Skinable Music Collection / Misc -Player

[Unregistered]

Hello,

First off I'd like to say that your MP3 player is the best I've ever found, and believe me I've been through quite a few. You meet all of my requirements:

-Small memory footprint
-Good MP3 decoding quality
-Low CPU utilization
-Media library (with add folder option, many forget this)
-Skinnable
-BIG HUGE detailed specs on mouseover

Lets not forget the features that I only dreamed someone would add, like changing the levels on a per song basis, song ratings (does the player recognize these as prefered when playing random?), and probably a few other things I've forgotten.

I just have a few recommendations that would polish off dbPowerAmp in my opinion, and add features that would draw and retain even more users.

-Skinable Music Collection
-Random playback using ratings as prefered songs, but with tweakable ratios of preferred to misc
-Ability to batch edit ID tags within Music Collection
-Ability to batch rename files within Music Collection (many disparate files, so little time) Adding in the feature to just edit the ID tags then rename all of the files to suit would be the baddest ass feature ever for people like me.
-The previous would treat the MP3 files more like database entries than actual files that are completely untouchable, like how most MP3 players treat them.
-skinable menus (i'm sorry, but your current menu is completely horrid)
-Dupe check utility (scans through Music Collection, finds potential dupes, gives list to check for quality, completeness, etc)


Sorry, I got a little long winded with my requests. But you guys have a great program, and you have definitely hooked a long term user. Please keep up the great work!

.:: epoch of entropy
.:: epoch_of_entropy at yahoo.c0m

[Spoons]

Lets not forget the features that I only dreamed someone would add, like changing the levels on a per song basis

not 100% sure what you mean. EQ levels can be set to change on an individual song and or album or genre. this has already been done in dap.

does the player recognize these as prefered when playing random

yes.

"-Skinable Music Collection "

this can already be done as the skinners have done it. just try out a few skins in the skins download section here: http://skins.dbpoweramp.net/

"-skinable menus"

same as above

[Unregistered]

quote:Lets not forget the features that I only dreamed someone would add, like changing the levels on a per song basis


not 100% sure what you mean. EQ levels can be set to change on an individual song and or album or genre. this has already been done in dap.

I was implying that you were the first I've seen to add this kind of functionality, and that I do appreciate it.

Sorry about a dupe request concerning the skinable Music Collection, I guess that I hadn't tried out enough skins. (non were to my preference)

Do you feel there is any weight to my request for editing MP3 files' tags / names? I have thousands of songs, as I'm sure many other dbPowerAmp do as well. If the player could aide in organizing MP3 files, you would have quite the tool.

Just keeping the lines open. Ignore me if you're busy.

[Spoon]

> Random playback using ratings as prefered songs, but with tweakable ratios of preferred to misc

Can you expand on this a little more?


as far as naming the files - I try to recommend that tags are entered correcly then 'Collection >> Arrange' is used to name the files / folders based on the tag data (watch out one guy liked his various in a various folder, not individual artist ablum names).

[Unregistered]

> Random playback using ratings as prefered songs, but with tweakable ratios of preferred to misc

Can you expand on this a little more?

A little bit more musing on this topic, okay. So I almost exclusively use random playback, and I've noticed in other programs (Winamp, Musicmatch, etc) that the playback really isn't so random. Alot of times I'll hear songs a few minutes after one another. Although I *have not* had this problem yet with dba. (I'll tolerate it if I do, but I'll probably be here to gripe, seeing how you guys seem to listen! unlike other developers)

Anyways... Back to randomness. I've noticed that there are stars next to the ratings, are they used for considering what song the random generator decides to play next? If not, I think that it should be an enabled feature, with the option to deselect it. The other options that could be included would be to set how often dba actually dips into using the preferred songs, basically setting a ratio. a 10:1 ratio would mean that it would play eight 5-star songs, one 3-star song and a one star song (or whatever is lowest). I probably didn't do the ratio calculations right, but you get the idea.

Another note on randomness. I have found that there isn't a SINGLE MP3 player that remembers what the previous song actually was when playing in random mode. When you click back, it just randomly picks another song, which imho is the same as going forward. There's been quite a few times when I wanted to go back to the actual previous song played. (or four) Could you make an array that contains the last 20-100 songs played so the 'Back' button when playing random was actually going back to the previous song? This would be another feature that makes dba stand out among all of the others as being far superior. I'm sure a checkbox to disable this wouldn't be too hard either, so people who have a purpose for the back button playing randomly (I don't know why they wouldn't press forward, but hey) would be nice too. I'm a big fan of having lots of things to turn on and off, if you haven't noticed.

About naming files and ID tags. It's too late! I already messed up. Years of ripping CDs and changing my style for naming, ID tags, rippers, etc have come back to haunt me. Especially when CDs go bad and I loose the joilet file table, getting songs named CAKE~1.MP3 with an ID3/4 tag that says "Cake" with no other information.

What I ment by 'batch' editing was this, in step by step order:

1. create a 'Batch Playlist' of songs you want to batch change from the Music Collection or with the file browser.
2. select the attributes to change for the batch. (version number, year, genre, artist, album, comments, etc) and more appropriately for dba the volume boost and rating.
3. Click 'Apply Selection' or something like that and voila! all of the ID tags and setting would be changed for the songs in the playlist. Maybe even a wizard to go through and edit the song titles, or any other selected attribute when it's all said and done.
4. Create a file naming convention (check out how the Exact Audio Copy guys did it-http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/)
5. Save the convention for future use
6. Click 'Apply Convention' and voila! the files that were in the queue will be renamed to the convention choosen based on the ID tags.
7. Upon exiting the Batch Playlist the files will be flagged and re-updated in the Music Collection (if applicable)


Okay, really long winded, but I'll talk to those who will listen. Any more Q's I'll be dropping by here quite regularly.

[Spoons]

yes Spoon is a rare developer who does take on board what everyone says.

batch editing tags is a good idea for sure. hmmmm... could easily change my "various artists" tags then :D

if you have computer with heaps of grunt some small batch editing can be done. i start up MMC and highlight the files then right click and edit tags. it hangs for a while but it does do it. but i don't recomend it though as i don't think it was Spoons intention for it to work like that.

[Unregistered]

:: bump

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Epoch of Entropy