Centrafuse RC2 Bugs

**veetid** · 08-16-2006, 10:05 AM

Originally Posted by Merzbow

Bunch of bugs:

The Track Sort feature is broken in RC2.

I have the "Track Sort" feature turned on in Audio settings. I have a hard disk formatted FAT32 (FAT32 doesn't auto-sort directory entries alphabetically, unlike NTFS) full of MP3 and FLAC files whose file names are like this:

Song Name - 01.flac
Song Name - 02.mp3
etc...

They have ID3 info with the title the same as the file name (minus the extension). When I browse to the directory of the album I want to play in Centrafuse via 'Music Paths', and then play the directory, the tracks are unsorted in semi-random order.

Another bug is that if single-click is on, you can't page through lists of items - the down or up button always gets 'stuck' and scrolls all the way up or down.

Another bug is that I want the ability to type in the text for a new voice prompt. I don't want to be forced to record a new prompt (which always comes out mangled but usually working).

Another bug is that during install, after I went through setup, it asked me to 'Update Library'. I clicked 'cancel' since I always use Music Path browsing, and so didn't want to wait while 15,000 MP3 files were categorized. It hung after cancel. I killed and reran the process, went through setup again, hit cancel again; this time it proceeded after about a 15-second hang.

If you don't let Centrafuse read all your tags, there will be no track sorting... This is all done with the library after the tags are read... If you are just playing from music directories then it will just play in the order it reads them...

single click issues are known...

I will look into the hang on cancel on the tag reader...

david

**veetid** · 08-16-2006, 10:08 AM

Originally Posted by sivart321

I finally got it to work and am experiencing the same issue (or perhaps this is the preset recording time?) Either way, it seems a little too long. I counted 5-6 seconds. It first cut outs for a second as if its going to switch stations, and then plays the previous station for 5 or so seconds before you hear the station you clicked on. A little strange.

Otherwise it works, aside from losing the channel listing if you mess with the settings at all.

There is some extra time because it creates the buffer and pre-records a second or two after it switches the station and then plays from the buffer...

I will look into speeding it up...

david

**Merzbow** · 08-16-2006, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by veetid

If you don't let Centrafuse read all your tags, there will be no track sorting... This is all done with the library after the tags are read... If you are just playing from music directories then it will just play in the order it reads them...

single click issues are known...

I will look into the hang on cancel on the tag reader...

david

But can't you have it sort the tracks it reads if you do play-by-directory? It should be no more than a couple lines of code - take the list of files read from disk and sort by filename (or track name). Otherwise that feature is useless. I have way too much music to navigate via the artist/album/etc. interface (> 15,000 tracks), I have my own multi-level directory heirarchy with genre, etc. The only way I can use this product is if I'm allowed to play by directory, and without sorting, I can't do that. It's not viable just to say "in the order it reads them" since this order will be different depending on the filesystem used (and only FAT32 is usable for removable hard disks).

**midiwall** · 08-16-2006, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by veetid

If you are just playing from music directories then it will just play in the order it reads them...

whoa... I'm with Merzbow on this one.

I never noticed this 'cause I loaded my tracks in album order onto a fresh drive, but this will quickly become an issue.

**veetid** · 08-16-2006, 01:52 PM

Originally Posted by Merzbow

But can't you have it sort the tracks it reads if you do play-by-directory? It should be no more than a couple lines of code - take the list of files read from disk and sort by filename (or track name). Otherwise that feature is useless. I have way too much music to navigate via the artist/album/etc. interface (> 15,000 tracks), I have my own multi-level directory heirarchy with genre, etc. The only way I can use this product is if I'm allowed to play by directory, and without sorting, I can't do that. It's not viable just to say "in the order it reads them" since this order will be different depending on the filesystem used (and only FAT32 is usable for removable hard disks).

I will look into adding something to sort when playing by directories... This is not the way it was really designed to work, but added for those users that do not like to read their music into a library...

I use to play that way until I fixed all my tag information... It shouldn't be a big deal to add...

david

**Lum** · 08-16-2006, 02:10 PM

I found some minor bugs in the installer.

1) Uninstalling RC1 failed due to insufficient disk space on C:\ (I have CF installed on D:\) fixed by temporarily disabling hibernate to get 480mb back)

2) Installing RC2 wrongly claims that I need 79MB of free space on C:\, (again, temporaily disabling hibernate fixes this problem)

3) The text that appears in the top bar, just below the titlebar and to the left of the CF logo uses a font that is not present on my system and thus becomes a very blocky large version of MS Sans Serif

4) The installer window is too tall to display on an 852x480 screen, even with the taskbar positioned over to the side. The scrollbar is appreciated but would it be possible to make it a lot smaller please?

Not found any major bugs with the app itself yet, a couple of minor ones though.

It sometimes takes a very long time to respond to mousedown / mouseup events, something which is made doubly annoying by the fact that it queues them. examples:

1) Press pause
2) Wait 5 seconds, nothing happens
3) Assume you missed so press it again
4) Wait another 5 seconds, music stops then instantly starts again.

or

1) Press Volume down and release
2) Volume dialogue box appears, volume drops to zero and does not go away
3) 5 seconds later it goes away, press volume up and it goes all the way to max again.

In both cases, removing my USB memory key (that was there when CF started) seemed to reduce the issue, but there is still sometimes a 2 second delay on the pause button.

**Merzbow** · 08-16-2006, 11:28 PM

Originally Posted by veetid

I will look into adding something to sort when playing by directories... This is not the way it was really designed to work, but added for those users that do not like to read their music into a library...

I use to play that way until I fixed all my tag information... It shouldn't be a big deal to add...

david

Thanks.

**midiwall** · 08-17-2006, 08:49 AM

Originally Posted by veetid

I will look into adding something to sort when playing by directories... This is not the way it was really designed to work, but added for those users that do not like to read their music into a library...

Hmmm, well, I wouldn't be on the griping side if the library loader was faster and smarter.

My H10 has about 800 WMA tracks on it. When I plug it into my desktop, Media Player pops up it's small dialog and just flys through the drive looking for things it doesn't already know about. When there's nothing new on the drive, it's ready to go in about 20 seconds.

When I do this with CF running, it takes forever - about 10 minutes, it seems to be pulling tags from EVERYTHING, not just new stuff.

When we looked at this problem with our player firmware core (used by IRiver, Apple iPod, Samsung, Creative and others) we built a local database of tracks along with the drive letter you found them on. That will give you enough to create a unique key that you can search on. When you see a player connect, start ripping through the drive, building a key. If the key's in the DB, skip it, if not, parse the track and add the key.

It creates an issue with managing deletions, but that's an easier problem to solve than making the user wait minutes each time the player's plugged in.

**veetid** · 08-17-2006, 09:56 AM

Originally Posted by midiwall

Hmmm, well, I wouldn't be on the griping side if the library loader was faster and smarter.

My H10 has about 800 WMA tracks on it. When I plug it into my desktop, Media Player pops up it's small dialog and just flys through the drive looking for things it doesn't already know about. When there's nothing new on the drive, it's ready to go in about 20 seconds.

When I do this with CF running, it takes forever - about 10 minutes, it seems to be pulling tags from EVERYTHING, not just new stuff.

When we looked at this problem with our player firmware core (used by IRiver, Apple iPod, Samsung, Creative and others) we built a local database of tracks along with the drive letter you found them on. That will give you enough to create a unique key that you can search on. When you see a player connect, start ripping through the drive, building a key. If the key's in the DB, skip it, if not, parse the track and add the key.

It creates an issue with managing deletions, but that's an easier problem to solve than making the user wait minutes each time the player's plugged in.

I have it on my list of things to speed up and look into, data CD and USB devices load time...

The initial scan of the library will take some time, but you should only have to do that once... We also plan to build a service that monitors your music directories so you do not have to rebuilt the library when you add music via copying from a drive or network...

david

**midiwall** · 08-17-2006, 12:06 PM

Originally Posted by veetid

The initial scan of the library will take some time, but you should only have to do that once...

Do you mean that it should work like this today, in 1.6/1.7? It doesn't...

We also plan to build a service that monitors your music directories so you do not have to rebuilt the library when you add music via copying from a drive or network...

There ya' go... now I like you again.