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Songbird needs improvement...
Ok, so i've recently switched over from Winamp to Songbird and so far i'm liking it but the problem is its just not "media player" material.
For one thing it uses to much memory and it takes a long time to load and even after loading i cant be able to smoothly scroll through my songs. I mean i have a 2 GB ram with AMD Athlon Processor and i currently hold 36,000 songs on songbird. i mean whenever i try to scroll down to find a song, it just freezes for a minute or two and then moves. whenever i use winamp (or even itunes) i dont encounter this problem. sometimes i encountered problems when i import an itunes library a wrong song or even video ends up in the wrong playlist or the metadata isnt imported at all.
Also, whats up with the classes, they dont seem to automatically adjust to the longest entry like if the longest time is 20:07, it would adjust to display that.
As for core audio features, its missing the an EQ (boys and girls, dont use headphones with songbird), CD Ripping/Burning/READING, FLAC support (dreadfully terrible), and the option for "Gapless Playback and Fade Out". and if your gonna have ipod support, we should be able to convert WMA (and other popular or not-so-popular formats) to MP3 or AAC. im also very eager for ipod touch and iphone support, so keep up the good work.
Also, ive noticed that songbird is really buggy, another thing you should work on, i mean whenever i install an add-on or a theme, theres always something wrong. ive had problems with the following addons:
MinimizeTotray
WMP11 Feathers
iTunes feathers
Mashtape
Flickr
Last.fm Audio scrobbling
and many more....
not only that but occasionally songbird crashes for no reason, and i know its not my system, i defragment it every month (painfully long process, like 3 hours). ai always have to then remove it from the processes menu in the task manager, because its still running
as for device support, the biggest problem is with the ipod, i mean i've encountered problems such as my sync being complete but no songs on my ipod or my ipod doesn't mount at all or my metadata isnt written to my ipod. i really want to ditch itunes, but how can i when it and winamp (10th version was really a dissapointment IMO) when it still surpasses songbird by a VERY long shot. Another problem is SYNCING PICTURES TO IPOD, must have feature and SMART PLAYLISTS.
The NOW PLAYING LIST MUST BE ROLLED INTO THE CORE. now i would suggest the now playing list to be an entirely different section where songbird would have 2 tabs, "now playing" and "library" like realplayer, where under this tab there would also be VISUALIZATIONS (a very important aspect) the now playing list should also be saved without having to create a new playlist and whenever we open a file from our default music directory it shouldn't be added to the library, i mean its very annoying. i have to end up deleting a bunch of broken video shortcuts when im done watching them. and of course "Add to songbirds now playing list" is a must have feature upon right click on a file.
The Album art manager should also be rolled into the core, although i personally prefers itunes cover fetcher, much more efficient. maybe the itunes library importer should also fetch the covers or itunes could be added along with amazon and last.fm as a cover fetcher
Party shuffle is something i dont quite consider as a real party shuffle. i mean it should start at a random song, it always starts with the first song. again also roll this in.
Now for video features, i know youre probably not focusing on this, but please do something to fix the cheezy window, maybe the video should play in the place of the visualizations under the now playing tab that i suggested? and of course Esc = Full Screen
As for internet surfing, not that bad, but please also focus on making the web playlist better.
i mean it should bypass the following scenarios:
Video run on a plug-in such as WMP, DivX and Quicktime.
SWF used to block FLV
FLV used to block MP3/WMA
also focus on making a "status/progress bar". might also be good for add-ons
a suggestion would be a yahoo messenger add-on, just a request
other than all that, just remember to focus on core audio features anf fixing bugs
also, does songbird have flv support?
For one thing it uses to much memory and it takes a long time to load and even after loading i cant be able to smoothly scroll through my songs. I mean i have a 2 GB ram with AMD Athlon Processor and i currently hold 36,000 songs on songbird. i mean whenever i try to scroll down to find a song, it just freezes for a minute or two and then moves. whenever i use winamp (or even itunes) i dont encounter this problem. sometimes i encountered problems when i import an itunes library a wrong song or even video ends up in the wrong playlist or the metadata isnt imported at all.
Also, whats up with the classes, they dont seem to automatically adjust to the longest entry like if the longest time is 20:07, it would adjust to display that.
As for core audio features, its missing the an EQ (boys and girls, dont use headphones with songbird), CD Ripping/Burning/READING, FLAC support (dreadfully terrible), and the option for "Gapless Playback and Fade Out". and if your gonna have ipod support, we should be able to convert WMA (and other popular or not-so-popular formats) to MP3 or AAC. im also very eager for ipod touch and iphone support, so keep up the good work.
Also, ive noticed that songbird is really buggy, another thing you should work on, i mean whenever i install an add-on or a theme, theres always something wrong. ive had problems with the following addons:
MinimizeTotray
WMP11 Feathers
iTunes feathers
Mashtape
Flickr
Last.fm Audio scrobbling
and many more....
not only that but occasionally songbird crashes for no reason, and i know its not my system, i defragment it every month (painfully long process, like 3 hours). ai always have to then remove it from the processes menu in the task manager, because its still running
as for device support, the biggest problem is with the ipod, i mean i've encountered problems such as my sync being complete but no songs on my ipod or my ipod doesn't mount at all or my metadata isnt written to my ipod. i really want to ditch itunes, but how can i when it and winamp (10th version was really a dissapointment IMO) when it still surpasses songbird by a VERY long shot. Another problem is SYNCING PICTURES TO IPOD, must have feature and SMART PLAYLISTS.
The NOW PLAYING LIST MUST BE ROLLED INTO THE CORE. now i would suggest the now playing list to be an entirely different section where songbird would have 2 tabs, "now playing" and "library" like realplayer, where under this tab there would also be VISUALIZATIONS (a very important aspect) the now playing list should also be saved without having to create a new playlist and whenever we open a file from our default music directory it shouldn't be added to the library, i mean its very annoying. i have to end up deleting a bunch of broken video shortcuts when im done watching them. and of course "Add to songbirds now playing list" is a must have feature upon right click on a file.
The Album art manager should also be rolled into the core, although i personally prefers itunes cover fetcher, much more efficient. maybe the itunes library importer should also fetch the covers or itunes could be added along with amazon and last.fm as a cover fetcher
Party shuffle is something i dont quite consider as a real party shuffle. i mean it should start at a random song, it always starts with the first song. again also roll this in.
Now for video features, i know youre probably not focusing on this, but please do something to fix the cheezy window, maybe the video should play in the place of the visualizations under the now playing tab that i suggested? and of course Esc = Full Screen
As for internet surfing, not that bad, but please also focus on making the web playlist better.
i mean it should bypass the following scenarios:
Video run on a plug-in such as WMP, DivX and Quicktime.
SWF used to block FLV
FLV used to block MP3/WMA
also focus on making a "status/progress bar". might also be good for add-ons
a suggestion would be a yahoo messenger add-on, just a request
other than all that, just remember to focus on core audio features anf fixing bugs
also, does songbird have flv support?
I’m REALLY DISSAPOINTED
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Inappropriate?Thanks for you feedback! But don't be so disappointed. We are still at Version 0.6.1. Which is just one number away from just half ready :-)
It's still a long way to a 1.0 and therefore the first true public release, that aims at replacing your current mediaplayer.
All the Songbird release before 1.0 will be developer-pre-releases, clearly aimed at people who want to get their websites ready, so that they are up and running when 1.0 ships, or people, who want to write addons, or just puny people like me, who just like to search bugs and help other users, to make a great program.
Songbird is still coded on, on every piece of code. From Top to bottom. Core to skin (aka feathers). Many of your suggested features and shortcomings are already currently worked on, or are on the Roadmap, and will be done, until 1.0 is ready to ship.
I'm sure, that you will like Songbird, when it's ready and done. But until 1.0 is upon us? There will always be serious bugs and shortcomings, you will miss, that other Mediaplayers already have.
In my opinion and with my tiny music library, I already switched over to the bird in full. But for your case, I would advise you to use another app as you main player for now.
But I can only encourage you, to stick with us. Maybe you report concrete issues you encounter with the bird, so that it can get fixed. Or search this forum for feature suggestions, that you want to be embedded into Songbird and support those topics (I think all of your suggestions have already been reported), so that the devs know, what to put in and work extra hard on. Let your voice be heard.
Tyler out!
I’m confident, that we'll get to it.
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Inappropriate?I'm not really dissapointed, just encouraging people, i know its hard to make a "Perfect media player" and that it could take a while. what i'm doing is not critisizing, but rather just giving open suggestions, pointing out obvious bugs, and giving a full true-hearted feedback. i mean i remember when i found songbird when it was on version 0.1 and IMO its come a REALLY long way. its not long before version 1 blows winamp, and itunes right in the face, and im sure it wil
I’m Hopeful, confident, enocuraging and NOT dissapointed
1 Comment
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Ok then. Thought you were disappointed, cause you said so ;-)
Thank you again, for your feedback. It's highly appreciated. -
Inappropriate?SongBird is really great, and i hope that this project will replace mmp soon.
There are infact a few things that should really be improved, as said before, the performance is a little bit laggy, especially for example the parser that reads the search results into the download applet.
cant wait to see the first 1.x,
greetz from germany
sascha
I’m very Hopeful about this incredible promising Project
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Das wird schon werden!! Ist auf jeden Fall alles auf dem richtigen Weg. Wenn sogar die Ubuntu integration kommt und die meißt gewollten Features endlich drin sind, wird es erst richtig los gehen.
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Inappropriate?Another thing i forgot is seperat video library like itunes2 Comments Add a comment
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Was auch schon ein weiterer Vorschlag war ;-) Du solltest dir auf jeden fall mal die anderen Vorschläge ansehen und auf den "I like this Idea" Knopf drücken, um den Vorschlag voran zu treiben. Und danke nochmals, für deine Rückmeldungen.
Tyler out! -
What again is in another Topic already ;-) You should definitely look into the other posted suggestions and hit on the "I like this Idea" Button, to support those Ideas and move them forward. And thanks again for your feedback. Tyler out!
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Inappropriate?I also have noticed performace degredation with large libraries. I have about 25,000+ songs and the library filter is noticably laggy - it will even freeze if I try to access my library stored on a NAS/server over my local intranet.
Still, iTunes is also a bit sluggish (still quicker); don't notice the memory issue (I'm at 8gb RAM on vista-64 / E8400), and I haven't used Songbird on my slower systems (yet).
The lack of an EQ is a good point. As is the lack of a fade / cross-fade (gapless) option. Those seem pretty simple to implement.
The CD rip/burn is a thorn in their side, I'm sure! Everyone wants it, and whatever reason they had in the begining probably sounds ridiculous to them by now, as well.
The thing with iTunes is that it has the iTunes store/backend to tie into. I know google is trying to build their music database as well, perhaps tying into google would be one option.
I'd also reiterate what has been said before: version 0.6... I'm cutting songbird a lot of slack for that reason.
I’m in agreement with a lot of the OP's issues.
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Inappropriate?While they're @ it they should just scrap the idea of a media player/web browser and start building an entire operating system from scratch. Yahoo messenger? Really?... Just download pidgin.
You're basically really disappointed with a pre 1.0 release of a great app because it isn't iTunes with 15 extra bloating features. Did you ever consider that syncing pics is completely unnecessary and irrelevant to a lot of other people using Songbird?
Aside from that, AMD Athlon is pretty broad, to give an average I'd say it's around 3200 series or ~2ghz. That, with 2GB of ram should run fine (even with your obscenely large library). I'm running a Pentium M 2GHZ with 1GB of ram, a 3600+ song library and I'm listening to songs on my remote FTP server's web interface and Songbird screams. ~6-16% processing and ~100-125 MB RAM.
I say, give a REAL benchmark. Open task manager (or equivalent) and write down the processor usage and memory footprint. Are you using a lot of processor intensive background processes (ex. Firewall, Antivirus, Anti-Spyware, Skype)? And, defrag doesn't help perf much, the only way to get really good perf out of an older system is by using fewer bloated apps. Also, make sure you don't have any viruses/spyware in the background munching memory and processing time.
What will make this app run faster in the end is taking specific features that most people don't use like pic syncing, gapless playback, cd-ripping/burning, visualizations, album art manager, cddb support, smart playlists, and ::facetiously:: even messenger mini-apps ::/facetiously:: into plug-ins so everybody can pick and choose what they use and leave what they don't.
Not bloating an app in favor of eye-candy is a practice that Open Source devs use because it leads to much better, much more stable applications.
For a suggestion to address the 'bugginess' check you're aggregate processing percentage and aggregate memory usage. You're probably maxing out something because I'm using .07 and it is completely stable. IMHO .06 was really stable too.
To amend the playlist issue... I say, don't display swf (because webapps use a lot of swf for interface), display .mov, .flv, .mpg, .avi, but grey them out and make them clickable so you can download the proper plug-in in the future. Maybe even highlight them a different color so the different formats stand out (might be nice but probably not).
Also, I noticed that the song listing sometimes doesn't load properly until the page finishes and if you try to use it before it's ready, it doesn't finish what it's doing. It might be a good idea to make the song list pane have no focus until the web page is finished loading (You could still watch it load but it won't be functional till the page is done).
Nothing good will come from making this app a bastard franken-clone of iTunes and WMP. The trick is to learn from their mistakes.
That's all.
I’m amused
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Inappropriate?One other note. I've seen a lot of comments about large libraries slowing things down. It looks like the database could use a little optimizations (if it doesn't already have them). Indexes help a LOT for large tables.
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Inappropriate?I do realise how old this is, but the bad thing is, most of the things here are still valid points in the 1.0 release.
I’m disappointed.
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True. But we ARE progressing!!
http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Roadmap -
Just to add my own personal comments, I think the main problems are that Songbird is trying to be a fully featured browser as well as a media player, which really just isn't necessary at these early stages, the stability issues should be the main problem, rather than features. Also,it needs optimisation for importing the library from iTunes, as whenever it does it, it pretty much redoes the entire import procedure over again.
CHAMP
