Messages

1

Questions / Re: Play / Pause Keyboard Shortcut Won't Work When MusicBee Not Focused Windows 10

« on: November 18, 2022, 09:55:01 PM »

Hey  @ColdsnapB, in case you didn't find a workaround for the media key behaviour, have a look at this thread : https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=31068.msg206441#msg206441

2

Questions / Re: New Logitech Options software does NOT work with MusicBee

« on: November 18, 2022, 09:51:22 PM »

As this issue still persists in 2022 I thought I'd confirm that the workaround from @dandepeched still works (MX Keys, 2022) - Thanks a lot!

I only needed to remap the play/pause button. The prev/next buttons  worked as expected.

Before remapping the key combination in Options, the play/pause key on the keyboard would control media playback in the browser regardless of what program was in focus.

3

Questions / Re: hotkey for jump to curently playing

« on: January 20, 2021, 07:54:37 PM »

You can also double click in the Bottom Bar next to the Artist-Song text. This will scroll the main library to show the highlighted track currently playing. You can use this function to show the playing track from any tab (e.g. browsing Playlists or Podcasts).

4

General Discussions / Re: A new forum board to help new users & relieve experienced contributing members

« on: December 28, 2020, 04:44:59 PM »

Hi everyone, kudos to you seasoned forum members for all your effort trying to improve the FAQs and consolidating commonly asked forum topics

Personally I use the wiki a lot and although my own contributions have been minimal i would very much like to see it maintained and improved with up to date information in line with the vision Steven has.

Can we be clear on what the boundaries are with the Wiki?
I see the Wiki as like a user manual where a new user can read and learn from scratch how to use MusicBee, where-as what is being proposed in this new board is a collection of common problems users have and what the solution might be.

For new (and not so new) users, a wiki/user guide is a commonly understood format, and in my opinion should be the first port of call for 'how to' documentation. Psychoadept has done a great job documenting a complex piece of software and with a bit more support it could be really good.
As a comparison I like the depth of information and clear examples given on the Audacity wiki (https://manual.audacityteam.org/) - although navigating it is a really poor user experience.

With reference to the MP3TAG FAQs I think it is only partially effective at what it aims to do. It resides in the 'How To' section and collects together answers to common tasks that users want to achieve. In this way i would say it is more similar to the MusicBee wiki than an FAQ resource. When i've used it in the past I found the format a bit unstructured and not that easy to find the answers i was searching for. I would rather search in a wiki or a more structured form of documentation.

As for the discussion about which parent topics to have in the new FAQs, and how many levels of hierarchy is acceptable my advice would be to take a bottom up 'card sorting' approach and start by identifying the topics where there are a lot of similar forum posts and make them all top level categories. As more topics are added you will be able to see when it makes sense to combine similar topics under a new parent. This is likely to result in an information architecture that is more commonly understood by most users rather than trying to impose a top down structure from the get go.

5

Plugins / Re: iTunes xml parser for Traktor / Serato / Rekordbox

« on: July 27, 2020, 08:46:05 PM »

Ok, a quick update on my attempts to import the MusicBee iTunes XML into Denon Engine Prime.

In short, it is possible, although your tagging needs to be pretty clean. However it doesn't work if you store your files on a network drive.


There were a few items that caused my import to fail and through a trial and error process I found all the issues.
I did this by making copies of partsof my library and using a portable install of MB I created different XML files which I then tried to import into Engine Prime.

Issues preventing successful import
Some dates were not formatted YYYY
Some playlists had no contents (due to the filter criteria not returning results, or renaming of target directories etc.). Removing these playlists in MB allowed the syncing.
Playlists that were organised in folders did not import, but a flat list of auto and static playlists imported ok.
When non-numeric characters (e.g. A, B, Side A) were present in the track number field the import worked, but no track number data was added to Engine Prime for these entries.

I saw strange behaviour when importing that I now think is due to the files being stored on a network drive. There were times it went through the import process but then reported 0 tracks in the Engine Prime collection. Other times the tracks imported, but then seemed to disappear from the folder they were in previously.
It seems this is due to the way EP handles the relative path to the files.

One final note is that I didn't notice import issues caused by non-ascii characters in the filenames or metadata.

6

Questions / Re: embedded album artwork

« on: July 21, 2020, 05:57:24 PM »

Find all tracks without embedded artwork

A great feature that I didn't know existed. Thanks.
The thumbnails of the linked album art on the right hand side make it easy to manage your images.

7

Beyond MusicBee / Re: Any tips for workflow when using DJ software?

« on: July 17, 2020, 11:29:13 PM »

Ok, i get it now.
By exporting/syncing copies of thetracks from your main library to the DJ software you ensure that only one program can write metadata to the files at a time. Then by reimporting with a check on important metadata from the DJ software you add the proprietry tag data to your main library.
If you delete the track off your USB drive and then re-add it later, does it still exist in the DJ database?

Nice solution by the way. Tootally understand where you're coming from regarding your code as it wouldn't be transferable. I couldn't code a solution myself, but i know people who could.

BTW I'm already on it regarding requests for better tag support: https://denondjforum.com/t/right-click-write-information-to-tag/14828/7

8

Plugins / Re: iTunes xml parser for Traktor / Serato / Rekordbox

« on: July 17, 2020, 10:03:09 PM »

Hey, alec.tron, Thanks for replying on this and my other post.
I'll probably try the trial and error approach you suggested and see what I can learn. The obvious character violations should be relatively easy to search for, but for the others let's see.
Do you have a list of invalid characters and mappings that you are willing to share?

Cheers, T.

9

Beyond MusicBee / Re: Any tips for workflow when using DJ software?

« on: July 17, 2020, 09:56:56 PM »

Hey Alec.tron, that's a super useful reply. Thanks 
A lot of your answers chime with my experiences previously - e.g. basically having to work around the limitations of the DJ software.

Until then I'll only get by by having one parent library, and a few USB children in sync, and giving access to them only to write the prorietary Traktor/Serato fields to file, then fix them up before alllowing them back into the parent library.

This part is interesting, but i don't totally get it. Are you browsing your MB library through the XML hook, then adding these tracks to your <DJ software> library for analysis/writing cue points, and then removing them from your DJ software library later?
What do you mean when you say "fix them up before alllowing them back into the parent library."

Cheers.

 

10

Plugins / Re: iTunes xml parser for Traktor / Serato / Rekordbox

« on: July 16, 2020, 09:07:46 PM »

Hey alec.tron,
I've read various posts by you in different forums and i'm wondering if you have any more tips  about integrating MusicBee in a Denon Engine Prime workflow.
I posted here, and I was hoping you might have some advice
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=32214.msg177468#msg177468

As Icepat experienced, the import into Denon Engine Prime software failed for me. Do you know any workarounds?

Cheers.

UPDATE: i ran a test importing the iTunes xml file generated by MusicBee of a smaller size library (450 tracks), and it was successfully read by Engine Prime. As you and other members have noted DJ software is sensitive to the variations in XML encodings. Not sure what the difference is between the two library files because my main library is 18k tracks, so i can't easily find the differences.

11

Beyond MusicBee / Any tips for workflow when using DJ software?

« on: July 12, 2020, 01:01:15 PM »

Seeing as many of the DJ apps such as Rekordbox, Serato, Denon Engine Prime and Traktor have quite poor library management features, and Musicbee is much more powerful, does anyone have any tips for using Musicbee in their workflows?

Currently all my music is organised in Musicbee, but I also need to use Denon Engine Prime, so i'm particularly interested in this software, but tips for any of the major platforms could be helpful.

Questions I have include:
* How to leverage the extended tagging capabilities of Musicbee when tag support is much more limited in the DJ software. i.e. do you use Musicbee to filter/sort/find tracks and create playlists or crates, and then import into your DJ software?
* How do you get your playlists or collections of music into your DJ software?
* How to maintain a subset of my main music library for DJ use but only use Musicbee for tagging and creating playlists or crates.
* Is is possible to update metadata through Musicbee and reimport into the DJ software in a relatively painless way? Or is this a concept that should be avoided?
* How do you minimise the risk of the DJ software overwriting your metadata if your DJ tracks are part of your main music collection?
* How do you manage multiple genres as most(?) DJ SW does not support this.

Cheers.

12

Questions / Re: All music in my library has disappeared from view

« on: May 02, 2020, 01:27:30 PM »

Ok. After checking again i now see that my entire library (17k tracks) has been added to my Inbox. This happened without any interaction from me, so I suspect it's a bug.

Setup:
My music is stored on a NAS and connected by ethernet to my Windows desktop where MB is installed.

Steps:
1. Woke PC from sleep
2. Shortly afterwards I launched MB. At this point my Windows desktop was available, but some services were probably still initialising (e.g. connection to NAS drives)
3. MB GUI appeared, then i saw the library change from listing all my tracks to an empty library.
4. Restarting MB and my PC did not repopulate the library.

I actually had something similar happen about 6 months ago, but i can't remember the specific details.

I could simply add everything from the Inbox to my library, but i'm a bit concerned that something is not stable. Another option might be to reinstall a clean copy of MB, but then i'd have quite a bit of manual work to personalise it again. Considering that i've been updating versions of MB on top of each other since v2 do you think it would be a good idea to go the fresh install route?


Regarding backups, I do have some but they are older than I would like to restore.

13

Questions / All music in my library has disappeared from view

« on: May 02, 2020, 11:47:04 AM »

Yesterday I launched Musicbee and as it was initialising all the music tracks in my library disappeared. After restarting I still have an empty library pane.
The music files are still on my NAS and can be accessed without issue. Playlists are still listed but are not populated with any tracks, but the Now Playing tab still lists my music and can play tracks without problem.
I'm guessing that something may have corrupted my library file, so I tried renaming the Library.bak and Settings.bak files and replacing the .mbl and .ini files but it didn't help.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what may have happened, and whether there is a way I can retrieve my library?

Cheers.

14

Bug Reports / Re: DivideByZeroException when switching tabs

« on: April 24, 2018, 10:03:21 PM »

Here you go...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zjw5i62hn6ucceq/MusicBee3Settings_20180424.ini?dl=0

Thanks for the patch.

15

Bug Reports / DivideByZeroException when switching tabs

« on: April 24, 2018, 08:39:24 PM »

Hi,

MusicBee v3.2.6676.40631

I've been experiencing quite a few errors when switching between pinned tabs. It's not an always issue, but it's happened more than 10 times.
I also just experienced the bug when switching Windows apps back to view musicbee from Chrome, which is a different use case.
The tabs have custom layouts and custom views.

Here are four error messages:

====================

MusicBee v3.2.6676.40631 (Win10.0), 24 Apr 2018 21:35:

System.DivideByZeroException: Attempted to divide by zero.
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.#=z_NV0Rma3wMSx.#=zaLXQwHNWx86m(MouseEventArgs #=zFlervTw=)
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.OnMouseMove(MouseEventArgs #=zFlervTw=)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseMove(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
   at #=zOo0qA8gsQKW1GtOhatR_Mbs=.WndProc(Message& #=zf70DYDI=)
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.WndProc(Message& #=zf70DYDI=)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


MusicBee v3.2.6676.40631 (Win10.0), 24 Apr 2018 21:31:

System.DivideByZeroException: Attempted to divide by zero.
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.#=z_NV0Rma3wMSx.#=zaLXQwHNWx86m(MouseEventArgs #=zFlervTw=)
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.OnMouseMove(MouseEventArgs #=zFlervTw=)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseMove(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
   at #=zOo0qA8gsQKW1GtOhatR_Mbs=.WndProc(Message& #=zf70DYDI=)
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.WndProc(Message& #=zf70DYDI=)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


MusicBee v3.2.6676.40631 (Win10.0), 24 Apr 2018 21:23:

System.DivideByZeroException: Attempted to divide by zero.
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.#=z_NV0Rma3wMSx.#=zaLXQwHNWx86m(MouseEventArgs #=zFlervTw=)
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.OnMouseMove(MouseEventArgs #=zFlervTw=)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseMove(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
   at #=zOo0qA8gsQKW1GtOhatR_Mbs=.WndProc(Message& #=zf70DYDI=)
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.WndProc(Message& #=zf70DYDI=)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


MusicBee v3.2.6676.40631 (Win10.0), 24 Apr 2018 20:32:

System.DivideByZeroException: Attempted to divide by zero.
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.#=z_NV0Rma3wMSx.#=zaLXQwHNWx86m(MouseEventArgs #=zFlervTw=)
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.OnMouseMove(MouseEventArgs #=zFlervTw=)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseMove(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
   at #=zOo0qA8gsQKW1GtOhatR_Mbs=.WndProc(Message& #=zf70DYDI=)
   at #=z5ZXRVTwIIU9SoBhiYif4wiOxDDSq.WndProc(Message& #=zf70DYDI=)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)