JeCh's dashboard

JeCh started following the idea "Really smart playlists via Mirage/Songbird" in Songbird.

JeCh replied on September 05, 2008 03:41 to the idea ""Night Mode" or "Dynamic Range Compression"" in Songbird:

This has been already suggested here.

To sum it up, there are 2 independent things:

1) Normalize volume between tracks (replay gain).
2) Normalize volume within one track (dynamic compression)

There is a GStreamer plugin for replay gain analysis and application. There are also many dynamic compression filters, a lot of them are opensource. For example they can be found in MPlayer, ffdshow or in Audacity. The best solution for Songbird would be probably VLevel, which according to it's web page can be used as a GStreamer plugin. I use VLevel in foobar2000 and it works great.

So when the switch to GStreamer backend is will be done, this should be quite easy to implement. There should be a configuration panel to make a chain of DSP effects (= GStreamer plugins). The basic ones (EQ, compressor, replay gain, channel mixer) should be included. More can be added as addons.

JeCh started following the idea ""Night Mode" or "Dynamic Range Compression"" in Songbird.

JeCh replied on September 03, 2008 22:58 to the idea "Normalize loudness" in Songbird:

I think that foobar2000 is the player to follow. It offers a great set of features especially useful for audiophiles but for common users too.

I used to be a big fan of this player. But I got disappointed with the development. There are three plugins for user interface. One of them (the best one) was kicked off by the core developers. The other two are incompatible, which splits forces. And it is Windows-only. So I started looking for an alternative, which would be open-source, multiplatform and with good management of big libraries.

Songbird has the best potential to become such a player. It is still quite feature incomplete compared to foobar2000. But I can see the developers are heading the right way and they're gonna change this.

Btw. I created a user interface for foobar2000. It was easier compared to XUL editing in Songbird. Maybe I just don't have the correct documentation and knowledge yet, but I don't think that foobar2000 is too geeky. It had something to offer for every kind of user. This is the same reason why so many people love Firefox and I hope Songbird will follow it's Mozilla partner.

I'm sorry I went quite off topic.

JeCh replied on September 02, 2008 04:48 to the idea "Normalize loudness" in Songbird:

Matt> foobar2000 can do both things. It supports replaygain and has a dynamic compressor DSP plugin.

JeCh started following the idea "Normalize loudness" in Songbird.

JeCh replied on September 01, 2008 23:32 to the discussion "Why iPod Touch / iPhone support isn't in the roadmap ?" in Songbird:

No, they just bought the wrong one. There are thousands of the good ones.

Anyway I don't want to punish anybody. I just think (and I believe we are the majority) that there many more important features. I dared to express a disagreement regarding the high priority of Apple players support.

JeCh replied on September 01, 2008 19:40 to the question "Custom layout" in Songbird:

How does library work in such a small window? How is filter-pane usability?

I don't have such small device yet. But I'm planning to get one as soon as there will be one with at least 120GB space. Currently the only MID available is Gigabyte M528 which only has 4GB. I hope this layout will be also useful for UMPCs like Asus EEE.

I definitely will have to make all texts a and controllers bigger. The screen size of a MID is usually around 5" (12,5 cm).

I would like to keep the layout independent on used skin, so I don't want to create any custom graphics. I think I just use the default one and stretch it using CSS properties. Since Gecko 1.9 uses cairo, it should look OK I hope. Or do you have any better idea? Btw. do you know why doesn't Songbird use SVG?

Also thanks very much for your suggestions.I will try to implement them. As you can see I just started to learn XUL and everything takes me a lot of time to find out. But it's getting better.

JeCh replied on September 01, 2008 19:24 to the discussion "Why iPod Touch / iPhone support isn't in the roadmap ?" in Songbird:

I'm always wondering why people buy crippled and locked devices an then they're wondering that those are not supported in open software.

I'd like to express that support for HW players has no priority for me. My player uses mass storage protocol so I can use any file manager to copy music onto it.

I understand that people who own Apple players (and there's a lot of them) look for something better then iTunes (I tried it once and will never touch it again). This is the reason why I would never buy an Apple player or any other which doesn't support mass storage.

So all I wanted to say is: Let's make Songbird (the core) a great player first. After it's done, then implement support for crippled portable players. People should think before they buy a player.

JeCh replied on September 01, 2008 17:30 to the question "Custom layout" in Songbird:

This is what I created so far. It finally has the layout I wanted to have.

JeCh replied on September 01, 2008 15:55 to the question "Custom layout" in Songbird:

Thaks for the suggestion to use the observer/listener, I will have a look into it.

The "display:none" CSS property worked well, but I had problems filling the empty space. I found a better way to do it using XUL thanks to DOM inspector.

I'm sorry but I have no idea how to lower the min width and height. The smallest I can get is 700x400, which should be O.K. for MIDs (they usually have 800x480 screens). But if Songbird can run on AMR CPU (Google Android, OpenMoko) then it would be really useful to have smaller window then 640x480 (which is the whole screen of these devices).

JeCh replied on September 01, 2008 04:10 to the question "Custom layout" in Songbird:

Thanks for your answer. I completely forgot about the CSS, I was only changing the XUL.

1) I want to hide the pane completely. Maybe something like display:none would help. I will try it.

2) As you might have already guessed, I'm aware of it. Unfortuntely I can't find any documentation on the XUL and the elements I can use.

3) I'm not sure, but in CSS I can't set any object to keep square proportion. I want to have height:100% (that already works) and then set the same size for width. I don't know any way how to do this in CSS.

JeCh replied on August 31, 2008 21:34 to the question "Custom layout" in Songbird:

I'm trying to create a addon which will create new layouts optimized for small screen computers. I started by modifying More Gonzo extension. This is what I hacked so far:



Now I have a few questions:

1) How do I remove the bookmark/smart playlist part (red highlighted)? At the same time I want to keep the bottom service pane to display album art. Or is there a different way to display album art?

2) Is it possible to move the "display" (the black window which shows song information) above the playback controls and keep it in the same box?

3) Is it possible to predefine size of panes? For example make the album art square and let now playing list fill the rest. Can I do it?

JeCh asked a question in Songbird on August 31, 2008 10:57:

Custom layout

Hi,
I would like to create a custom layout whre the different parts (playlist view, panes, controls etc.) will be placed somewhere else. For example I would like to have Album Art in top left corner. How would I do that?

I looked at the feathers tutorial and there's written it is possible, but there is so far no information how to do that. Could anyone help?

JeCh replied on August 31, 2008 10:51 to the idea "Built-in resampling and channel mapping... will Songbird have it?" in Songbird:

I think that once the GStreamer backend is implemented, this shouldn't be a big problem. I would like to see a DSP settings panel, where I could add different effects like ReplyGain normalization, Equalizer, Channel mixer etc.

JeCh started following the idea "Built-in resampling and channel mapping... will Songbird have it?" in Songbird.

JeCh replied on August 28, 2008 18:16 to the idea "EQ and applet" in Songbird:

I'm not sure what is the current state of GStreamer implementation. I see the GStreamer libraries in Songbird's directory (I'm using Windows). It should be possible to add a lot of DSP effects using it.

See these links: 1 and 2.

JeCh replied on August 28, 2008 04:57 to the question "Can you sync protected AAC songs on to devices besides the iPod?" in Songbird:

You can upload protected AAC on any player you want, but it will not play. You will never be able to play these songs in other players then Apple. Even in Songbird you have tu use QuickTime backend to play them.

My advice is - never buy DRM crippled music. Buy a CD and rip it yourself to a free format such as flac or Ogg Vorbis.

JeCh replied on August 28, 2008 04:53 to the discussion "iTunes?" in Songbird:

iTunes is a mess. It is doing what it wants, not what I want. It has some nice features, but the overall usability is extremely low for me.

So Songbird is a player which implemets some nice features from iTunes but does it right.

JeCh started following the idea "Sorting artists with "The" names" in Songbird.