Topic: Files are locked while playing (wish for fully buffered playback)..

[tbrg-22]

Hi there!

I'm new to XMPlay, for some weird reason I missed its existence. I discovered it by accident, while searching plugins for Winamp to play my old mod/tracker collections.
Amazed I am from the player! o) It's nice to see software like this is still developed, it's my software of the year already! o)

One thing I miss:
I cannot edit metadata or rename a music file (mp3, flac e.g.) outside of the player, when it's playing the file. In Winamp e.g. I can do this with mp3 files, since it will fully load the files and "unlock" them after reading, so they are free to mess around with in MP3Tag or other software, which is pretty handy and something I got used to in my editing/sorting workflow.

I already tried the secret setting ReadAhead=1024, but the file is still locked (i tried with a flac file, since this is not supposed to work with mp3 files, if I read correctly).
Is there any other setting I overlooked to get the files unlocked when playing?

Thank you in advance! o)
tb

[Ian @ un4seen]

Good to hear that you're liking XMPlay so far!

Regarding tag editing, it should be possible to do that while XMPlay is playing the file, as XMPlay opens the file with write access allowed. XMPlay doesn't currently have its own tag editing (except library tags), but it is possible to use Winamp plugins for that purpose via the "Plugin file info" option in the right-click menu, and XMPlay will refresh its info afterwards. So you could try copying the MP3 plugin from Winamp and see if that works better for you. I'm not sure the latest version works but there's an old version available on the support site:

   https://support.xmplay.com/files_view.php?file_id=278

The "ReadAhead" option will get the file into Windows file cache (in memory) but won't affect XMPlay's reading of it during playback. It just means that the file content will be ready to go (from the cache) when XMPlay needs it.

[tbrg-22]

Hi Ian, thank u for replying! o)

I think older plugins to edit metadata don't cut it these days, thinking of mass regex operations or mass importing names/tags from clip/textfiles etc. FLAC files will also be a problem with older plugins, so they are not really an option, especially if you're used to MP3Tag e.g. I just tried MP3Tag on a playing file and for some reason it *is* able to set metadata/tags, while Directory Opus (what I also use for editing tags) is not, it gives "file in use" error instead. I will contact the Directoy Opus devs about it, they have been quite cooperative in the past, but..

..a (somewhat) locked file still remains an issue when running "from tags to filename" rename operations or if you want to delete a duplicate from the filesystem, which is currently playing.
You will always have to stop XMPlay to not run into errors, which does not help the workflow.

Thanks for explaining the ReadAHead option, it's very unfortunate it's not doing what I need, arrg! o)

In the meantime I downloaded all the plugins, it's nice that XMPlay just scans its entire folder for plugins, so you can sort them into sub folders to keep track of all the things!
Being able to playback XPK compressed MOD files from back in the days.. awesome! o)

[Ian @ un4seen]

I think older plugins to edit metadata don't cut it these days, thinking of mass regex operations or mass importing names/tags from clip/textfiles etc. FLAC files will also be a problem with older plugins, so they are not really an option, especially if you're used to MP3Tag e.g. I just tried MP3Tag on a playing file and for some reason it *is* able to set metadata/tags, while Directory Opus (what I also use for editing tags) is not, it gives "file in use" error instead. I will contact the Directoy Opus devs about it, they have been quite cooperative in the past, but..

..a (somewhat) locked file still remains an issue when running "from tags to filename" rename operations or if you want to delete a duplicate from the filesystem, which is currently playing.
You will always have to stop XMPlay to not run into errors, which does not help the workflow.

Yeah, I don't think editing tags in another app during playback can reliably work 100% of the time. It should be fine if the tags are written at the end of the file, or if there's space reserved for them at the start, but probably not if content needs to be moved for them.

Here's an XMPlay update that should allow file deletion/renaming during playback - Windows will delay deleting the file until XMPlay (and anything else) is done with it. Perhaps it'll also fix the problem with the tagger you're using?

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe