tstevens's dashboard

tstevens replied on June 13, 2009 20:40 to the idea "Cue sheet support" in Songbird:

One more thing on this topic - you should be able to give individual songs in a cue sheet different ratings & play them independently in playlists etc. For all practical purposes, songs in a cue file should be just like any other track.

Tangent: would be good to have crossfader support in songbird too (so a song taken from a mix set/cue would not abrubtly start/end.)

tstevens replied on March 11, 2009 19:31 to the problem "Import playlist + import media = dup tracks" in Songbird:

Well, looks like this problem still exists, and watch folders don't help at all. Further search turned up Bug 14096 - anyone know when this will be resolved? I have ~8000 tracks, about 6000 of them rated, so clearly doing this manually after media import from watch folder is not an option. And the Exorcist plugin isn't compatible with 4.1. :(

tstevens reported a problem in Songbird on March 11, 2009 19:09:

Cosmetic problem when importing playlists

Hi - import of playlist has some cosmetic problems. I am trying (again, now that 4.1.1 is out) to migrate from winamp to SB. So I create a smart playlist in winamp for each rating, export each as a playlist, and then import the playlists into SB. When I try to rename the PL in SB, I type the new name & hit return, in some cases the change is reflected, but often the change does not "take". However, if I quit & reload SB, the change is reflected there. This is windows XP SP3.

A comment on the idea "Add mini-player "Docking" option" in Songbird:

Thanks for that Laura! – tstevens, on January 16, 2009 16:22

tstevens replied on January 09, 2009 06:29 to the idea "Songbird should continue playing current song after restart" in Songbird:

agreed. In fact, it should happen any time SB is exited IMO - remember the current track & position & start up in that state (probably paused).

tstevens started following the idea "Songbird should continue playing current song after restart" in Songbird.

tstevens replied on January 09, 2009 06:22 to the question "play playlist" in Songbird:

If you select a song in the PL and press Play then it will play that song & then continue w/the rest of the playlist.

Agree that you should be able to just double click the playlist in the left pane and the PL should start playing.

Another nice-to-have there is if you select the "Playlists" item on the left pane it would show all the playlists as a list in the middle pane.

tstevens replied on January 09, 2009 04:58 to the idea "keyboard shortcut for shifting to random song" in Songbird:

Can't you just enable shuffle and then select next track if you want to skip the current track & suffle will randomly pick another song in the PL? There are global hotkeys configurable for previous/next track (mine are ctrl-shift-win-right for next track & ctrl-shift-win-left for prev track).

Or are you saying you want to listen to the PL in a static order but if a track comes on that you don't like and you press a hotkey it will then pick a random track to continue on from (rather than you just hitting the hotkey for next track and skipping the current unliked track and going to the next track in static PL order)?

tstevens started following the question "Configuring Audio Scrobbling" in Songbird.

tstevens started following the idea "How about a lean and mean Songbird, that is less demanding of CPU and RAM?" in Songbird.

tstevens replied on January 09, 2009 04:49 to the problem "Import playlist + import media = dup tracks" in Songbird:

Hm, I'm actually running into a more serious problem now where I have my SB pretty well customized (bunch o' addons & prefs set) but I want to just purge the whole library & start over (having now made an "unrated" playlist to catch the rest).

I can't delete all the tracks in my library, it completely freezes SB and I have to kill it, even in safe mode. Has anyone seen problems with deleting a large number of tracks from the library at once? Is there a way to purge the library without starting a new profile?

I tried deleting a couple files in the db folder but that hoses things up big time. Are there some select files I can purge to reset the library to empty/default? I can create a new profile and move files from there if it would help but got an error trying to just replace the db folder with one from a default new profile too.... :0

tstevens replied on January 09, 2009 04:28 to the problem "Import playlist + import media = dup tracks" in Songbird:

duh - I didn't even think to also create a rating=0 playlist. That will of course fix it for now. doh!

The main problem I see with this behavior though in general is that, say I add 5 or 6 or 10 tracks here and there in my music folders. I don't want to have to import them one by one! Better to be able to just point at the my music folder & have SB figure out which tracks are added & which are already in the library.

Guess maybe this type of logic will come with support for watch folders?

WRT the exorcisor, yes, I found that, but if I select and try to delete more than 20-30 tracks at once SB just hangs up completely and has to be killed. I didn't realize that it prefers rated songs over non - it still warns when you say exorcise that it shows no preference between tracks. Maybe I don't have have the very latest....

Thanks.

tstevens reported a problem in Songbird on January 08, 2009 06:19:

Import playlist + import media = dup tracks

Running into an odd problem, don't think it should work this way, but let me know.

I'm trying to migrate my song ratings from winamp to SB, so I create a smart list in WA for each rating 1 to 5 stars and export those as playlists (m3u).

Now in SB I import those playlists and as each is imported I select all songs, edit metadata, set the rating. Now I have all the rated songs from WA in my library (assume a virgin profile in SB).

Now I say import media and point to the my music folder (win xp sp3 btw). It chugs thru and adds all the songs into the library, but now I basically have not just the unrated songs added but also a duplicate of every rated track.

Is this expected behavior? The path & filename of the dups of course are identical, but I guess SB considers them different since one has a rating and one does not??

Any suggestions??
Thanks,
Tim

A comment on the idea "Need more global hotkeys" in Songbird:

Thanks Boris for the reply. Agree complete customizability is perhaps too complex. I think setting the song rating is a key one, and the ability to show the notifier on demand. Those are 2 global ones I use in winamp all the time (using the toaster plugin). Not sure if plugins in SB can hook into the global hotkey infrastructure or not, I am using birdtitle right now which has a very nice notifier but it only pops when songs start/stop. – tstevens, on January 06, 2009 04:19

tstevens shared an idea in Songbird on January 04, 2009 16:44:

Add mini-player "Docking" option

I like the mini player, but it would be really nice if it were dockable rather than free-floating. In winamp (yes I am a looong time winamp user so it's what I've become accustomed to) you can choose to *dock* the mini player to an edge of the screen (I choose the bottom of the screen).

This is superior to just "keep on top" because it never blocks any status bar or title bar or button etc in some other app (usually I have other apps maximized on screen).

Couple other nits on the mini player -
* dont need to show the menu names but if I type alt-F the file menu should just appear floating, etc
* would remove or at least downplay the X (exit) button and replace w/button to restore the main player which seems a more likely action for a user (eg, want to mod the playlist, see info on the track, etc) - maybe this is something a feather could control not sure
* should add keyboard shortcuts to change between player types, I am a BIG keyboarder, I hate the mouse

Thanks for listening!

tstevens shared an idea in Songbird on January 04, 2009 16:30:

Need more global hotkeys

Global hotkey support should be expanded to include a lot more than just song/volume controls. Things like lower/raise or set specific song rating and show the song notifier on-demand would be a good start. In general, complete customizability of hotkeys/keyboard for all functions would be a huge plus; of course not all would have to be global, that would be a per-shortcut option. Thanks!

tstevens marked one of joux's replies in Songbird as useful. joux replied to the idea "Cue sheet support". tstevens and 7 other people think it's one of the best replies.

A comment on the idea "Cue sheet support" in Songbird:

YES, your suggestion is excellent - the absolute key is that the component bits of the master mp3 are treated essentially as individual tracks, more or less just like any other single-file mp3 etc. Winamp has several major problems in this area, the cue support is half baked IMO. This would be a HUGE plus for SB! – tstevens, on January 04, 2009 07:44

tstevens replied on January 04, 2009 07:40 to the idea "Cue sheet support" in Songbird:

Cue sheets are a MUST!! I am a big vocal trance fan - the best choonage out there consists of CD length mixes with accompanying cue file with the track listings. Cue support via plugin is one of the big plusses of winamp, which I'd be happy to dump as soon as SB pulls in a couple key features like this. Sure hope this is something we will see in 1.0.1. ;)

tstevens started following the idea "Cue sheet support" in Songbird.