Messages

1

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: Today at 10:14:35 AM »

But, a lot of us... or rather, I'll speak for myself aren't interested in a VU meter, spectrums or playlists either for that matter, so why respond to these things?

I assumed they were talking about VUMeter users, not all Musicbee users.

And just for some trivia.
The largest single download count for a version of this plugin is just over 1100 with total downloads across all versions a smidge under 4000. Probably a fair bit of overlap there.

Looking at the numbers on all my plugins, the forum participation rate is extremely low.

There is a pretty good chance I'm going to add an option for this. With the thread on here about users getting Musicbee running in Linux, you never know what hardware they could be using in future and I don't think one extra checkbox on the Needle Action sub menu is going to overwhelm the average user with too many settings. It's not going to open the flood gates, aside from updates to keep this functional in future I doubt there is much more I will add to this plugin moving forward. This recent change was only due to the significant performance boost from the underlying OpenGL library patch.

2

Bug Reports / Re: Dead Pixel in Header Menus Caused by "True" SlimIcons Element

« on: July 06, 2025, 11:48:09 PM »

(I can't think of something good right now, having a bourbon and toasting to BoringName's good health)

That's the spirit!

I'm not seeing the missing pixel using the DNA skin with slimicons set to true. I even got out a magnifying glass to be 100% sure. I'm running 2560x1440 at 125% scale on windows 10.

3

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 06, 2025, 11:09:07 PM »

(perhaps add that as an Ultra Smooth™ option in the UI?)

I did have the frame rate in the options at one point but took it out as it didn't seem to make any difference over 60. I think I'll add a slider to the needle action submenu for 30, 60, 90 120. edit: actually if it's running on a 12 year old machine I might just keep 60 as default and add the 120 option like you suggested for users that are not worried if uses a bit more CPU to look smoother.

I just ran that on a 12 yrs. old PC with on-board graphics (hmm, the exact same age as the Lagavulin that I am currently abusing) and it didn't break a sweat.[/i][/color]

That's cool, what was the CPU usage like on that machine?

You will notice the 120 frame rate does use a bit more CPU.

4

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 06, 2025, 10:55:35 PM »

New version - VUMeter_2.7.2

Changes
- Removed the message from the status bar. I was using it to test something and forgot to remove it.

5

Beyond MusicBee / Re: A both practical and philosophical discussion on LLM neural networks.

« on: July 06, 2025, 09:45:23 AM »

Listening to and seeing what they are doing.

I don't think this helps language models, they are just text predictors on steroids.

A Mirror of Human Knowledge, Polished: My responses reflect the best of what humans have thought, written, and discovered, up to the point of my data. I’m not perfect—my knowledge is bounded by what I’ve been trained on, and I can only approximate the latest insights.

While this response might sound insightful, it's wrong. 'polished' and 'best of' are not how I would describe most of the the tripe I've seen 'AI' spit out. It's a blended mesh of crap because the text predictor doesn't actually know what is right or wrong because it's not actually AI.

There was a recent case locally where an online chef sued another online chef for plagiarising some recipes from her cook book. They denied it of course and when you check the recipes they are a little different but most of the structure and wording are very similar or identical in a lot of places. What all the media reports failed to consider (maybe on purpose) is the second chef probably just asked an AI model for a recipe and it spat out a version of the other chefs because at some point it probably scanned it.

'AI' might help productivity to some extent but it's going to be at the expense of creativity and critical thinking. There will be a point in the future where you survey 10,000 people on a subject and they will all give the exact same answers.... that's not going to move humanity forward.

6

Developers' Area / Re: Exact time a playlist will end

« on: July 06, 2025, 08:22:11 AM »

I threw this together very quickly and I've had a few bourbons so yeah...

This will iterate through the now playing list from the current track onward and display the time when it will end in the status bar.

Code

TimeSpan totalDuration = new();
MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_QueryFilesEx(null, out string[] filenames);
int index = MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_GetCurrentIndex();

for (int i = index; i < filenames.Length; i++) {
    totalDuration += TimeSpan.ParseExact(MbApiInterface.NowPlayingList_GetFileProperty(i, FilePropertyType.Duration), @"m\:ss", null);
}

DateTime endTime = DateTime.Now + totalDuration;
MbApiInterface.MB_SetBackgroundTaskMessage("Now playing list will end at " + endTime);

Note the format string, if you have a track in the now playing list that runs for more than 9:59 this will fail so you will need to come up with a better way to handle that.

It doesn't take into account how long the current track has been playing. You can get that with Player_GetPosition() but keep in mind this returns a millisecond string and not a time formatted string.

You could put this in a method and set it to trigger whenever a nowplaying list notification occurs. If you wanted to have it constantly showing and counting down the seconds, I would use a system timer to refresh the background message and offset the time between notification events so you're not constantly iterating the now playing list.
Edit: Actually you wouldn't need to do this because the time it ends would be static. Having it run via notifications when something changes should be enough. You could account for how much the current track has played in case the user moves the slider on the current track.

It should get you started.

7

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 06, 2025, 06:24:19 AM »

@BoringName, thank you, all is working fine now.

p.s. also, i've deleted all SharpGL*.dll files from plugin's folder. don't know if it's important.

Nice. No point leaving them there as they are not used anymore. Less chance of issues in future.

Looking at Silk.Net it requires net6.0 so I'm not sure if I would be able to use that. In any case, everything seems to be working smoothly now so I'll leave it alone unless something else breaks.

8

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 06, 2025, 01:07:56 AM »

New Version - VUMeter_2.7.1

Changes
- Updated framework Net target to 4.8
- Compiled the SharpGL dependencies from the code on Github to make sure they are current as they haven't released an updated nuget package for the current version.

I have also released a new version of 3DBee with the updated SharpGL library and framework target. Aside from using less CPU it also seems a lot smoother to me but it's been a while since I played around with it so it could just be confirmation bias...

9

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: July 06, 2025, 01:03:41 AM »

New version - 3DBee_2.6.1

Changes
- Updated framework Net target to 4.8
- Updated the SharpGL library to use a new render method that substantially reduces CPU usage, particularly for large libraries.

I haven't made any fixes for the errors some users have reported. I'll get there eventually....

I haven't done a lot of testing with the updated SharpGL library but it does seem a lot smoother to me.

If you also use VUMeter, you should update that as well. I have just released a new version of that which targets 4.8 also. There also some info in the VUMeter thread if you get a blank panel after updating.

edit: If you have any SharpGL*.dll files in Musicbee's plugin folder, you should remove these when you update to this version. Older versions packaged these files separately but they are all included in the single mb_3Dbee.dll now and leaving the SharpGL DLL's in there might cause conflicts.

10

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 05, 2025, 11:35:43 PM »

This only occured with the VUMeter running. If I swapped it out for the volume visualizer there was never a problem.

Based on the author comments on the patch that fixed this problem in the SharpGL library, it seems the old method made lots of manual Garbage Collection calls. I don't know why a large library is more effected but I think the constant Garbage Collection calls is what causes the Musicbee UI to bog down. I've used WPF to create the openGL element as I just went with what worked at the time, I don't know if that is the issue or the SharpGL library just isn't coded efficiently.

I found Silk.Net the other day which might be a better alternative to SharpGL as it seems to be regularly updated unlike SharpGL. But I don't think it supports WPF so I might have to rebuild from scratch....

11

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 05, 2025, 10:46:08 PM »

you are wrong. all my active plugins are targeted to 4.8

Has it been like that for a while? I'm sure at one point I incrementally increased the net version until I got an entry point error to determine how high I could go. I guess that was probably a couple of years ago now.

Anyway, that didn't fix it but I have got it working on my other machine (PC2) although I'm not sure exactly what the problem was. I'll go through the steps I took.

PC2 had a portable install with an older version of Musicbee and the VUMeter plugin when it still had separate sharpGL DLL's.
I deleted the SharpGL dll's from Musicbee\plugins and copied over the mb_VUMeter.dll and Musicbee.exe from my main machine (PC1).
At this point it wasn't working.
I tried setting the output to Net 4.8, this worked fine on PC1 but still produced an error on PC2.
I deleted the entire Musicbee folder on PC2 and copied over the entire Musicbee folder from PC1.
It now works on both PC's.

The only thing I can think of is maybe there was another copy of SharpGL.wpf.dll in the Musicbee\appdata\plugins folder.

So maybe have a search for SharpGL.wpf.dll and delete any instances you find. If not create another fresh portable install and see if that works.

If you still don't get anywhere I'll send you a copy that will display an error if it's the same problem my PC2 had instead of just giving you a blank screen with no info. Just in case you are having a different problem than my PC2 had.

12

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 05, 2025, 10:02:57 AM »

could you set the project to target .Net 4.8? (4.8, but not 4.8.1, is the last .Net version available for Win7)

at least MB itself is targeted to 4.8

I could be wrong but I believe 4.6.2 is the highest you can go for plugins. If you target higher they won't initialise in Musicbee.

Both systems I have here are on the exact same version of windows 10. Works on my main PC but the other one throws the exception. Tried installing all the 4x net versions but the installer says they are already installed.

I compiled my own SharpGL DLL's and set them to target 4.6.2 and get the same result. The nuget package only targets 4.5 and 4.7.2

I've had a few bourbons and bad things happen when I troubleshoot half tanked so I'll give it another crack tomorrow.

13

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 05, 2025, 08:44:04 AM »

new version shows only blank (black) rectangle. right-click menu is inaccessible too.

The good news is I have a system here that is behaving the same way so that should make it easier to troubleshoot.

The bad news is I still don't know how to fix it.

It's producing a MissingMethodException error for the command that sets the new rendering method. But the method is there because it works on other machines.... I thought it might be a NET version issue but the plugin is set to target Net 4.6.2 and the machine has that installed.

Open to ideas.... I've tried cleaning and rebuilding it in Visual Studio but no dice.

14

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 05, 2025, 03:36:40 AM »

I also use the 3DBee plugin, but I haven't changed any settings there, yet I'm seeing this behavior.

I haven't updated 3DBee with the new render method yet, that's next on the list once I get this working for everyone. I suspect that will bring your CPU usage down a bit more.

15

Plugins / Re: VUMeter Plugin

« on: July 05, 2025, 03:34:07 AM »

p.s. i noticed that SharpGL library(-ies) is not included in plugin's zip. is this OK?

I use Costura.Fody, it bundles everything into one DLL.

I'll look into it. I'll probably send you a test version tomorrow.