ruipenunes's dashboard

A couple of months ago, stutes said "You're definitely not going to attract users of other music managers if you don't import their meta-data already created by the other players."

I replied saying there were no reasons to despair. However 2 months have passed. SB is nearly at 1.0. and still I'm waiting to have my ratings available at SB.

If I'm not mistaken, work is being done in order to import ratings from iTunes. My question is: "what about importing ratings from other players?"

I believe this is absolutely essential. Can someone from the company say what's being done in order to solve this situation?

This is also something I really miss in SB.

Isn't it possible, for instance, to sort the library by artist and then, with a push in ctrl and a click in another column, sort again without undoing the previous sorting?

I guess this would be a good solution.

I can't do it either. I'm I doing anything wrong?

Why can't I simply drag a song up or down and then drop it in a new position?

I undestand this isn't done from within the library, but it's kind of incomprehensible that I can't do it in a playlist.

The other post was way too big, so here's another one to list some problems I recently found in the add-on:

1. I can't access "Play Queue" by clicking on it in the tree. It seems the link is off. The only way I found to check on Play Queue was clicking on the song being played on the player. However, there are situations in which even this solution doesn't function. For instance, if I interrupt a selection by double clicking a song. On this situation, the selection remains, but there's no way I can access Play Queue.

2. In more than one situation, I found out that SB was scrobbling the wrong song to Last.fm . SB was telling me the song being played was X, but last.fm said it was Y. From what I could see, this happens when songs are being played in my chosen order, which is different from the one showed in Play Queue.

3. The playback is irregular. Once a song ends it takes a lot of time until the next one stops.

4. If I, for some reason, stop playback, it eliminates the selection made. This is really annoying.

5. When I double click on a song without previously having queued any other, then this song isn't added to Play Queue.

6. The way I see it, the Play Queue should reflect the order selected. If I tell SB to play song A first and song B after, then this is what I should see if I go to Play Queue. This doesn't happen currently, although the songs are indeed played in the chosen order.

I found more problems, however explaining them here would be quiet complicated. If they persist, maybe I can point them in some other occasion.

Thanks!

Hello Moshy!

Thanks for paying attention to the suggestions made. I think the new version is a step forward, although there's still a lot to get better, as the add-on is yet a little buggy.

Anyway, I've been testing it, but only now did I have the time to post here.

I found a significant number of bugs. Which leads me to think that somehow one should make a reflection on why is this add-on needed and what it should exactly do.

In my opinion it should simply keep track of what was played, what's playing and what will be played, and of course give the user the chance to add new songs and change the order they're supposed to play.

Let me try to describe the behaviour I'm thinking:

- Situation 1 - I open SB. Double click a song in the library or in a playlist. It starts playing. In this situation there should be a Now Playing option that basically would show the double clicked song and the ones who follow it in the library or playlist.

- Situation 2 - I double click another song in the library or playlist. The same thing happens, clearing the previous selection. However if I do this from within the Now Playing list I'm simply skipping the song that was being played and playing a new one.

- Situation 3 - I find a new song in the library or playlist that I want to listen to. I right click it and choose "Queue Now". By doing this I'm adding this song to the previously chosen selection, interrupting the song that was playing and starting this new one.

- Situation 4 - I find a new song in the library or playlist that I want to listen to. I right click it and choose "Queue Next". Once again I'm adding this new song to the selection, although this time it doesn't interrupt playback. It will only start once the current song ends.

- Situation 5 - I find a new song in the library or playlist that I want to listen to. I right click it and choose "Queue Last". This way I'm adding the chosen song to the end of the previous selection.

- Situation 6 - I'm checking the Now Playing list. I decide to change the playback order. I have the possibility to drag songs up or down and then drop them in their new position. This should be a possibility in every SB playlist, but not in the library.

- Situation 7 - I'm checking the Now Playing list. Just like it presently happens, I can reorder the tracks in the list by album, track title... However when I do this, I'm not reordering the entire library or playlists.

- Situation 8 - I close songbird, putting a stop to my selection. I open it again. The selection I had made is still there, so I can keep listening to it.

This is in a very simplistic way, how I think this add-on should behave. I'm probably forgetting something. If that's the case, I'm sorry.

Anyway, having this into consideration, here are some (re)suggestions:
- It should be possible to queue songs from playlists. Right now one can only do it from within the library.
- As I've said in my original post, I think the Play Queue should keep track of the tracks I've already heard, not only the one I'm listening to or the ones who follow it. Right now it still eliminates the songs as they get to be played.
- I think there should be an icon to represent Play Queue in the tree. It would look a whole lot better as it would integrate better with the SB design.
- Once again, as I said in my original post, I think that when I close songbird, putting a stop to my selection, I expect it to remember that selection the next time I open it. This still doesn't happen.
- The usual behaviour when double clicking a song is to eliminate the previously chosen selection to start a new one. This means, as someone said, that in order to prevent this behaviour, the user should be able to decide what a double click does or, at least, have the chance to undo the double click who ruined the selection made.
- If you think double clicking should behave as I've said before, then there should be a "Queue Now" option, that basically would interrupt playback, starting to play the new song without eliminating the selection made.

This is it. I hope this post, can be of some help to discuss what this add-on and Songbird should do on this matter.

Keep up the work.

I've just noticed someone has posted a sentence on this topic saying "The company implemented this idea". What does this mean?

I'm using the 1.0 RC3 and I can't see any of this implemented. Does this mean it's going to be available in the next release? Can someone say anything?

Ratings are a major point for me. If they are considered to be user-created information (like playcount and last-played), will I be able to import that information from my player, which, I must say, isn't iTunes, but Media Monkey?

As I've said before in other topics, this is really important for me. I've rated all my files with Media Monkey, and, off course, I will never fully use Songbird, unless I'll be able to import that information.