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Topics - zigzag10

Pages: 12
1
I’m a massive fan of MB and I like to be able to export m3u playlists from this to a UPNP music server running on a NAS.  Most of the time MB performs this task admirably, but occasionally I’ve noticed that the music server doesn’t display the first track that features in playlist it’s exported.  

I first noticed this when it ought to have been one by R.E.M. so initially guessed this may be due to certain characters not being supported by m3u.  I tried m3u ascii, m3u #EXT and even m3u8 as well as pls playlists, but none of this was to any avail.

I then loaded a m3u #EXT playlist comprising the track (which was refusing to display) into MP3tag from its ‘Playlist’ options changed ‘Extended Write info’ from ‘%artist% - %title%’  to  ‘%album% - %track% - %title%’ and resaved the playlist file.   As my NAS uses Linux that then had to be modified to ensure it followed the unix path convention (/) et al, but then bingo – the UPNP Server correctly displayed the playlist, starting with the one by R.E.M.!!  I got there in the end!

Maybe I missed something and this particular issue has already been addressed in MB.  The solution I came upon isn’t great.  Ideally, if a m3u #EXT playlist was wanted, there would be an option to change its title mask to ‘%album% - %track% - %title%’.

2
Questions / Can ‘Picture Type’ for embedded artwork be displayed?
« on: January 07, 2020, 12:54:31 PM »
All my artwork is embedded and MB has no issue in displaying this.  However, not all this artwork is displayed in other devices and/or programs and I think I’ve established that this is maybe due to no value being assigned to ‘picture type’ – that’s to say, in certain cases this field doesn’t contain ‘Album Cover’ etc.

I know it’s possible to view this field in mp3tag with the syntax %_cover_type%, can it also be displayed in MB?  I have incidentally used the Album Artwork Manager, but as far as I can tell this utility doesn’t display this info. 

3
I’ve got quite a few custom tabs, some of which I use frequently, once I’ve selected a particular playlist.  I don’t know if it’s possible, but it would be great if such a playlist could somehow be associated with what I deem is an appropriate custom tab; so that if I then select that playlist MB would automatically display the custom tab its associated with.  Can this be done?

4
I’ve mistakenly being storing sub-genres as several custom tags in MBs database and as I’ve no started to use some other software that can handle this info I really want to transfer the sub-genres (contained in the custom tags) so that they feature in individual tracks.  That’s to say, rather than forming part of MBs database I would like the sub-genres to be contained, as metadata, in my music files.

I’ve read various threads about creating custom tags, but couldn’t find anything about this particular issue.
 
I had concluded that it would just be a matter of creating a ‘new Custom Tag Definition’ and then changing ‘the save to music file as tag’, from ‘Save to MusicBee Database Only’ to the appropriate custom tag; and while this caused my collection to be rescanned, the process failed, with only a very small number of custom tags being converted across to the music files.  Fortunately, on that occasion I had backed up MB so nothing was lost, though I would now like to have another go at this, and this time get it right.  Has anybody any pointers? Am I missing something?

5
My collection comprises a reasonable number of OGG formatted files and if I attempt to fast-forward (or rewind) any of these whilst they are playing to a UPnP/DNLA device the music skips back to the beginning of the track.  Yet if I select a wav, flac or mp3 fast-forward and rewind works just fine.  

I’m pretty convinced that this is unlikely to be connected with MBs UPnP plugin.  Perhaps it’s because OGG Vorbis files are effectively containers, or somehow due to Bubble UPnP Server which I’ve got running in the background.  Any pointers?  Should I just convert these files into mp3s?

6
The thumbnail browser is already a very useful feature of MB  – what I suggest here is to make it even better!
  
Please, is there any chance of making it possible to customise the thumbnail browser, so that any of the individual ‘groups’ can be excluded, or hidden, from what it ultimately lists? Perhaps this could be achieved by having an additional right click option available for thumbnail browser?

I think many individuals with large collections will value this modification.
  
At the same time, it would also enhance MBs ability to cater for sub-genres.  Think about it, every track in a collection features multiple genres and their respective style tags (a custom tag) are likewise populated with multiple sub-genres.  Then, there’s a genre playlist to filter for example, ‘Rock’ and the thumbnail browser has been configured to display Styles, or the sub-genres.  In this case, if this modification was implemented, there would be a possibility of configuring the thumbnail browser to only list ‘Rock’ sub-genres, for instance glam rock, progressive rock et al.

7
Questions / Is there a simple, quicker way of editing multiple genres?
« on: December 04, 2018, 01:00:43 PM »
I’ve spent a good amount of time assigning multiple genres to my collection and want to take this further, by making refinements to what I’ve already done.  However, given the size of my collection this has become a daunting task, especially as in some cases I’ve gone as far as assigning different, multiple genres to the individual tracks of an album – I must be mad! 

Currently, the process I’m carrying out involves selecting a particular genre, changing the display mode to ‘tracks’ and sorting this by the genre tag, then selecting as many individual tracks as I can, which is dependent on them having the exactly same genre value.  For instance, if I wanted to change the phrase ‘Indie Folk’, I can’t obviously edit a group of tracks all having “Indie Folk; Indie Pop; Neo-Psychedelia” as a multiple genre, whilst also having another subset of tracks selected, that have “Indie Rock; Indie Folk” as a multiple genre.  Is there a way of overcoming this limitation, so that I can conduct my edits quicker?

8
Questions / MusicBee won't play one of my albums...
« on: November 05, 2018, 01:16:26 PM »
I have a relatively large collection and have set MB to continuously monitor the library, with stuff residing on my NAS.  This set up has been great, though I’ve just stumbled upon an album that MB won’t play – that’s to say nothing happens when I try playing any of the tracks in the album.

I’ve tried: a) rescanning the album and indeed the complete library; b) reconverting the problem files (retaining the format as flac); and c) scanning MB for new files - but none of these approaches did anything and I would add that the album which refuses to play is definitely located in a monitored folder.   

Yet VLC doesn’t have any issues playing the tracks on this album...

Any thoughts?

9
Questions / Difficulty assigning multiple genres to m4a files ...
« on: October 16, 2018, 10:53:48 AM »
For some time now, I’ve been applying multiple genres to my collection, using “;” as the separator.  This seemed to be going well, though I then realised that this approach doesn't work for m4a files when using MB.  Of course, I could overcome this issue by converting these rogue m4a files to something like Ogg Vorbis, but I’ve just established that mp3tag can assign multiple genres to them with the “\\” separator.  Am I missing a trick with MB??

10
I really like seeing a "Disc 1, Disc 2 etc" sub-heading for multi-disc albums.  I’ve assigned $If(<Disc Count>>1,"Disc "<Disc#>,) to a virtual tag and I’ve selected this tag as a sub-group heading  -  following the instructions set out here: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=15094.0.  But I can no longer find the ‘Expanded Panel Settings’ in 3.2 beta and I can’t get the multi-disc sub heading to display when I’m using ‘Album Covers’ to view my collection.  Is there anything that can be done to get this to work?

11
This idea relates to the development of a new routine (plugin ??), that when activated brings up a dialog box listing the values that have been assigned to two or three multi-value tags (for instance the genre and sub-genres) for the currently selected track or album.   The user selects any combination of these, which behind the scene the routine adopts as filtering criteria; then presses OK, which closes the dialog box and quickly and automatically filters the library based upon what’s just been selected.  Below is a mock-up of what this dialog box could llool like if Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love was selected (with its tag values derived from Discogs).  From this it would be exceptionally easy for the user to filter out lets say 'Art Rock', 'Experimental' and 'Electronic' as the genre, or just 'Synth-Pop', or whatever..  



Given that some folk will be interested in things such as mood, instruments, composers etc I suggest there should be the ability to customize the routine with the user able to determine the tags that its based upon.

12
I find the ‘Open in Web Browser’/’custom web links’ a very useful feature of MB.  I have two suggestions to make it even better:

1. Remove the restriction that this feature only works for the current playing track; and
2. Incorporate the feature into the ‘context menu’, so that when a user has right clicked a track 'Open in Web Browser' is listed as one of the ‘Search...’ options.

13
Having read https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=16030.msg132459#msg132459 I gather that MB is currently configured to use WASAPI in exclusive mode, though it is possible to change this by modifying  MusicBee3Settings.ini – in a process that if I get it right, involves adjusting buffer settings.
  
Earlier this year Microsoft announced that starting with Windows 10, applications using event-mode WASAPI can request buffer sizes smaller than 10ms (see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/mt298187%28v=vs.85%29.aspx); and on the back of this, very recently, a new BASSWASAPI driver has been released, adding support for lower latency Event mode in Windows 10 (http://www.un4seen.com/download.php?basswasapi24).
 
I guess there’s a possibility that some users could be using Windows 7, or even XP (??), which I appreciate may complicate things, but it would be great if MB could capitalise on this improvement and have a simple method of switching between WASAPI Exclusive and Event modes, which doesn’t involve modifying an ini file.

14
Questions / How do I display the ‘Style’ field?
« on: December 04, 2017, 04:25:15 PM »
Please can anybody tell me how to go about displaying the ‘style’ field, whilst using the ‘Tracks’ view.  I had hoped that it would be just a matter of selecting it from ‘Set Displayed fields’, but it doesn’t appear to be listed there

15
Bug Reports / At times Context menu fails to list plugins.
« on: November 29, 2017, 10:32:18 AM »
Sorry to burden you with a potential bug Steve. I’ve already raised this as a question on the forum, but nobody has come forward with any suggestions – see: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=23367.0.  

In short, if MB is configured so as to use the 'album covers', 'artists' or a 'custom’ view, plugins are only listed in the context menu once, immediately after start-up.  Subsequent right clicking an album or track displays the context menu without any plugins that are intended to be listed on it.  I’ve established that this issue is dependent on the view that's being used - it doesn’t occur if the view is 'Tracks' or 'Album and Tracks'.

Pages: 12