pvh's dashboard

pvh replied on December 04, 2008 19:16 to the problem "Album Art does not display" in Songbird:

@Niophe: More details would be great. What application are you using to embed and display this information? Can you attach a small sample file to the bug GusE linked to so that I can take a look?

pvh replied to "Can Songbird Get Songs From The Internet?", but it was removed. see the change log

pvh replied on December 04, 2008 19:06 to the question "resume playback" in Songbird:

Uhhhh?

pvh replied on December 04, 2008 19:05 to the question "Is it iTunes?" in Songbird:

No, it's not iTunes. The short answer is "because that's what people are used to." Of course, unlike iTunes you can retheme it and put in all kinds of addons which will make it look and behave differently. Check out the add-ons site for all kinds of sweet stuff.

pvh replied on December 03, 2008 21:31 to the problem "X-Windows controls via ssh X11 forwarding won't work" in Songbird:

Okay, it's not going to be a priority for the company to fix. That sucks, I know, but it's a really rare configuration and it would take someone a while just to get set up and reproduce the bug locally. Having said that, it's probably not a complicated fix for someone who has the right knowledge (not me).

So, that's the bad news. On the plus side, I filed it in our bug tracker (http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...) and so hopefully someone who is running that setup will have some time to look into it. If other people have the problem too, they can vote this issue up and if it becomes popular we'll absolutely look into it.

Just to clarify, you can still resize the window and quit the app and such, it's just the triple-buttons in the top corner that don't work, right?

pvh replied on December 03, 2008 19:48 to the problem "X-Windows controls via ssh X11 forwarding won't work" in Songbird:

@W, AFAIK this isn't something anyone's ever tried before. Does Firefox work properly with the same configuration?

pvh replied on December 01, 2008 23:00 to the question "when will songbird support rescanning the library?" in Songbird:

That's true -- watch folders should hopefully be in the next release after 1.0.

pvh started following the idea "Integrated BPM counter" in Songbird.

pvh replied on December 01, 2008 22:58 to the question "genesis release date" in Songbird:

Well, we decided not to ship on Wednesday before the long weekend when everyone would be away from the office. Is that enough of a hint?

pvh replied on November 29, 2008 19:11 to the question "Setting Audio file extensions to open with Songbird (windows)" in Songbird:

We should really get this into Songbird at some point. I'll see if there's any interest in doing this for the next release. In the mean time, it's probably easiest just to drag and drop tracks into the application or to get them with File->Open or File->Import Media.

pvh replied on November 29, 2008 19:08 to the idea "Songbird during video game?" in Songbird:

Sorry, it's simply not feasible to create an overlay that would cooperate with all games. That has to do with the way 3d graphics take over the screen.

There IS the possibility to do integration with particular games, but it's not something we'll be doing internally at the company and would be a hell of a challenge.

You might find that using the media keys on Windows is a more immediate solution to your problem.

pvh replied on November 29, 2008 19:05 to the idea "Reveal mp3 files in the filebrowser by rightclicking" in Songbird:

It's done in 1.0, enjoy.

pvh replied on November 28, 2008 20:31 to the problem "Using arrow to in metadata window skips one track" in Songbird:

Yes, I see what's happening here. I'll file a bug in our internal bugzilla and think about a good way to fix this that won't introduce any other problems. It's bug 14002 and I'll try to get it into the release of the last.fm addon.

pvh replied on November 28, 2008 20:28 to the problem ""Overlay" error & crash" in Songbird:

WR, it sounds like an addon you've installed has a problem. The "layout" mechanism is how add-ons insert themselves into the application.

Please try starting Songbird in safe-mode, then disabling any add-ons that may have caused the problem. You could also disable all add-ons then re-enable them one-by-one until you find the problem.

To start Songbird in Safe Mode on Windows, choose Songbird (Safe-Mode) from your start menu. On Mac/Linux, switch to the location of the songbird binary, then start it with "./songbird -safe-mode".

To disable add-ons, go to Tools->Add-Ons and click disable next to each add-on, then restart the application.

Hope that gets you back on your feet. If not, you can try deleting your profile altogether ( http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t... ), or you can write me back and we'll see if we can track the problem.

pvh replied on November 28, 2008 20:16 to the question "Why can't I play playable tracks?" in Songbird:

Is the Download button missing? What site are you looking at so I can try this out myself?

pvh replied on November 28, 2008 20:03 to the problem "Last.fm scrobbler breaks scrobbling protocol rules when submitting cache" in Songbird:

Thanks for the bug report Dominik. I'll file this in our bugzilla and see if we can get someone to take a look at it before the next release of the add-on.

pvh replied on November 28, 2008 19:36 to the idea "Remote control via native iPhone/iPod Touch app" in Songbird:

Although it is not yet uploaded to the add-ons site, I heard a little birdie say that one was already in the works. I don't think it's an official Songbird project, but keep your eye on the add-ons site and maybe it will show up.

pvh replied on November 28, 2008 18:35 to the question "Can't install add-ons unless root." in Songbird:

Ian,
here's what I expect has happened. When you ran songbird as root and created a new profile, your OS created files with root permissions on them in your ~/.songbird2 directory. Now it isn't able to edit them without root permission. The solution is simple:

sudo chmod -R ian:ian ~/.songbird2

(ian:ian or whatever your usual username:groupname pair is on your distro.)

Please note you can do this to yourself in almost any application and that this is just one of many reasons why running your applications as root is not recommended.

Hope that gets you back on your feet.

pvh replied on November 27, 2008 08:38 to the question "when will songbird support rescanning the library?" in Songbird:

Heyo,

go to about:config
set songbird.commands.enableRescanItem to true
restart songbird
right-click on track(s) and choose "Rescan"

(This won't work in 0.7 or earlier.)

pvh replied on November 27, 2008 08:36 to the question "Library Management" in Songbird:

Songbird stores your library as a SQLite database. Most properties are stored as elements in a properties table.

Songbird keeps its claws off your media. We leave things where you put them and you can even disable writing to file if you decide you don't want to change the file when you update metadata if you so desire.

As for robustness, I'd say we're robust. It's hard for me to be objective, since there was a time when we were rather unstable and the last year has been spent cleaning up the code base and improving stability.

I think you'll find that for a library of 50,000 songs the application is quite usable compared to many other media players, though there will probably be a few rough edges -- for example, you probably won't want to try to edit the metadata for all 50,000 tracks at once.

The best way to find out if Songbird is the right media player is of course to try it and see. If you download today, I'll give you 50% off the regular purchase price of $0. That's a bargain you can't beat.