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[saga]

XMPlay shouldn't be using the gadget feature, because Windows Update is going to kill it anyway, now that Gadgets are treated as security threats.[1]

That's just a marketing stunt to give Windows 8 some more room (look! New things you can't do with Windows 7 [anymore]!), though. Gadgets are still available if you don't apply their Fix-It tool, and they can still be downloaded from other places. No problem at all.

[amit]

In addition to replaygain options "album" and "track" can you add also "auto" mode?

In auto mode if a track before or after the current track are of the same album then album replaygain would be selected , otherwise - track replaygain data would be selected.

[amit]

Here's one more: 

When selecting a track from the "recent tracks" list , the list will jump and highlight the track but won't start playing it. Many times I only want to locate recent track and play the next on the playlist.

[ChipnDalebowl]

Enable it by adding a "ReadAhead=<limit>" line to the XMPLAY.INI file (under "[XMPlay]"), where "<limit>" is the maximum file size (in MB) to read ahead for.

What is the default ReadAhead=?

The default is 0 (disabled).

It sounds like what you really want is for the reading to be done as quickly as possible, ie. have it read ahead. That should already happen with MP3 files, as XMPlay scans the entire file to get its length (unless "NoMP3Scan=1" is set), but here's an update with an option to do similar with other formats too...

Shouldn't that be "NoScanMP3" ?

Oops, you're right. I've corrected that now.

It seems after this update that XMPlay starts a little bit faster, at least on my old system.

The "ReadAhead" stuff shouldn't really affect XMPlay's start time, but rather just result in audio files being read from disk as quickly as possible

Quick question here from the depths...I've gone in the ini file and wrote a line that said ReadAhead=4 and saved it.  I can tell through Windows Task Manager that xmplay is using more RAM because its reading the file as soon as its played.  Now, should the RAM levels decrease once the file is buffered?  There's a difference on FLAC/MP3 files--FLAC makes it run at about 4.8mb of RAM and MP3 around 12.3

Does this sound correct Ian?

[tails_]

Hello, I have 3 small requests about extended playlist window.

1. Use … symbol instead of ... (three dots) this saves 2 symbols if you use monowidth font and doesn't look so huge.
You may ask what to do if skin font don't have a … symbol. AFAIK XMPlay works with font substitutions just fine.
2. Add max playlist width setting. Sometimes when I listen to Japanese music and add single track playlist explodes to screen width D:
3. Scroll currently selected track in playlist window. Would be nice addition to 2nd feature.

P.S. Forums seem to be dead last week. something happened?

[amit]

2. Add max playlist width setting. Sometimes when I listen to Japanese music and add single track playlist explodes to screen width D:

For your second request there is a solution: the function 'cut' in the titles format section.

%cut{vaiables|maximum length|text to put after cut string}
%cut{%2 - %3 - %5 - %1|30|...} => "artist - album - tracknumber -..."

[tails_]

Thanks! Never heard of it.

[saga]

P.S. Forums seem to be dead last week. something happened?

Maybe summer happened, or people are just happy with XMPlay as it is for once!

[Dotpitch]

3. Scroll currently selected track in playlist window. Would be nice addition to 2nd feature.

Options and stuff > Playlist > Follow current track. Note that this only works if the playlist is visible, otherwise you should use the 'List nav - Jump to current' shortcut, or right-click the playlist scroller.

[Zarggg]

In addition to replaygain options "album" and "track" can you add also "auto" mode?

In auto mode if a track before or after the current track are of the same album then album replaygain would be selected , otherwise - track replaygain data would be selected.

This functionality is impossible when in Random mode, since the following track will not be known. Also, such a thing would heavily depend on metadata information, which may be inconsistent or not present.

The best solution would be to have the user set up the playlist and RG mode the way they want it. Even with playing random tracks, I often use Album Gain data.

[Jimmy Neutron]

P.S. Forums seem to be dead last week. something happened?

Olympics?

[amit]

In addition to replaygain options "album" and "track" can you add also "auto" mode?

In auto mode if a track before or after the current track are of the same album then album replaygain would be selected , otherwise - track replaygain data would be selected.

This functionality is impossible when in Random mode, since the following track will not be known. Also, such a thing would heavily depend on metadata information, which may be inconsistent or not present.

The best solution would be to have the user set up the playlist and RG mode the way they want it. Even with playing random tracks, I often use Album Gain data.

In random mode , there is no point in using album replaygain data because no continuity of volume level needed to be maintained.

The absence of some data is not restricting here as xmplay can always fall back to track replaygain data or no replaygain at all. Actually it is how xmplay is currently behaving when album replaygain option is chosen.

I asked for this option because I switch lists quite often and only part of them are sorted by albums , thus I need repeatedly to switch replaygain options. Other wise albums sound uneven (with track replaygain) or mixed tracks sound too quite/loud (with album replaygain). If there is a way to make xmplay be smarter - why not?

[dbz]

I have an idea that could be a really good feature. I think there needs to be a mode to switch between a minimal selection of plugins and a full-blown selection of plugins. A lot of the time I use xmplay to just play mp3's or one of the other common formats. In this instance, it's not necessary to have the program load all the plugins (which slows the load time and eats up more system resources). In another situation though, I need to be able to load all the plugins so that it can play any format out there.

I know there's a simple solution that will do this (more or less). Have two separate versions of xmplay "installed". But doing this means you end up duplicating all your other files (skins, visual plugins, etc.) if you still want those things in both versions. That can waste a bit of disk space. And then there's the issue of keeping both versions in sync (up to date). So it's not really a simple solution after all.

Rather than breaking all the skins, if there was an option to select between a 'lite' and 'full' mode in the pop-up menu, that would do it. XMplay could automatically restart when a different mode is selected and load the corresponding plugins, or you could have it switch modes the next time the program is run. Also the 'lite' mode could simply be the default formats xmplay uses (but then you also lose some key plugins - output, archive). Though this would definitely take more effort to implement, I think it would be a far better solution in the end - in the "Options and stuff" dialog window you could have another category in the Tree-view menu called "Mode" or something. From there, you could list of all the plugins and let the user select which ones they want active (similar to the "file association" selection process). This way they can pick and choose exactly which plugins load in the "lite" mode. And the "full" mode would automatically select/load all the plugins.

If you really wanted to go crazy, you could have all 3 options available, "default" (xmplay's default formats), "lite" (default + user selected plugins), and "full" (default + all plugins).

[amit]

Wouldn't it be easier to add in the xmplay.ini an option to set custom folders for skins,plugins,library,playlists? Then all instances of xmplay can share part of the core data.

[dbz]

I suppose that could work as well, and it may actually give the user more control over each instance of xmplay, but I don't think it's as 'clean' of a solution as what I proposed. I can foresee having multiple versions running and losing track of what each version is actually using. It's not user-friendly. On the other hand, the upside of it is that you could have 2 instances running (lite and full versions), without having to reboot xmplay to switch from one mode to the other. Personally, I prefer using just one instance - less clutter.

[samplah!]

I have an idea that could be a really good feature. I think there needs to be a mode to switch between a minimal selection of plugins and a full-blown selection of plugins...

I like the idea. How about a checkbox on the left (or right) of every plugin in the list of "Input and archive plugins" and only the checked ones be loaded? I think this should not be hard to code

[amit]

Hello ,

A couple of suggestions regarding drag and dropping files into lists:

1. When the DragN'Drop cursor is hovering the list a line between track lines will indicate the target destination of the inserted files.

2.While in DragN'Drop mode crossing the down or up edges of the list will scroll the list up or down slowly. Going further from those edges will increase the speed of the scroll.

[murakami]

Don't know if this has been suggested before, but under mouse button actions for the playlist
is there a possibility of including a play + add folder/album to playlist option or something similar?

[dbz]

I like the idea. How about a checkbox on the left (or right) of every plugin in the list of "Input and archive plugins" and only the checked ones be loaded? I think this should not be hard to code

Once I posted my idea about this, I went through the settings and realized I had forgotten that the plugins are already listed there. So yeah, that would make the most sense - to take what's already there and adjust it, rather than create another list of the plugins somewhere else. And it should make it that much easier to code as you've also pointed out.

You would still need to have an option to switch between lite and full modes (preferably in the pop-up menu). Otherwise, you would constantly end up changing the checkboxes back and forth.

It'd be nice to get some feedback from Ian on this if possible (if he's not too busy). Is any of this do-able?

[saga]

I can imagine that adding checkboxes to the plugins list would be very helpful when searching for dodgy plugins, as you wouldn't have to rename/move all your plugins if you need to identify a broken plugin anymore.