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Messages - BoringName

Pages: 12 3 ... 14
1
Portable Devices / Re: Wifi android device synching
« on: March 20, 2024, 05:26:06 AM »
Is it safe to just download the apk from here or something similar?
https://musicbee-wifi-sync.en.uptodown.com/android

Considering it has Steve's name on it and it's dated October 2023, which is years after he stopped releasing updates, it's either a dodgy file or they have scraped it from somewhere else to generate traffic to their site. Either way it's probably not going to work if you are on Android 13 or later.

If you go back a few pages in this thread, some people have provided links to updated versions that should work. One of them is mine but I compiled that a year and half ago, there might be better options.

2
Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0
« on: March 19, 2024, 05:20:21 AM »

Victory :)

iTunes version : 12.13.1.3 (latest version as of today)

Well done. I actually didn't know they were still updating the non store version of iTunes for windows. Looks like most of it is to add support for new iPads. I'd be surprised if they have fixed any of the API bugs.

The next time you need a new phone, consider that syncing an Android device to Musicbee can be done over wifi through an app. It's basically just a click and it's done. Works fast too.

I only use this plugin to keep my partners iPod up to date and I don't know how long she will bother with that as she keeps her entire music library on her mobile these days. It works for what I need it for and I don't think there is much demand for it to do anything else. There is too many bugs in the API to keep it working with up to date versions of iTunes and there is nothing I can do about that. So I probably won't be updating it any further. I might give it a look over once I've finished playing around with my other plugin but that won't be anytime soon.

3
Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0
« on: March 15, 2024, 04:25:40 PM »
I haven't worked out all the kinks from my process : currently I need to manually remove all playlist from iTunes for the playlist update to work (and even then it's a bit of a dice roll) => does anyone have the same issue ?

It's because you're using a version newer than 12.5.3.16

That's the latest version that works properly. Every version after that has some kind of issue.

Granted you probably have to for it to work with whatever version of iPhone you are using.

Also, one improvement to the plugin that seems easy to implement is the sync order between tracks, playlists and tags.

What gives you the idea it would be easy?

From memory, this is what it does (if you're using the right version).
- MB provides a list of tracks/playlists that match the sync criteria.
- The plugin adds them to iTunes while syncing ratings from MB to iTunes(if option selected)
- If the track is a playlist, it deletes it first in iTunes and recreates it. (has to be done to work around a bug)
- depending on settings it will remove anything in iTunes that wasn't included in the sync. (just realized this could result in lost play counts).
- Playlists in iTunes are populated with songs.
- Syncs Play Count and ratings back to MB.
- Resets play count to zero in iTunes.

Could we switch the sync order to :  tracks, then tags, then playlists ? And would it work

It wouldn't work. MB parses tracks to the plugin based on the options you choose when the sync is initialized. There is no way to alter that list once the sync process has started.

Alternatively, could we get an option to only update the playlists (without going through the full library update) ?

You can choose to only sync certain playlists. It will still sync back all ratings and play counts of everything in iTunes. It will probably delete playlists from iTunes though....
Honestly can't remember if this will work but if you uncheck the following setting it should leave everything previously synced in iTunes.
Hamburger button (top left in MB) -> Edit Preferences -> Devices -> iPod & iPhone Driver -> Configure -> Settings -> Delete files that are not on the auto-sync list from the device.

So if you untick that option and do a full sync of all songs/playlists. Then perform another sync with just one playlist selected, it should leave all the songs in iTunes. But it will probably delete all the playlist except for the one you selected. The songs of all the deleted playlist will still be in iTunes, they just won't be part of a playlist.

The other issue with this is it will only sync ratings from MB to iTunes (if option selected) based on the selected playlist.
But it will sync all ratings and play counts back to MB (if option selected) regardless of what songs/playlists are selected to sync.

Just to be clear, there is no way to update MB with playcounts/ratings from your device and sync updated auto-playlists back to your device in one pass.

4
Beyond MusicBee / Re: One-way sync from SD card to an iPhone.
« on: February 26, 2024, 05:29:54 AM »
Only way to do it is to copy everything on the SD card to your computer and manage it from there. If you are not prepared to do that then don't waste time reading the rest of the post.

If you import it into Musicbee, you can use playlists to choose what you want to be sent to the iPhone and use the iPod & iPhone driver plugin in Musicbee. There is a thread on how to use it in the plugins section of the forum, it involves installing iTunes to handle the copying of the songs to the iPhone.

As you found out, iTunes does not support OGG files but you can set Musicbee to automatically format them so they will import into iTunes. But this will basically store a second copy of all the songs that get transcoded in a temp folder on your laptop, its going to take up more space. Also you are bound to still get some that fail to copy just because iTunes is bloody terrible, there is more info on how to handle that in the plugin thread.

There is a way to sync Musicbee with your android device wirelessly. My partner does it just fine with 40k+ songs. The issue is also trying to sync it with an apple device. Apple stuff just doesn't play nice with others and even though what I have mentioned above will work, it's probably going to be slow and annoying to get it to work how you want. You would be better off just shelving that iPhone and getting something else.

5
Portable Devices / Re: Wifi android device synching
« on: February 15, 2024, 11:29:32 PM »
Anybody able to get Poweramp playcounts to sync in android 13+

You need the paid version of Poweramp for it to work.

If you have the paid version and it's still not working, the only thing I can suggest is changing to GoneMad as I know that works. You need the paid version for that too.

6
Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin
« on: February 13, 2024, 04:33:32 AM »
*Adding an option to sort by Album Artist/Year instead of defaulting to Album Artist.
*Adding an option to only display covers for albums in a specific playlist, instead of displaying the whole library.

Adding the functionality is easy enough but due to how everything is coded, it has implications I need to work through, particularly with buffered playlists.

I was going to work on re-coding all the OpenGL stuff but it's such a massive job I've been putting it off and making other improvements instead. But I really should nut it out so I can get rid of the buffer settings as they are just a workaround for the old inefficient OpenGL code.

But here is the to-do list I currently have. No promises what will and won't happen. Just a list I have of possible improvements.
- Re-code to use Modern OpenGL instead of immediate mode.
- Adding sort functionality.
- Limiting the flow display to playlist/files element/search etc...
- Add an option to change the flow to be vertical. Up and down instead of left and right.
- Migrate all the Skin.ini file settings to be configurable within Musicbee and allow skins to be created/deleted within Musicbee.
- Move the save settings confirmation message box to appear under the mouse instead of center screen. Apparently the only way is creating your own message box....

7
Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0
« on: February 08, 2024, 09:44:54 PM »
Just going through an old library of my dads. It has some horrid spelling mistakes and strange file names, he must of downloaded it from somewhere. A good chunk of them failed to sync so I thought it would be good to go through and figure out what was stopping them.
It seems anything with apostrophes, commas and ampersands (&) in the filename would fail.

I also had a few that appeared to be failing simply because they were spelled wrong which was bizarre. Here is a few examples of what it was originally and what I changed it to that worked.
memorys are made of this.mp3 - memories are made of this.mp3
the isralites.mp3 - the israelites.mp3
when your in love witha beauti.mp3 - when youre in love with a beautiful woman.mp3
saacrifice.mp3 - sacrifice.mp3

Thinking that can't be right I did a test with the following filename.
i love eo love.mp3

I changed it to "i love to love.mp3" relocated it in Musicbee then changed it back to "I love eo love.mp3", relocated it again and this synced successfully.

So I guess whatever the problem is gets solved just by relocating it in Musicbee. All I did was change the file name, attempt to edit the song in Musicbee which would display an error that the file could not be found. Then I would close the window and double click the song, MusicBee would prompt me to locate the file. This updated all the song info but maintained the play count.

Another thing I noticed is when performing the sync, make sure iTunes is showing songs and not albums. For whatever reason it's 3x faster if you have songs displaying in the iTunes window. You can test it while doing a sync, click on "albums" in iTunes and then "songs". Just another stupid quirk of the iTunes API.

edit:
And another strange one. I had a song in a folder "zager & evans". This synced successfully originally but when I changed the song file name to fix a spelling mistake, I left the ampersand in the folder name. When relocating in Musicbee, it now showed an album cover in Musicbee that wasn't displaying previously. It's embedded in the file. It now wouldn't sync. So I changed the folder name to "zager and evans" and relocated it again. This time it synced.

8
Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin
« on: February 08, 2024, 09:30:30 PM »
New Version 1.8 - 3DBee_1.8

- Playlist config panel no longer shows on the taskbar
- Fixed a bug that caused index errors when adding multiple songs to the library.

Sorry about that second one, I should have found that a long time ago.....

9
Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin
« on: January 31, 2024, 02:39:07 AM »
New Version 1.7 - 3DBee_1.7

- Config panel no longer shows on taskbar.
- Double left click on the 3DBee window will "Play Album Now".
- Refactored the display of album and artist names to use the Graphics class instead of SharpGL. It's much less pixelated now. Long names that will not fit in the display window get truncated.
- The graphics class seems to handle special and cyrillic character encoding better. On my machine anyway, hopefully it applies to other locales.
- Editing song tags will update the album and artist name in the flow if they have changed. But the sort order will not change until restarting musicbee or changing libraries. I'll probably leave it that way until I've refactored all the OpenGL stuff.
- Fixed a regression bug that would occur if the 3DBee panel was removed in Arrange Panels and added again.
- Fixed a possible bug saving settings when the 3DBee panel is not loaded.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the last album cover from loading when Load All Covers Into Memory is selected.
- Fixed a bug that caused incorrect covers to display on program start if any playlists are selected to keep buffered.
- Improved handling of setting changes.

Edit: Gah, forgot to set the playlist config panel to also not show on the taskbar, that will be fixed in the next version.

10
Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin
« on: January 25, 2024, 09:41:35 AM »
just tested new version, 2 remarks:

1. Done.
2. Was the 3Dbee panel loaded (covers visible in the Musicbee window) when you clicked save? I can see where there might be a problem with that so I will have to look into it. Does it happen every time you try and save settings or was it a one off?
3. I've made it double left click for now.


11
Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin
« on: January 25, 2024, 02:29:17 AM »
New Version 1.6 - 3DBee_1.6

- Updated SharpGL DLLs. I haven't changed any code in relation to the new library versions so you can probably just stick with the old ones. There might be some benefits behind the scenes. So if you are feeling adventurous just copy all the DLL's from the zip file. (back them up first just in case) Note for Boroda - the code was slightly different but I altered the source code again to handle some unicode characters before compiling. Hopefully it doesn't mess anything up in that regard.
- Changed font name to use the name and not path from skin.ini files. Just make sure any font you specify is installed in windows. Font names in the skin.ini file no longer need the TTF extension. eg)Arial.ttf can be listed as Arial. If you have 3DBee set to use the default Musicbee font you don't have to worry about it.
- Updated code for Queue Next and Queue Last context menu options to be more accurate.
- Added "Play Album Now" button to the context menu. You may find some albums do not queue in track number order. I have a fix for it I just haven't implemented it yet. It seems to be a rare occurrence but my testing library is a bit small. I don't want to mess around with the now playing list on my partners computer.
- Fixed another bug with mouse scrolling. It actually works properly now.
- Fixed a bug when changing flows that caused it to ignore some settings in Skin.ini files.
- Fixed a bad memory leak that could occur when constantly scrolling through covers. This should significantly improve memory usage on large libraries. The level of usage will depend on the quality of your images and fluctuate a bit as you scroll but it shouldn't continually creep up anymore.
- Improved draw speed so you should see less no cover images when scrolling fast through non buffered covers. They are still there but not as bad. Not sure I will ever be able to eliminate them completely, it's a trade off for not having VRAM filled with buffered covers.

I took the chance and installed it on my partners computer (if I break something on there I'd be as popular as asbestos) with over 2000 albums and it seemed pretty good. No playlists are buffered. Album buffer set to 50 and animation threshold set to 50. Previously if I zoomed back and forth through her collection it would eventually get to over 1gb and crash. Now it just sits around 200-300mb of ram usage. The no cover images appear a little bit but nothing too bad.

I'm testing on a Ryzen 5 7600 system with an RTX 3060 TI and music library stored on NVME drives. Your experience may differ on mechanical drives and/or slower processor.

12
MusicBee API / Re: MusicBee API
« on: January 22, 2024, 10:45:35 PM »
I fixed it by swapping around the code.

Code
Plugin.MbApiInterface.Library_QueryFilesEx("AlbumUniqueId=" + uniqueAlbumId, out songsList);
if (songsList.Length > 0)
{
    Plugin.MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_QueueFilesNext(songsList);
    Plugin.MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_PlayNow(songsList[0]);
}

I thought Plugin.MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_PlayNow would add the song to the now playing list and start playing it.

But I think it's meant to play a song that's already in the now playing list and if that song doesn't exist in the list, it just plays the next song in the now playing list and adds the song you specified to the end of what has recently added.

13
MusicBee API / Re: MusicBee API
« on: January 22, 2024, 03:15:46 AM »
If I remove the line to that queues the remainder of the album next,  it adds the first song correctly and starts playing it. So I think the issue is sending a Play Now command immediately followed by a Queue Next command. I've also found another album that doesn't come through in track number order. Maybe coincidentally it is only 3 tracks as well....

And I should probably make separate threads for these issues instead of dumping everything in here. Sorry.

edit: It also has the same problem if I replace
Code
Plugin.MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_QueueFilesNext(songsList);

with
Code
foreach(string s in songsList)
                        {
                            Plugin.MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_QueueNext(s);
                        }

14
MusicBee API / Re: MusicBee API
« on: January 22, 2024, 01:42:15 AM »
First off. Is there an API command that replicates the Right Click->Play More->Play Album Now option? If there is you can probably ignore the rest of the post.

Edit: Before you waste time reading this stupidly long post. I fixed the problem. Solution posted below.

I couldn't find one so I used the following code to try and replicate it.
Code
Plugin.MbApiInterface.Library_QueryFilesEx("AlbumUniqueId=" + uniqueAlbumId, out songsList);
if (songsList.Length > 0)
{
    Plugin.MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_PlayNow(songsList[0]);
    if (songsList.Length > 1)
        {
            songsList = songsList.Skip(1).ToArray();//remove first song from array
            Plugin.MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_QueueFilesNext(songsList);
        }
}

Ok strap in, this is going to be a bastard to explain.

When the now playing list is empty. This works as intended. But if the list is populated and already playing something, instead of playing the first song from the album I am trying to play now, it just starts playing whatever the next song in the now playing list was and queues up all the songs from the album I select next. But it puts the first song at the end of the current album in the list.

This might be a better way to explain it. Each letter is songs from an album in the now playing list. E is one album, D is another etc...
Lets say the list looks like the following and the * is the current song playing.
D*
D
D
D
F
F
F

Now if I want to play album now for Album G.
Instead of looking like this -
D
G*
G
G
G
D
D
D
F
F
F
It looks like this -
D
D*
G
G
G
D
D
G <-- this song should be playing now. But instead it's inserted after Album D.
F
F
F

This only occurs if I try play now(using my code above) on 2 albums in a row without letting the song change. If I play now on an album, let the song fully play through so it goes to a second song, then play now on a second album, it will work correctly. Or I can manually double click a different song then play now on a second album and it works. It's only if I play now on an album and then try a second album while that first song is still playing. And it doesn't appear to matter how far through that song has played.

Also
Plugin.MbApiInterface.Library_QueryFilesEx("AlbumUniqueId=" + uniqueAlbumId, out songsList);

The output string array is not in track number order. Is there a way to do that or do I have to query all the songs in the array to sort it myself?

Using the Right Click->Play More->Play Album Now option works as you would expect and queues the songs in track number order.

It's a strange one.

edit: Ok I might be wrong about the track number order. It does appear to be in order for most but I do have one album that seems to be out of order. But it only has 3 tracks labelled as 2 of 11, 5 of 11 and 11 of 11. The last 2 are out of order,  I'll do some more testing on that one.

edit2: So most albums are coming through in track order but lucky me the first one I just happened to test initially did not. I've tried a bunch of things but they don't come through in track order.
The album Arrival by ABBA. I only have 3 songs in this library from that album
Dancing Queen track 2 of 11
Knowing Me Knowing You track 5 of 11
Fernando track 11 of 11

All other info for each track is the same. Sorting tab is the same. But for whatever reason, Fernando always comes through second in the array instead of third.

Tried changing the track numbers to 1, 2, 3. deleting the 11 field. I even renamed the file names to put the track numbers at the start of the song name like the rest of the library has and Fernando still comes through second.

I can go through and sort them myself but figured you might be interested if it's not working as intended.

15
Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0
« on: January 21, 2024, 04:19:18 AM »
Just going over some old posts.

Don't use this plugin if you still use iTunes and have anything in iTunes of importance. This is a plugin for Musicbee that uses iTunes as an intermediary step to sync things from Musicbee to apple devices. It will completely overwrite anything that is currently in your iTunes library. It might leave songs in place but it will certainly delete all your playlists and create new ones to match Musicbee.

Just a few pointers -
If you delete a song in Musicbee or change it's file location, you should manually delete this from iTunes to prevent errors when it syncs to your device. There is no way to automate removing deleted files from iTunes without making every sync take as long as the initial sync, nobody wants that.

I used to think long path names caused issues with some songs syncing but I'm not sure that is the case, I've had songs not work where other songs with longer paths did. I think longer paths just give a higher chance to come up with a character combination iTunes doesn't like. Accented characters do have a higher chance to cause issues. I would recommend renaming any songs with accented characters to use standard. eg) change é to e

You probably need to accept the fact some songs just will not sync. Ive had 2 songs virtually identical to each other. Same bitrate, format and path length, no special characters in the name. One works and one doesn't, nothing would make it sync. It doesn't happen often,  just something to be aware of.

The plugin will increment your play counts in Musicbee but set everything in iTunes to zero after a sync which goes back to the first sentence in this post.

It's probably better to just sync a couple of playlists instead of your entire library. The bigger the file count the higher the chance iTunes will have issues syncing a particular song.

If you have a big FLAC library, maybe consider converting them all the ALAC. That way the plugin won't have to spend time converting them all on the fly. When converting on the fly it has to create a temp file and if you are syncing a large library that could be a lot of unnecessary writes to your SSD.

Also, the iTunes Api is buggy as hell. I had to do a lot of workarounds just to get this thing to be functional and it's why I have the best version of itunes to use on the first page of this thread. These are issues that will never be fixed.

This is how I do a sync on my partners modified IPod Classic. She syncs her entire library to it so it's a big sync (39,000) songs.

- Turn the driver on in Music Bee
- After iTunes starts and it prompts to plugin the iPod I plug it in.
- At this point I wait a while as iTunes will sync with the iPod. I make sure it's finished syncing before I go to the next step.
- Start the sync in Music Bee
- If she's added a lot of music between syncs this can take a while as adding new songs is the slowest part of the process. (because the iTunes Api blows.)
- If there isn't much new music it takes about 20 minutes. That's reading the music off an NVME, it used to be a fair slower on a mechanical drive.
- If no errors popup, iTunes should do another sync with the iPod at the end of the process. I make sure that finishes, unplug the iPod and close everything down.
- If there is an error (which tends to happen more often now). This usually interrupts the importing of play counts and you have to wait quite a long time for the summary to pop up.
- I sort the iTunes library by play count. If any songs have more than 0 for a play count, I start the whole process again but click to work in offline mode and leave the iPod unplugged.
- After 20 minutes or so it will probably error again but once it's finished usually all the play counts have been synced. Otherwise back to step one for a third go....

It would be simpler to just remove the song causing issues from the sync but my partner wants ALL her music on there. I've also had some songs where the iTunes Api returned an error code that it failed to add the song but it did indeed add the song... did I mention how crap the iTunes Api is?

I might look at improving the error handling down the track but that's not going to be for quite a while.

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