Messages

1

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Physical separation of "Queue Next" and "Play Now" in Files right-click menu

« on: December 01, 2023, 04:49:16 AM »

All great suggestions! Thank you all. I have at least 3 ways now to work around the issue, minor as it is.

Did I remembe to thank Steven for Musicbee? I don't think I did. So - thank you!

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MusicBee Wishlist / Physical separation of "Queue Next" and "Play Now" in Files right-click menu

« on: November 30, 2023, 10:13:15 AM »

(Minor, low priority usability request)

I like to queue up ad-hoc music playlists by going down my list of tracks in the Main panel and right-clicking on ones I want, selecting "Queue Next".
This works brilliantly.

Except that every so often my mouse pointer will wander and I'll accidentally click on "Play Now" - which erases the queue I might have spent minutes building

I can't think of a "fix" for this, other than to physically separate the two options, perhaps with a menu divider, so that they're not adjacent.
Or alternatively, if "Play Now" is selected, add it to the front of the play queue, rather than replacing the play queue?

Yes, I could use the keyboard shortcuts - Alt+Enter, Ctrl+Shift+Enter - but this means constantly moving my hands from mouse to keyboard and back again and isn't ergonomically efficient.

Thoughts?

3

Questions / Re: unable to open file error=bass-error-unknown

« on: November 30, 2023, 10:05:02 AM »

Everyone - Steven, Sveakul, Boroda - thank you for your help on this, but I've decided it's easier all round to just re-encode the problematic tracks.

Firstly, having installed MB on a second Windows 11 PC, the behavior occurs there too. So my tally is: Windows 10 + MB: works with all tracks. Windows 11 + MB on two different systems: issues playing some.

Having flicked randomly through my entire 6100+ track collection, I can only find a handful that exhibit this problem. They're all .M4A AAC encoded tracks; however, I have several other tracks of the same type and source that work fine, so maybe it's just an issue with the encoder.

The main obstacle for me, in trying to debug this further, is that I'm loathe to upload a copyrighted music track to a file-share service and, technically, risk legal troubles for all concerned. I tried finding CC/public domain tracks that show the same behaviour, but nope, they all work fine, wouldn't you know it

If you think that this issue merits further digging regardless - for example, if more people see it - I'm still happy to help, but for now, please don't let me take up any more of your valuable time.

Thanks again. All your help and suggestions are really, really appreciated.
And now I'm heading over to the Wishlist thread, to see if my one minor headache with the MB user interface has already been raised 

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Questions / Re: unable to open file error=bass-error-unknown

« on: November 27, 2023, 09:08:20 PM »

Thanks Sveakul! Doing that right now. And you're correct, this is not the Windows Store version. If downloading .ZIP files direct from the author's site and unpacking them was good enough for my grandpappy, darn it, it's good enough for me  

(Seriously though, I have an irrational aversion to application stores, and avoid them wherever possible.)

I'll post an update shortly once I've transplanted the bass* files.

UPDATE: OK, did that. All the bass* files were identical between the installations, with the exception of bassdsd.dll and basswasapi.dll, which were older on Windows 10. Regardless, I copied them all, just in case one was corrupted.

Unfortunately, it didn't work.
I've done a little more investigating.

1) if I load a "bad" file (remember - "bad" only as far as MusicBee on my Win11 machine is concerned. MB on my Win10 PC, and VLC on both, will happily play it) into Audacity and re-export it as AAC via FFMpeg, MB/Win11 will then play the re-encoded file. This suggests that there's something in the encoding of the files that MB/11 doesn't like. At this point I'd say "oh, it was corrupted files" and apologize for wasting everyones' time, but... why is MB on Windows 10 happy to play the files?

(By the way, I feel that this issue is becoming a time-sink for people whose time is far more valuable than mine - Sveakul, Steven - so, I am happy to just re-encode the dozen or so "bad" files if it comes to it. If we want to continue digging and find out why one instance of MB chokes on a file that another instance is happy with, I'm happy to co-operate and do whatever I can.)

2) renaming the "bad" file to .MP3 didn't work either. Yes, I know that was on the face of it irrational, but I wondered... "what if these aren't actually M4A/AAC files after all?". VLC says they are, and MB says they are, so (shrug)...

3) I'm going to copy my "good" Win10 installation of MB across to a couple of other PCs - I have several spare - to see if the issue is specific to Windows 11 (as we have a sample size of 1, the whole "windows 10 vs windows 11" might be a red herring), or this particular PC.

As a next step, what's the best way to get one of the "bad" files to you, Sveakul?

Thank you both for the time & effort you've put into this. Even if you do nothing more than what you've already done, then I am still very grateful.

5

Plugins / Re: 3DBee (Cover Flow) Plugin

« on: November 27, 2023, 07:35:21 AM »

Regardless of whether "BoringName" is still reading these forums or not - I just want to say that 3DBee is brilliant and works great for me. It scratches a deep itch that I've had ever since Apple killed Coverflow in iTunes. There's just something fulfilling about virtually "flicking" through a rack of album sleeves. Good job, author!

The only thing I wish I could change is the sort order for the album covers. It appears to be hard-coded to "sort by Artist" - which, when I have my Music library sorted by, say, "Date Added", means that there's a disconnect between what 3DBee is showing, and what the music library track list I have just below it is showing. And playing consecutive tracks in the library results in a lot of thrashing as 3DBee makes a massive jump in its list. But that's just nit-picking

Five star rating on this one!⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Questions / Re: unable to open file error=bass-error-unknown

« on: November 27, 2023, 07:21:46 AM »

Thanks for the amazingly fast response, Steven. I definitely appreciate it (and by the way, a colossal THANK YOU for Musicbee and your hard work. I don't think you get enough recognition.)

Following your advice I tracked down the forum post by Sveakul that linked to the latest bass_aac.dll at un4seen.com (2.4.6.0 at time of writing). I installed the 32-bit version to the MB root directory (and unblocked it in Windows Explorer -> File Properties).

Sad to say though, my problem remains - the files that didn't play before, still don't work.
As I said - these are not high bitrate, and they are as far as I can tell identical in codec terms to files that do play correctly in MB.

Hmm! Puzzling. Your solution made perfect sense and should have worked.

7

Questions / Re: unable to open file error=bass-error-unknown

« on: November 27, 2023, 06:47:02 AM »

(First, apologies for adding to an old thread - I am seeing this issue too, but I'm not sure what the etiquette is around here. I'm happy to start a new thread if that's preferred.)

I have Musicbee 3.5.8698 on two PCs. One is Windows 10 22H2, and plays all my tracks. I've never found anything in my collection that it won't play.

The other PC is Windows 11 (also 22H2, albeit of that OS), and plays most of my tracks - there's some that it barfs at with this "BASS_ERROR_UNKNOWN", and this page is the most "relevant" that came up when I searched for help on the error.

Screenshot here. Don't laugh at my eclectic taste in music 

To forestall the obvious questions: yes, I've done a clean install of the application, and I've whitelisted the various files in Windows Defender (and have actually turned off realtime scanning anyway). I've also tried changing the output device - whether WASAPI/Exclusive, or DirectSound, makes no difference.

What's weird is that there's no pattern to the tracks that won't play. The ones that won't play all seem to be .m4a AAC tracks (44100Hz, 32bits per sample, according to VLC, which by the way plays them perfectly)... but I have plenty of other tracks of the same type that play perfectly in Musicbee.

My collection is on my Linux NAS; thinking that it might be a file permissions/access issue, I've tried copying the problem files to the Desktop, and Musicbee still won't play them from there either.

The Musicbee error log shows nothing... literally, it remains empty after failing to play a file.
One oddity, that might be significant, is that when I've removed the tracks from my MB library and re-added them, all their embedded metadata shows up in the library - ID3 tags, album cover art, etc - except for the track duration, which remains blank. If I re-add a "working" track in the same fashion, the duration is immediately displayed, as expected. Could MB be having trouble reading the headers on these tracks? As I said, VLC plays them perfectly, and they've been created using exactly the same encoder as the working tracks, so I don't think they're corrupted in any way.

This is a little frustrating, to put it mildly. What can I do to help diagnose and debug this issue? I'm happy to provide more detailed information about my computer configurations if needed.

8

Bug Reports / Re: v3.5.8446 - copyright shown as 2008-2021

« on: February 16, 2023, 11:21:42 PM »

You're welcome. Easy to overlook things like that.

Maybe change the string so that the current year is automatically inserted?

Code

string sCopyright = String.Format("Copyright © Steven Mayall 2008-{0}, All rights reserved", DateTime.Now.Year);

Just a thought. Would give you one less thing to have to remember

(Edit: of course, this would display the current year on the running system, not necessarily the year that the program was compiled... I've run into this requirement before in my own projects and ended up having to use reflection to extract the build-date. For example: https://rmauro.dev/add-build-time-to-your-csharp-assembly/)

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Bug Reports / v3.5.8446 - copyright shown as 2008-2021

« on: February 16, 2023, 06:32:20 AM »

Hi Steven! I am delighted with MusicBee, it's a great player. Thank you so much for a wonderful piece of software.

I've just updated to 3.5.8446 and I notice on the About dialog that the copyright date is given as 2008-2021. Do you need to update this?



(looks like this is a repeat of a very similar bug-report from 5-6 years ago...)

Thanks!

10

General Discussions / Re: Coverflow Plugin

« on: January 27, 2023, 03:48:10 AM »

Excellent news (and Happy New Year..)! I'm still here, watching this thread, and still first in line to test it when you deem it worthy of release!

11

Questions / Weird. Double-click-on-track-name behavior suddenly changed for no reason (v3.4)

« on: December 15, 2022, 09:35:11 PM »

Hi all,

Here's an odd one. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious.
Up until 3 days ago, if I was playing a track and double-clicked the track name at the bottom of the window - whether from Music Library or Now Playing - MB would switch to the Music Library view, with the current track selected and highlighted. So, super-easy to jump to the current track to edit it, sort the library by album/artist, etc.

Now, all of a sudden, double-clicking the track name - whether I'm in the Now Playing view, or the Music Library view, jumps to the Now Playing view, with the track name highlighted in the Playing Tracks pane.

I haven't installed a new version of MB (this is 3.4.8033), or changed any settings, or indeed done anything that I can think of.

Any ideas? I've looked deeply through the Settings, but the only option I can see related to double-clicking concerns the tray icon behavior.

At the risk of being roundly mocked for my poor taste in music, I've taken an explanatory screenshot, here.

Unexpected Edit, before even hitting POST on this: Wow, you folks are amazing. Before I even submitted this post, Musicbee went back - almost - to its original, preferred, behavior. I double-clicked the track name to take a screenshot of the annoying new behavior, and to my amazement it meekly did what it used to. But only, now, if I'm already in the Music Library view. Spooky. Brrrr. What the heck?

Anyway. I'd still like to know what I did that changed (twice) this behavior. Is it down to whether the time-of-day is odd or even? Which hand I hold my mouse in? Cosmic rays? More seriously, some super-secret option in MusicBee that I'm not consciously triggering?

12

MusicBee Wishlist / Indicate whether displayed lyrics are downloaded or embedded

« on: November 25, 2022, 08:50:24 AM »

Musicbee does a good job of automatically downloading lyrics for songs in my library. Too good, in fact, because they appear instantly when playback begins, and I have no (apparent?) way of knowing that the lyrics have been downloaded, versus being read from within the audio file.
I prefer to embed lyrics within the files; call it part of my general aversion to being dependent on cloud services   . I like to think that if I lose Internet access, or such-and-such lyrics server goes down, I'll still be able to view song lyrics for my collection.
So right now, as I play tracks, I'm having to check each one, and right-click -> "embed displayed lyrics" where necessary. Which is kind of a pain.

Would it be possible to have some visual indication within the Musicbee UI, that lyrics are local- versus cloud-sourced? Maybe a color coding, or a heading at the top of the lyrics pane?

EDIT: OK, I am dumb, I just noticed that when you right-click on the lyrics pane there is a small "Lyrics Source: Embedded in music file" heading on the context menu. So, technically, my request is already answered. May I modify it? Could the "Lyrics Source" be made a little more prominent? By the time I've right-clicked on each song's lyrics to check their source, it's only one more click to "Embed Displayed Lyrics into music file", so having the source info in the context menu doesn't really save any time.

13

General Discussions / Re: Coverflow Plugin

« on: November 05, 2022, 05:59:41 AM »

Cool, I'm glad it's still progressing. Hey, Duke Nukem Forever surfaced, eventually.. so as long as you beat the Gnu Hurd to release...

I have some C# expertise myself, albeit no familiarity whatsoever with OpenGL, so I have some empathy for the challenges you're facing and what must be involved with it.

Thanks for your surprisingly quick response to a 3-month old thread. If you do manage to get your plugin functioning inside Musicbee, I will be first in line to download it (and donate). As I said earlier, "flicking through" my MP3 collection - which, over the course of the last 25 years*, has grown and has metadata and album artwork of obsessive completeness - in the old itunes was a delight. Trust Apple to bugger itunes up, of course... hmph.

(*yes, 25 years. I still remember the first MP3s I got, from a friend in London, and being utterly gobsmacked that an entire song could fit into only a couple of MB)

Good luck!

14

General Discussions / Re: Coverflow Plugin

« on: November 05, 2022, 03:45:15 AM »

Hi,
Did you ever get your plugin working?
I would kill (metaphorically) for a decent coverflow-like view in Musicbee. Like someone mentioned above, the gold standard in this area was itunes 10.7 (the rest of it was a clunky mess, but...)
I really, really liked being able to flick through my music collection as though it was a carousel of physical albums.

Any positive news to report?

Thank you!