Improve Cross Platform Support Not Video

Hoping to see things done differently? Yes!
I see from the roadmap that pretty soon developers are heading off to add video support for Songbird. I for one would much rather see better device support for all platforms than forgetting about non-Windows users and heading off into video land. Get the basics working for ALL platforms first. At this time I still can't even do simple MSC syncing (on Linux). I think if Songbird intends to be the Firefox of music managers then take a cue from Mozilla and make sure you really do have cross-platform support and not a spotty dog version of it.
Maybe I'm wrong here but I want to use Songbird for songs and music not videos. I listen to music on my music player and I suspect that most people would rather this work first before getting superfluous with video.

Chris S. shared an idea in Songbird on October 26, 2009 06:00:

Poorly Worded Warning about Installing Add-ons

"Only install add-ons from authors you trust" - this has got to be one of the most useless warnings around. Who can we trust? Should we only install an add-on if we know the author personally? I guess Songbird puts this warning there to try and disclaim liability. But wouldn't it be much more useful if there were some way to verify add-ons and give users some idea about which ones can be trusted? Or at least just warn them that any add-on they download has not been checked for potential threats. The current warning is just silly because anyone who cares about security would have to refuse to install any add-on. I certainly don't know who any of these authors are and I'm sure that 99% of Songbird users don't either.

Chris S. shared an idea in Songbird on October 17, 2009 10:07:

Remember Window Size and Position on Startup.

Please can we have an option to remember window size and position on start-up? It drives me crazy how most Linux programs (Windows too? Don't know...) force you to move and resize the window every time you start the program. This is the year 2009 and computers automate so much but for some reason developers force us to do this every time we start a program. I fixed this for Firefox and TBird with add-ons. Is there an add-on for Songbird? It would be a good idea, but even better implemented as an option in Songbird itself.

Chris S. replied on September 27, 2009 12:22 to the question "managed mode" in Songbird:

Yes, I will repay it a visit before long and see how it goes. I'm very keen on community developed software and would like to put more time into helping improve things. Tagger is likely to be a critically important add-on in my future use.

Chris S. replied on September 27, 2009 10:25 to the question "managed mode" in Songbird:

Thanks Klint. Makes good sense.

I don't really need it to manage my files now anyway. I have a simple [artist]/[year]-[album]/[tracks] format that I can easily manage manually. Problem is that I replace artist with composer (and drop the year) for my classical music and this would likely cause grief. I have about a 50/50 mix. I'm pretty happy with just using Songbird as a database and copying discs in to the suitable location when I get new ones.

Incidentally I tried the Tagger add-on hoping to get some functionality like EasyTag so I could avoid using several programs. Unfortunately it failed me miserably. I selected a bunch of files to re-tag and started but it came back with some internal error message repeatedly for each file, over and over. I got so tired of clicking Ok and having it come back with another that I just terminated Songbird from the command line. It didn't cause any lasting damage but after that I just removed Tagger and decided to wait til it worked better. I figure if it spits out some internal error and can't tell me why then it's not ready to use.

I have been using some other add-ons like Exorcist, Power Tools and Media Flow which are all very useful.

Chris S. replied on September 27, 2009 06:52 to the question "How to make a list of albums missing cover art?" in Songbird:

-- Edit: Ignore this. Turns out you have to restart for the columns to show up. Did that and they are there now. Super. --

I gave this a try. Installed Power Tools and turned on extra properties in columns and in smart playlists. But there is no "Artwork" column showing still. Did they decide to remove this column completely now or am I doing something wrong?

Chris S. replied on September 27, 2009 06:24 to the question "managed mode" in Songbird:

While talking about having more Help links I think it would make a lot of sense to have a menu item for going to your Help Dashboard too. Right now it seems that to get there you have to first select a question, get the answer page and then that has a <username> link at top that drops down to a menu with your Dashboard on it. A bit circuituous. What is a quick way to get to my Dashboard to see my activity/account from the Songbird program.</username>

Chris S. replied on September 25, 2009 17:23 to the question "managed mode" in Songbird:

Good idea. Hope it will get added. Thanks.

Chris S. replied on September 25, 2009 17:20 to the question "How to make a list of albums missing cover art?" in Songbird:

Hey, Thanks. I'll give that a try then. Sounds like having the column available in some way would be a good thing. Hopefully that will happen some day.

Chris S. asked a question in Songbird on September 25, 2009 12:44:

How to make a list of albums missing cover art?

Is there some trick way to get a list of albums missing cover art?
I tried making a smart list and choosing tag image or art but no such tag exists. I'd like to make a list that selects only files with no art so that I can work through the list fixing them.

It would be great if a future version could expose a value for cover art that can be used in smart playlists... just a boolean or filename maybe. Actually size would be great so you can list images by size etc., with 0 meaning no art.

Chris S. replied on September 25, 2009 12:39 to the problem "OGG file truncated tags with hyphen" in Songbird:

Regarding the file name quotes I'll see if I can verify it and give you an example. I think it was only double quotes not single. ie. " not '

Chris S. marked one of Mike Smith's replies in Songbird as useful. Mike Smith replied to the problem "OGG file truncated tags with hyphen".

Chris S. replied on September 25, 2009 12:37 to the problem "OGG file truncated tags with hyphen" in Songbird:

Thanks Mike for your help looking at the file.
In trying to fix this I found a program called Ex Falso (Linux) that provides more flexibility for seeing multiple tags and fixing them. That may be useful for others if they have this problem.

I did fix the files however Ex Falso also did something weird that makes these files unable to be opened in EasyTag (2.1.6). EasyTag exits immediately upon hitting any of the fixed files.

Songbird reads them fine (but will refuse to save metadata back to the file after). Very strange and I have no idea what ExFalso did. MP3Tag in Windows reads and writes the files. I'm ok with them as is because I got the correct info set and imported to Songbird. Hope this info helps other users.

All in a day's mp3 work...

Chris S. replied on September 25, 2009 02:08 to the problem "OGG file truncated tags with hyphen" in Songbird:

Thanks Mike. I have sent an example file to you.
I'd certainly prefer not to convert to mp3 on these files and if the problem is fixed in 1.4 then I'd just wait a while before importing the current versions. The files at issue are classical and have tempo indications after the "-" or even piece names so are important to keep intact. Note that I have been checking the Ogg tags with EasyTag 2.1.6 and so that is what I am using to check the hyphens are present before import.

I have also seen some strange behaviour related to quotes (") being in file names. The files become inaccessible and metadata non-editable in Songbird. This is for mp3 files. I'm pretty sure that has been noticed and will be fixed before long, maybe in the next version. It happens often that classical tracks with nicknames get that name put in quotes as part of the file name and so I have seen this behaviour a few times and have been forced to alter the filenames and re-import to work around it.

Chris S. replied on September 25, 2009 01:53 to the question "managed mode" in Songbird:

Thanks for the help guys. I think I better stay away from the managed mode for now anyway. I get far too many files with muddled up metadata and my guess is that Songbird would make a real mess of the directory structure from that. Also it sounds like it would work ok for pop music but since I have a lot of classical as well it may have trouble with where it puts things.

I see from alfred's reply that there is a Sonbird Wiki. This is what I was hoping to find but it's very strange that this isn't linked more directly from the Help menu or at least has a easy to find link on the "Help" page. I had a quick look and it doesn't seem to be easy to get to. It appears to be under the "Contribute" tab.

My suggestion would be to have it on the Help menu or at least as a big button on the Help page. If more people know about it and find it then I think it would get more love and topics added. I know I couldn't find it for this question.

Thanks for the help here.

Chris S. asked a question in Songbird on September 24, 2009 15:18:

managed mode

What is "Managed Mode"? And it seems to work with only a single base directory... Is there a manual somewhere for Songbird because when using the Help menu item you only get access to questions and problems etc. There doesn't seem to be a section for explaining how something should work or be used.

Chris Savery reported a problem in Songbird on September 24, 2009 05:37:

OGG file truncated tags with hyphen

When importing OGG files Songbird ignores tag data after a "-" (hyphen) character. I have many files with hyphens in titles that read fine with MP3 format but the same title tags as OGG files get truncated. Is there some valid reason for this or is it a known bug? It's totally annoying as for consistency it looks like I now need to convert files from OGG to MP3 to have the data imported correctly. Using Version 1.2 on Unbuntu 9.04