klint's dashboard

you can read the section about Media Management here: http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Getting_... – klint, on November 13, 2009 14:36

And what I'm also missing from Firefox to be able to browse almost as easily is the personal bookmark bar. If that can integrate somewhere in the layout of course – klint, on November 13, 2009 14:05

Yep, I'd bet it's ACME-related, but can't see the rationale though. – klint, on November 13, 2009 13:37

Don't worry, bookmarks support is now available as an addon. Still there, so. – klint, on November 13, 2009 10:24

First bug seems to be a known bug in 1.2 (as long as the folder specified in the "Gestion des fichiers" (or "Gérer les fichiers") entry of the Options is writable).
So you may want to install 1.4 latest build if you dare (I did, as all those issues have been solved there. And it is very stable).

They can be found here:
http://developer.songbirdnest.com/bui...
Addons are here:
http://developer.songbirdnest.com/bui...

For the second issue, you can try with 1.4 and either the MTP or the MSC addons and mode. I personnaly use MSC smoothly (however, there is no playlist support on the device yet in MSC.. It's coming soon in 1.4.1, don't worry).

En espérant vous avoir aidé :)

100% in line with you, Mike. People at Songbird are really open and nice to work with. We wouldn't be answering all these anxious posts if not! The Songbird adventure is not only a matter of product, it's people, first.
And, {o_o}, I want to believe too! So, welcome on board? ;)

Hello {o_o}
I think you made a very good analysis, I would agree with you on most of the points.

But actually you are aware of the reason for all this, as you state it at the end of your post: it's free for us, not not made for free! There is a company behind it.
And yes, apparently, the state of mind changed with the change of CEO. It is public knownledge (Google is your friend) that the Songbird company has had some very hard times in a not so old past. But luckily for them and for us, users, they have found a deal with a major manufacturer device.
Which, on one side, brings money hence future to the Songbird company and it's product, but on the other side, brings new constraints and a change of paradigm: it's not totally community-based anymore by the way, has it ever been only community-based? I'm not sure about that). And not everything can be told anymore , planning and feature-wise, for non-disclosure commercial reasons, I would say. And new demands/requests from this important customer take precedence on our requests in terms of released date and contents.
So, we are now in the middle of a new opensource development ecosystem, with a company developing the core of its product, community developing excellent and powerful extensions, both of them testing and bringing support, and the users... That a little bit more complex than only community, isn't it?

But I personally do not see any reason for me to become indifferent (IMHO):
- the core product is evolving everyday, even if some planning are not met and some features are moved to the future. Looking at the wiki page for the Korn, Ledzep and Madonna release shows that very easily. Searching bugzilla shows bugs fixed everyday
- the addons are also evolving and being developped in a very nice manner by the community. For instance, I had asked for a couple a add-ons to be developed, requiring help as I'm no developer, and got effective response: the 2 add-ons have been developed in a timely manner!
- I can see from all people complaining and caring about delays that the momentum is still there... (ok, it should not be lost, I do agree :) )
- when the deal will be announced, probably new users will join the community
- and... now it's time for dinner, so, I let your read all that ;)

Thanks for your attention and sorry for the long response.

Not sure you will find what you need, but you can already add some hidden columns to the library views and the smart playlist criteria.
Look here:
http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Docs/Pow...
and
http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Docs/Pow...

Then the only solution is to place a call for a new add-on to be developed...
By the way, the MSC addon will support playlists soon. But then you need to use the manual sync mode (and your music will not be erased).

By the way, renaming the Music folder on your device is risky, as there has been cases where files outside of the Music folders were deleted as well (but that does not happen on my Sansa clip, for instance). But as you have backuped your music, you may want to try all the same! – klint, on November 11, 2009 23:53

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a solution in Songbird now for your need.

Maybe the following can help you a bit though:
I don't know if you have subscribed to the blog, or if you download page after page, by browsing the blog.
Anyway, by browsing in the blog and downloading tracks a page, a hidden property called "Source Page URL" contains the actual page the track is coming from. This column can be added to the library by setting songbird.columnpicker.allowSecondaryProperties to true in about:config
You can sort on it, to group by page. – klint, on November 11, 2009 23:31

Not sure it can help, but I had the same problem as you about numbering... and I don't like playlists. So, I'm using the Tagger extension, which has the capability of setting incremental track numbers on selected files... among other very nice tagging features (replace, copy tags to other tags, set tags after filenames and reverse...)
and thanks for the blog :) – klint, on November 11, 2009 22:53

Ok, so let's assume that all your audio files are on your MP3 player, including the ones obtained via the blogs.

You can try the following, it should work (maybe this is what you wanted to do :) ):

- make sure that your MP3 device is connected in MSC mode to your laptop when you run Songbird (it will be used simply as an external drive).
- when you plug the device and start Songbird, IGNORE this MSC device (or you can simply deactivate the MSC add-on for good).
- set the "Music Downloads" folder in the Options/General to a folder located on your MP3 device. This is a place where all the files downloaded from the blogs will be saved

Doing that way will simply tell Songbird to download new files from the blogs directly to your device and add them automatically to Songbird library. No synchronization is needed anymore.

Then, you can also use the "Import Media" on your device global music folder to add all existing tracks from your device to Songbird. Of course, make sure to DEACTIVATE the "Manage Files" (aka "Manage Music") option, in order to leave your files at their original places. After this action, all the music files on your device, including blogs, will be managed in Songbird and still be located on your MP3 device though.

Note that the SB database itself will remain on your harddrive.

Hope this helps.

Understood. I know there are some posts about managing one's music on a removable device in Getsatisfaction. I don't do it myself, so I don't know the exact limitations of it, sorry!
One silly remark though, you are probably totally aware of already: maybe you backup your music somewhere else. If not, don't you think it could be better to have your 20Gb of music on your laptop if you have enough room for it, and use SB to automatically synchronize this entire library to your MP3 device? This would solve both your question and the backup issue (a MP3 device is so easy to loose). :) – klint, on November 11, 2009 15:37

I think you can achieve that by using the "Import Media" feature on the root of any of your harddrives... Songbird will scan all your folders and add all found music.

In theory, as they are some remarks though:
- Due to some bugs, other files that pure music files will also be imported. You will have to delete those file from your Songbird library by selecting them in Songbird, right-click and remove them (from the library only, not from the disk). This can be very tedious.
- This is a one time action, but after that it would be better to manage your music centrally

So, you can try the method and see how many unwanted files have been imported by error in your library. If removing is too hard, then remove everything from your library and import folder by folder (or gather first all your music in a single folder by using the Windows Find feature, then import them into Songbird).
But start by giving a try to the method above.

One last thing after you've imported everything:
if you install the latest 1.4 build (or wait for 1.4 to be released very soon), you can activate the "Manage Files" option, which will make copies of all your existing music in one single new folder. From that time one, this folder will be the central repository.
Note that you need to have enough disk space to do that. But after this operation, you could erase music from all the other places.
Note also that this operation is to be done with properly tagged files, preferably. You can use the Tagger extension to tag your files based on the filenames, if needed.

Good luck :)

you have only 2 options:
- either you keep your device automatically sync'ed with playlists in Songbird (the songs on your device being an exact copy of the ones in your Songbird playlists on your hard drive)
- or you manage your device manually, and you have actually 2 different libraries: one one your device the other on your hard drive. But then, it is manual synchronization.

But each of this option applies to the whole Music folder on your device, not to a subfolder only.

I suppose you have a reason for not using Songbird to manage all the music on your device and on your harddrive. Trouble is, Songbird is designed to handle all your music, not only a subset of it, I'm sorry.

(and it is not mine either :) )
Maybe some words will appear in the next Birdbath about the current plans. The long discussion we've had here would deserve them, wouldn't it?
Just coming back on one topic though: I agree that Songbird is different from iTunes, of course. But it is also different from Firefox, for instance. Mozilla is a non-profit organization, if I remember correctly. I don't think Songbird is one, on the other hand, it is a company implementing an open-source software, but the ecosystem, the business model, product marketing constraints, ... are different. Hence maybe, as a logical consequence of that, a little bit less open communication than we would like. And also a different split of devs between company and community. – klint, on November 11, 2009 08:27

@asd (and others)
On one hand, I could almost agree, but on the other hand, you already have far more information than you would have for any other project just *one or two* clicks away from the Songbirdnest home page (and if you are here, reading a post about 1.4, it means that you have already been browsing the Songbird website deeper than the home page, correct? So, you know how to find that info)

And what does this info tell you?
- yes, ok, the October gate has already been missed by 15 days.
- yes, the Songbird team is working hard on the Korn release, you can see a dynamically updated planning for the week, bug by bug. And guess what? There is even a date, end of November (I should not hard code it here, it will be used against Songbird in case of more delay :) )

So, what can you easily conclude from that? simply that they delay songbird 1.4 with few weeks/ months... don't worry, they work hard to deliver the best music player. Does that ring a bell? ;)

To conclude, the paradoxal "problem" with Songbird may be that actually TOO MUCH info is transparently displayed to users, which gives a (most of the time correct ) impression of extreme precision and confidence. But, as always as in any software project, many unexpected things occur, and documentation/roadmap may not be accurate for a little while.

By the way, can you tell me when the next release of iTunes will be delivered and what will its exact contents be? Well, for Songbird, with an acceptable error margin, I could tell.

PS: again, I'm not working for Songbird at all, just helping users and testing coming release. And the above does only reflect my personal opinion.

PPS: again, please, be patient :)

Yes, that could be a simple and helpful information to be added on the home page "Next version cooking and coming very soon. Want to try Songbird? Just download current version 1.2, install it, use it and you will be notified automatically when the new release is published".. Maybe a feature-wise "what's coming next" in a few and big words could help, still prominent on the front page (and not hidden in the roadmap one or two levels deeper).

As I'm not hired by Songbird, I hope a company's employee will have a look to this post :)

About all the information I mentioned in my post above, this is not official information that the company can display on its website for the moment, as the deal I mentioned is more a rumor confirmed by some Songbird people interviews found in other places and close observation of development cycles and documentation. You can understand that there are some non-disclosure agreements likely in place.
But I'm able to to talk about it here because 1) I'm not hired by Songbird, just a user like you who likes this product&team 2) it's only made of information publicly available if you dig a little bit the Songbirdnest. 3) we are on the company&COMMUNITY-based support site.

All that being said, I must also stress the fact that beyond the nightlies every night, you can follow the *constant* progress of the releases by following bugzilla, the release pages on the wiki, the weekly development tasks on the trackers there. Songbird has implemented and made visible a very strong and neat development methodology, very nice to follow.

As usual, adopting a new software is a balance between what you gain and what you loose or miss, in the context of your very own situation. So, if you have no benefit in other areas than simple format support, than there is no reason for you to be stuck with Songbird, I do agree. On the other hand, if you feel that despite the lack of support of your own format, there are plenty of nice other features/addons that you can't find anywhere else, then having a massive conversion from APE to FLAC and sticking with Songbird may be the reasonable choice... until the proper addon is developed by community to support APE :) – klint, on November 10, 2009 10:16