JeCh's dashboard

A comment on the idea "CD Rip / Burn Support" in Songbird:

If somebody comes with a very good idea and everybody starts using it, that shouldn't be any reason to cancel his patent. The problems I see in current law are following:
1) Patents were made to protect inventors and thus speed up inventions. Now big companies use patents to slow down technical progress.
2) The patent law is old, with current speed of progress the patent law allows for people or companies to hold their patents for too long. Patents should expire much sooner.
3) You can patent anything and it's up to the other side to prove that your patent is invalid. I think the patent owner should prove that his patent is valid.
4) You can patent SW algorithms or business models. Such things should be impossible to patent.

This only applies to U.S. Most other countries have much better patent law, but there is a very strong push from global companies to change the law. There have been many attempts to introduce SW patents in EU. – JeCh, on October 26, 2009 18:11

A comment on the idea "CD Rip / Burn Support" in Songbird:

Well, that's true and I agree with you. On the other side it is impossible to ship a free (opensource) SW with MP3 encoding support in US. The company has to find out a workaround for this issue. I believe the workaround will be an addon distributed from other country then US and with the disclaimer about illegality of using it in there. – JeCh, on October 16, 2009 14:16

A comment on the idea "CD Rip / Burn Support" in Songbird:

No, the patent is still valid. But maybe Songbird would accept external encoders (such lame), so MP3 support can be added easily. – JeCh, on October 16, 2009 12:56

JeCh made a comment on "CD Rip / Burn Support", but it was removed. see the change log

JeCh replied on August 27, 2009 10:44 to the idea "Suggestions for improving the Now Playing List" in Songbird:

I'm very happy with the latest version of NPL. Finally there is the feature to queue song by double clicking it. Thanks a lot moshy for this improvement. Also would it be possible to add this possibility to filter panes? I can use Drag&Drop, but doubleclick is much more comfortable.

JeCh replied on July 30, 2009 14:56 to the question "Custom layout" in Songbird:

Hi, I got stuck with some problems. I need to find out how can I change size of scrollbars and other UI elements. Because the size of these elements makes it unusable for a small touchscreen device (like MID or UMPC).

Also it would be very useful to have a possibility drag the playlists with touchscreen like I can drag webpages using this addon for Firefox.

I currently created similar configuration for foobar2000, because it allows easier customization. But I'll try to work on a Songbird version too.

A comment on the idea "please make enque system, like in winamp." in Songbird:

The original idea was about an enqueue system like in Winamp. So in fact is a feature request for the Now Playing addon. Unfortunately it is not implemented yet. – JeCh, on June 14, 2009 11:00

A comment on the idea "Automatically organizing music library" in Songbird:

In mp3tag you can choose any pattern to convert tags to path and vice versa. It can also get tags from Internet if you have a complete album. Once you have your files tagged properly it will rename your music into any directory and filename scheme according to your settings. But be careful, because you can easily do something wrong since mp3tag renames the actual files, it doesn't make a copy of them.

Then you just tell Songbird to watch the directory where is your music stored and it will automatically reflect the changes.

I believe that Songbird should in first place focus on music playback (as it is a player in first place) and library reading and once it works correctly then add functions which already can be done easily by other programs. This includes CD ripping, burning, automatic file organization etc. I don't say there shouldn't be these features, but I think they are not that important.

From marketing point of view it makes perfect sense to focus on functions for powerusers, like I mentioned in my first post, because they are the ones who will tell the world about Songbird via their blogs, webpages or articles in computer magazines. But if the power users won't be happy with Songbird, they won't recommend it. – JeCh, on June 09, 2009 03:37

A comment on the idea "Automatically organizing music library" in Songbird:

Meanwhile you can use mp3tag (from www.mp3tag.de) to organize your music. Thats how I do it. Once the music is in it's place, Songbird automatically adds it to my library. So for me music organizing feature is completely useless for me. Just because it is for some unclear reason very important to you doesn't mean it is important for everybody else too.

There is still missing cue-sheet support, transcoding, fxing playback problems, making the GUI more responsive etc. These things are much more important to many people including me. – JeCh, on June 08, 2009 20:47

A comment on the idea "Suggestions for improving the Now Playing List" in Songbird:

Moshy already wrote that he tried to assign add to NPL to doubleclick. But he run into some problems. See Moshy's post from 6th May. – JeCh, on May 26, 2009 11:27

JeCh replied on May 25, 2009 11:25 to the idea "File management" in Songbird:

Hi Murphy, thanks for the links to the two topics. I didn't thought about drag'n'drop, but it should work this way too. I would prefer to implement it via right click menu too. This would allow to implement more options (transcoding, naming scheme).

A comment on the idea "File management features needed?" in Songbird:

This already works for a long time on both Windows and Linux. Right click on any track and select "Show File".

Jbeukema already mentioned this 3 month ago.... – JeCh, on May 25, 2009 11:13

A comment on the idea "CD Rip / Burn Support" in Songbird:

For me EQ and transcoding is much more important then ripping. What advantage you think you will get with integrated ripping over a standalone ripper? I can't think of any.... – JeCh, on May 23, 2009 15:32

JeCh started following the idea "VISUALIZATIONS!" in Songbird.

A comment on the idea "Make a custom media view without any coding abilities" in Songbird:

In fact you can already do this by creating an addon with different XUL layout. I already started working on it, but didn't have much time (and motivation) to work on it recently. But I will definately finish a MID (small screen) optimized layout. Have a look at this topic. – JeCh, on May 15, 2009 13:52

JeCh started following the idea "This is what the Songbird official release icon should look like." in Songbird.

JeCh started following the idea "Make a custom media view without any coding abilities" in Songbird.

JeCh replied on May 14, 2009 14:16 to the question "Songbird with Android Support?" in Songbird:

I believe that Android phones work as a standard mass storage devices. So there should be no need for a special Android plugin.

A comment on the idea "Suggestions for improving the Now Playing List" in Songbird:

I think I should describe how I use a music player to make it clear why I want 3 playback management levels (library, playlist (now playing list) and queue). Very often I make a mix of different songs from my library and listen to it randomly. Then after hearing a certain song I decide I want to listen to more songs of the same style or artist so I insert 2 or 3 tracks into queue. After the queue finishes the playback of my playlist continues just like before.

I do believe this is not very unusual behavior because I've seen my friends using their media players (usually Winamp) just like this.

Currently I can do this in Songbird by rearranging the now playing list but it's not very comfortable. I believe the solution for all my requests is to have two separated track lists: the displayed tracks and the real (but invisible by default) order in which they will play. – JeCh, on May 12, 2009 07:04

JeCh replied on May 11, 2009 11:07 to the idea "Suggestions for improving the Now Playing List" in Songbird:

Hi moshy,

Thanks for the big improvement. It's great that now I can sort the Now Playing List.

I'm wondering if this could be implemented:

Currently if I enable shuffle, then the list randomizes itself. I would prefer the behavior of most other players (Winamp, foobar2000, AmaroK). In these players if I select random (shuffle) mode, the list order doesn't change. But random songs are selected. Could this be implemented?

Also this would allow (I believe) additional features known from foobar2000 such as "Playback follows cursor", which means that a highlighted (selected) song starts playing after the current one finishes.

Also I believe that a queue system as known from Winamp, foobar2000 or AmaroK can be implemented then. The queue should be a next level of playback order management. Currently in Songbird are only 2 levels: Library -> Now Playing List. But i would like to se it go like this: Library -> Now Playing List -> Queue.

The queue should work just like in other players. I will select a song and by pressing "Q" (or other keyboard shortcut) the song will be added to queue, which is marked by a number of queue position. After the queue finishes the playback continues from the now playing list. Have a look at my screenshot of Winamp which shows the queue system.

Do you think this is possible without too much effort?