Second deck or file player through secondary output

[Methosan]

Ciao!

I have been using Musicbee for a long time but I have always had to use another program at the same time to prelisten to songs I want to play.. Mediamonkey can read my Musicbee exported playlists so I go there to choose files and then back to musicbee to finalize my selections, but I would like to do everything within Musicbee.

Someone had made a plugin for Mediamonkey but I did not care for how it worked nor do I like the entire program as much as I like Musicbee.. this lack of preview within is the only thing missing from this software.  None of the dual deck DJ softwares have library and playlist functions as MB has.

MIXXX player has a cute preview function.. there is a button next to each song that then feeds the song to the preview player which is set to output #2 when the main player is set to output #1.  I can not use the program as it does not have a playlist column that automatically plays the next song on the list, as MM and MB (and WMP, etc) have.

Help appreciated

[phred]

I suggest searching the forum as I recall a few folks have asked how to use MB with DJ or mixing software.

[Methosan]

Nope.. haven't found a post that covers what I wish for.. a plugin for MB that allows me to preview a song while another is already playing.. within the same software.  I can drag and drop files from MB to a few programs but I can not find a lightweight player (playlist-only, basically) that shows playlist with all the fields that I was to display (song, artist, genre, time, composer are minimum).  So if all can be done within MB 100% better.

Does the coding support someone smart writing an addon that allows this?

[Zak]

Not very elegant, but you could set up a second lightweight player (e.g. XMPlay) as an external tool, and send files to it as you want to preview them. You could assign a hotkey to make it easier.

Set a different output in that program and you can listen to tracks without affecting what is happening in MusicBee.

-edit-
I realise this won't let you mix and cue tracks like say, Serato, but MusicBee was never designed to be used that way.

[Methosan]

Send to-option does not work for me.  I tried and it is fine if you play 1 song at a time and send each song right after the previous one finished. At least I could not get it to work with older Musicbee, Foobar2000, or XMPlay.  XMplay opened a new instance for each file; Foobar and Musicbee replaced Now Playing playlist with a new list of the file(s) I sent, instead of just adding them to the queue.

I don't actually need 2 big decks like Serato, or MIXXX, or VirtualDJ, or Traktor..or CUE/feature. I just need a plugin within Musicbee that allows me to scroll through the same library I use to play already.. I just want to browse to different folders, preview a song, and if I like it, I add it to the Now Playing list.  Someone had made such a plugin to Mediamonkey long time ago but I don't like Mediamonkey (and the plugin is old and doesn't work beatifully anymore).

Check Mixxx.. It has crazy many decks available but the point is you have this little miniplayer on the side and you assign it a different output in the preferences.

[Zak]

I tried and it is fine if you play 1 song at a time and send each song right after the previous one finished. At least I could not get it to work with older Musicbee, Foobar2000, or XMPlay.  XMplay opened a new instance for each file;

Yeah, I assumed you'd only want to preview one track at a time.

I just want to browse to different folders, preview a song, and if I like it, I add it to the Now Playing list.

Wait, are you previewing one track at a time or not? *is confused*

[boroda]

Musicbee replaced Now Playing playlist with a new list of the file(s) I sent, instead of just adding them to the queue.

use musicbee /QueueLast xxxx instead of /Play xxxx.

[Methosan]

I just want to browse to different folders, preview a song, and if I like it, I add it to the Now Playing list.

Wait, are you previewing one track at a time or not? *is confused*
[/quote]

You are right.. What I started to do.. or the idea... was to preview in Musicbee and then send it to play in another lightweight-playlist_only-player(of the kind there really are none; foobar is closest configurable to that task).. but this isn't what I had asked here yes.

I had asked here how to use MB as main player and preview elsewhere.  I would still like MB to have the function to preview within without needing to change screens or programs.  Of course in case such a plugin was developed a few other changes would also need to take place:  3.3 version has removed the feature that is critical in my 2.3 version: Ability to read M3U playlist files in the file browser column.

Thanks