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Songbird Media Player

Started by Barbara, 2008.02.03, 12:43:51

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Barbara

Hi all, i was searcing for an iTunes alternative in Windows and i've found Songbird ( http://www.songbirdnest.com/ ), how many kinds of success we should have trying to compile it on OS/2 or eComStation due his dependence from mozilla code? Songbird can connect/transfer songs to an iPod using a plug-in, and can manage library exactly like iTunes  ;D !!

Saijin_Naib

#1
Yes, but songbird is also kind of a piece of crap. Its much improved over its earlier stages, but it is still not very good. Its very bloated and slow. :(

Edit: That is not to say that it would not be a welcome and much needed addition to OS/2, but simply that you are going to have a not so pleasant surprise upon using the tool. Barbara, if you would like to use a truly quick/simple yet powerful media manager (no ipod support) for playback on windows, try Tuniac. Development has been stalled, but I've found it to be the best media manager by far. See my "Proposed Enhancements for PM123" thread for more details and a few pictures of it.

Saijin_Naib

Alright, I felt the need to substantiate my claims that songbird is a fat turkey, and boy, was I right. 200MB of usage? spiking to 30% CPU usage just during playback? Come now. Thats worse than iTunes, what this is an alternative to. It is quite pretty however, and does have many good features... Hmm.. A tough call. It does limit its platform to XP/VISTA, so there may be some hidden dependencies we need to wrestle with in there.

For contrast, I have included a screenshot of Tuniac working with my full library, take a look at CPU time and Memory usage. Quite a different tale no?

And finally, because everyone hates Microsoft, I have included WMP11 working with my library as the final comparison. Its as sleek in usage as it looks. It would seem the mantra of the MS hate mongers is wearing a bit thin now, wouldnt it?

Barbara

Oh, yes, Songbird should be better than now, and personaly i use PM123 and z! Player in eCS, and z! in Windows, iTunes only to manage my iPod from now, than is new ( but very slow  :( ). I've also an iBook G4, but all my favourite libraryes are on Win (and my iPod was formatted by the iBook), but Songbird seems to be the only one that can be ported and that can manage an iPod under eCS. In the next future  ;) ?

Barbara

About memory usage, this is Z! Player on my Windows, the OS/2 software is always better  :P !!

Saijin_Naib

#5
Z! Player is just a simple VIO Player, its not fair to compare to a GUI player :P Also, Z hides its usage in Virtual Memory.

Also, I talked with Tonymillion (creator of Tuniac) and he has started to develop Tuniac again! (announcement posted 1/29/08). I asked him if he would mind us making a Tuniac/2 so we can have such a great player on OS/2, I wait for his response now :)

Barbara

Wow, should be a great news  ;D !!

RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.03, 21:31:04
Z! Player is just a simple VIO Player, its not fair to compare to a GUI player :P Also, Z hides its usage in Virtual Memory.


What I think you are actually seeing is how much memory Z! is using (or allocated) to buffer the stream you are playing. Z! in and of itself, uses near nothing (memory-wise) to play music files on either Windows or eCS.

-Rob


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Saijin_Naib

Yeap, I know that, but I was comparing all the players in terms of their memory usage in phyiscal and VM both, and Z! takes the cake in terms of VM usage. Thats not to say Z is hog, its not, but to be fair, it needed to be compared in like with the other players.

RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.04, 05:34:54
Yeap, I know that, but I was comparing all the players in terms of their memory usage in phyiscal and VM both, and Z! takes the cake in terms of VM usage. Thats not to say Z is hog, its not, but to be fair, it needed to be compared in like with the other players.

Ummm... turn down how much it buffers? Or test them all from disk loaded content? :)

-R


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Saijin_Naib

:) Point taken, same usage however :(

RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.04, 05:56:22
:) Point taken, same usage however :(

That is very weird... I wonder if that's a bug. Did you shut down and restart Z!? If so, it's gotta be a weird bug in the Windows version. I use Z! (minus a few reboots) nonstop (it plays music in my room 24/7 - for the last 2 years, whether I am there or not) and that's on a machine with less total memory available on boot than Z! is using on your system. But that's the Warp version (hence my thoughts on it being a bug in the Windows version).

I don't have a Windows machine handy right now, so I cant see if it's something specific to the version you are using. You might wanna send Dink an email (or post a question in his message boards). He's a pretty personable guy.

-Rob


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
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Criguada

Hi all,
just to set some things straight: you should be using VM-size + Mem size as an indication of the memory usage of the process. VM size is everything you want to know, and it overlaps with Mem size (which is the current working set of the app). Sometimes (see Songbird) Mem size can be higher than VM size, but this is a particular and temporaneous situation and it doesn't really affect the calculation.
Second: you can't simply use those columns to say something about memory usage when it comes to programs included in the OS (see Media Player): those programs share large portions of code and memory with system components, so you don't have a realistic picture of their memory usage (I can show you screenshots of IE using 2Mb of memory in the Mem size).
I have some pages explaining very carefully what those columns (VM size and Mem size) mean, but they are in italian :-)

Bye
Cris

Saijin_Naib

Yes, you are right Cris, but I saw no correlative increase in VM or Memory usage (nor CPU time) in any other process than wmplayer.exe, although the SVCHOST.exe (one instance) was in use by WMP upon startup to check for codecs/player updates, however, my screenshots were taken after WMP had detached from using SVCHOST for its auto-updates routine, and as such, I think what I have captured there is a pretty close estimate of its actual usage, no?

RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.02.04, 18:59:55
Yes, you are right Cris, but I saw no correlative increase in VM or Memory usage (nor CPU time) in any other process than wmplayer.exe, although the SVCHOST.exe (one instance) was in use by WMP upon startup to check for codecs/player updates, however, my screenshots were taken after WMP had detached from using SVCHOST for its auto-updates routine, and as such, I think what I have captured there is a pretty close estimate of its actual usage, no?

Not at all actually. Much of the software MS writes uses code loaded already by the OS, so you wont see what the program is actually using. Doesnt matter how you start the app, the support DLLs were already loaded (and UNloadable) on boot.


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
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