• Welcome to OS2World OLD-STATIC-BACKUP Forum.
 

News:

This is an old OS2World backup forum for reference only. IT IS READ ONLY!!!

If you need help with OS/2 - eComStation visit http://www.os2world.com/forum

Main Menu

My Proposal for PM123 Advancements :)

Started by Saijin_Naib, 2008.02.02, 10:06:14

Previous topic - Next topic

Saijin_Naib

Hello all, I am back, and I have brought ideas with me! Here is my correspondance so far with the developer of Pm123 concerning what I think PM123 needs, and more over, what OS/2 needs! What do you guys think? If you have access to a Windows machine (not Vista, Tuniac does not play nice with Vista and not having DirectAudio), please give Tuniac a shot so you can see how amazing it's media management capabilities are, something that OS/2 is missing!
-------------------------------------------------------------
Hey, I had written to you before about possible improvements to PM123, and I have spent a lot of time with MS Paint and Tuniac (a media player I use on Windows), and I think that I have come up with a good idea. PM123 is really the ONLY music player for OS/2 that is still supported, and is very good :) The only thing PM123 is missing is a good media management system with good playlisting support. Tuniac is a shining example of this for Windows. Its small, very fast, very simpe, and plays music amazingly. It has the best management and playlist system I have ever used. Please try it out so you can see what I am talking about:http://tuniac.com/build/Tuniac_Setup32_060305.exe

So, I think that PM123 should have a playlist that is like Tuniac's Media Management. I have included 2 screenshots of Tuniac in action. The first (tuniac1.png) shows the player and the full media mangement playlist, and the second (tuniac2.png) shows the player and filtering out things based upon what I typed in the entry box.

I have made a mock-up of what I think the PM123 playlist would look like and work like with the features of Tuniac (pm123list.png) so that you can have an idea of what I am thinking.

Let me know what you think! I think PM123 and OS/2 need this, nothing on OS/2 can do this!

Thanks,
Brett Carlock

magog

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.02, 10:06:14
PM123 is really the ONLY music player for OS/2 that is still supported, and is very good :)

Well there is still z! which I generally prefer but maybe some do not like the textmode interface...then PM123 is the only other option.

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.02, 10:06:14
So, I think that PM123 should have a playlist that is like Tuniac's Media Management. I have included 2 screenshots of Tuniac in action. The first (tuniac1.png) shows the player and the full media mangement playlist, and the second (tuniac2.png) shows the player and filtering out things based upon what I typed in the entry box.

The filtering option is really a nice idea.
Regards,
Juergen
*** Java Movie Database - http://www.jmdb.de/

Saijin_Naib

#2
Yeah, I use Z! but pretty much only for streaming music (di.fm channels :) ), I think its a bit cumbersome for managing all of my music (over 2k files, over 100 directories, 12gb+). Tuniac was a project started/coded by Tony Million, one of the people behind the Sonique (Lycos) media player, something that I still used to this day although development was stalled almost 10 years ago :(

In any case, how do you think this guy is doing the filtering? The media library is stored in a .dat, and is quite massive for me (5mb), yet it loads upon startup in about 2-3 seconds and is ready to go immediately. Building the database for the first time takes a little bit, somewhere on the order or 30seconds or so.

Do you think the database coding and how he makes the filtering is a lot of work to implement into pm123? I really dont know :\

Edit: I have attached the TuniacMediaLibrary.zip, which contains the .dat file so it's structure can be determined.

Saijin_Naib

Here is the first entry from the database:
   ¬  ÿÿÿÿ        C : \ D o c u m e n t s   a n d   S e t t i n g s \ B r e t t   C a r l o c k \ M y   D o c u m e n t s \ M y   M u s i c \ ( C D 2 )   T H E   O T H E R   S I D E \ 1 1 .   C o n v e r t i n g   v e g e t a r i a n s . m p 3                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ˆ|     Ø    0  ê Ø      ÔØ      Ÿ       C o n v e r t i n g   V e g e t a r i a n s                                                                                                                                                                                                                     I n f e c t e d   M u s h r o o m                                                                                                                                                                                                                               C o n v e r t i n g _ V e g e t a r i a n s                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     P s y c h a d e l i c   P s y c h e d e l i c                                                                                                                     

RobertM

Quote from: magog on 2008.02.02, 17:27:31
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.02, 10:06:14
PM123 is really the ONLY music player for OS/2 that is still supported, and is very good :)

Well there is still z! which I generally prefer but maybe some do not like the textmode interface...then PM123 is the only other option.


Actually, making a GUI based interface should be relatively easy using some sort of Visual REXX setup. It should also be easy to use container "classes" of sorts that would allow functionality on par with CWMM's MMFolder class (ie: playing "from" shortcuts), meaning a media library could be built in a fashion Saijin describes, but also be extended in a fashion to take advantage of OS/2's wonderful shortcut handling abilities - as well as simply by going by the disk structure. And even in the case of going by the disk structure, there should thus be methods of tracking when items are moved or renamed on the disk in a similar fashion.

Controlling Z via REXX is simple... doing a REXX GUI is simple... doing both together? Dunno... project anyone?

-Rob


|
|
Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
|
|


David McKenna

  I've always used the built-in media player. Maybe I'm missing something.... what does this have the media player doesn't?

Dave McKenna

Saijin_Naib

#6
Yes, you are definitely missing something. There is a distinct difference between media management and media managers and media players. The build in media player is great for putting in some files and playing them that way, but its not very graceful nor elegant for those of us who have more than maybe 50 odd songs. Try using the default media player with a library of over 2200 songs and you will see quite quickly why a media player becomes obsolete, and a media manager becomes the preferred tool for dealing with the files.

The media manager builds/uses an internal database of ID3 tag information and file location to show you a library of your files. This library can be manipulated on the fly by using a filtering tool (pictured in the top right of my mock-up) that will allow you to dynamically generate play-lists based upon your criteria. This is a very efficient and easy way of doing things, as opposed to mucking around with D-N-D 2200 files every time you want to do something.

Like I said, if you have access to a windows machine, give Tuniac a try so you can see/feel what is so good about a proper media manager. If you havnt used one, or have no need for one, you probably should stick to your media folder as a media manager will have no value for you.

Also for the Media Folder or the CW-MM classes to work properly, I have to have the files on a drive with write-access, and Im not about to give our flaky-ass NTFS driver read/write to my XP volume, seeing as it already trashes it when locked in RO mode, so unfortunately, the CW-MM classes and Media Folder do not suit my needs. I need to use an external player like Pm123 or Z, and with the size of my library, I would like to see a media manager. Nothing like it exists on OS/2, and its never bad to have a good feature set :\

David McKenna

  Thanks for the clarification... yes, file numbers that large would be a bear to DND. The filter function you show would definitely be a great thing to have.

Saijin_Naib

Yes, in the end result, but to get to that point there would probably be some uncomfortable programming to be done. I am just envisioning the end result as I think would be most practical and useful. I had talked with the developer and I mentioned my concerns about how sometimes the loading of the playlist can take over a minute (my computer's specs in sig), and that should not be. He said that he was aware and planned to fix that in a coming release. I think that this should be a path that he possibly consider.

Similar players on linux would be Amarok or RhythmBox. iTunes is also a media manager, but its superbly bloated and miserable to use. WMP is also a media manager, but a bit more rudimentary than Tuniac seems. WMP is also a bit bloated and has too many features that most on OS/2 wouldnt use often, although another member on the newsgroup had mentioned the want for an auto-ID3 updating manager, which could certainly tie-in with the media mangement I have proposed here.

RobertM

Quote from: David McKenna on 2008.02.03, 02:43:09
  Thanks for the clarification... yes, file numbers that large would be a bear to DND. The filter function you show would definitely be a great thing to have.

There was a Playlist folder tool that was included with CWMM if memory serves. I believe it is REXX based. It would be very easy to create a filter in the REXX script, then DnD a folder to it and let it plug away using the filter parameters.

If there wasn't any such thing, it isn't too tough to write...

-Rob


|
|
Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
|
|


magog

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.02, 17:51:27
Here is the first entry from the database:
[..]               

I looked at the file. It would be possible to reuse the format but I don't think it's worth the trouble.
The problem is that each of those files normally uses the datastructure methods the used programming language offers. I've not checked what has been used to create Tuniac.

The best way I think would be to check the PM123 Plug-in interface. Maybe this would allow the access to the required data and functions (read mp3tags from files,...) to create a plug-in for PM123.
As PM123 is OpenSource it would be possible to add missing functions to the core of PM123.

A REXX based addon/tool is out of question.
Regards,
Juergen
*** Java Movie Database - http://www.jmdb.de/

Saijin_Naib

Awesome, so it sounds like its mostly possible. I was thinking that using the database would be a good place to look to to see how it is done, because it is really quite fast. If it can be implemented in a way that achieves the same result, but in the way that pm123 is written, then so much the better right?

Saijin_Naib

Well, I have just written an email to Tonymillion (developer of Tuniac and Sonique), and he has just picked Tuniac back up for development not a few days ago! The sources are available from sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tuniac/) and he is busy it seems! Could this be ported to eComStation as Tuniac/2?

melf

#13
Don't know what value this have but saw this utility aimed to sort musicfiles by tags. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-viewer?sh=1&fname=/pub/os2/apps/mmedia/util/sccsong-0-2-1.wpi
It's some years old but maybe you find something usuable there.
/Mikael

magog

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.03, 21:28:42
Well, I have just written an email to Tonymillion (developer of Tuniac and Sonique), and he has just picked Tuniac back up for development not a few days ago! The sources are available from sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tuniac/) and he is busy it seems! Could this be ported to eComStation as Tuniac/2?

Ok, looked at the sources. Tuniac 2 is written using VisualC++ from MS and it looks he's not using an Window abstraction layer like wxWidgets or Qt, so the complete GUI stuff has to be done on your own and can't be reused in larger parts.
The good thing is that Tuniac 2 will use SQLite as database backend. SQLite ports are also available to OS/2 and if you don't know already Firefox 3 is using SQLite as well for the new bookmark storage engine and some other things.
SQLite database files are platform independent so this could be interesting...
Regards,
Juergen
*** Java Movie Database - http://www.jmdb.de/