Browsing by Album, Artist, Genres

**F350** · 09-27-2005, 03:07 AM

I really like this feature since it will use the winamps library which uses the id3 tags to automatically group albums together within an artist. It is working well, but seems to be missing a few things. This may be because I do not know how to implement them, but this is what I have noticed.

1. There is no album artwork associated when using this feature.
2. When using the back button, it always defaults back to your main music folder. It seems it should just go back one level. For example, if I select an artist, and then an album, and then decide I want to look at a different album from that artist, I have to go back to the very beginning again instead of just going back to the list of albums from that artist.
3. Is there a way so that when I go into my audio browser, it will automatically go into the last selected artist or album. This would be within the browse by artist, album, genres section.

If your ID3 tags are all set up correctly, this feature is very clean and easy to use. Very similar for those of us that have used ipods in the past.

Sorry for all the requests / questions. I am finalizing my RR frontend, and just going through my wishlist of things.

Thanks.

**guino** · 09-27-2005, 10:36 AM

1.There's no album art until you get to hightlight a FILE. Reason being that there's no clear association between the album and any file, until you actually select it. The idea is that your songs could be scattered all over the harddrive and the library would still find and associate it, but the art file could not necessarily be with any of the files, or more than one art file could exist...
2.This feature would be very memory inneficient OR very slow, depending on how implemented. That's why if you want to go back, you should start over.
3.The audio browser returns exactly where you left it. Again, making RR search the library for where you left off would be slow and/or innefficient, needless to say not everyone uses the library, although many (like me) have it setup.

Believe me, if those were simple things to do, I'd have done it already.

**TheLlama** · 09-27-2005, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by guino

2.This feature would be very memory inneficient OR very slow, depending on how implemented. That's why if you want to go back, you should start over.

I don't know all the circumstances, but in my player I was able to implement this fairly easy by using a stack. Just push the current mode/options onto the stack. When they hit back then pop off the top and set the state = to the top of the stack.

Just thought I'd mention it. I couldn't use a player without that.

**guino** · 09-27-2005, 11:29 AM

The problem is that this is an incremental selection. It is not like just selecting a folder then going back to the previous one. If you push back on an Artist's album, the code would have to select the full set of songs again, then re-select the genre, then artist until you're on the position previously selected. Either that or I'd have to save all the data on each selection state.

**TheLlama** · 09-27-2005, 02:17 PM

no... what I'm saying is you store the state of the filters in the stack. you can either store a dynamic array of all the filters in each level of the stack. This is more flexible. If you are not going to have more then one of each type of filter (artist, album, genre) then you can make a structure that has a field for each filter and use that in the stack.

Anyways, I'm sure you have good reasons for doing things the way you are. I'm not trying to doubt you; just making sure you have concidered all the possiblities.

**F350** · 09-27-2005, 03:36 PM

Thanks for clearing that up for me guino. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

**kbreeden** · 11-28-2005, 02:45 PM

Originally Posted by guino

1.There's no album art until you get to hightlight a FILE. Reason being that there's no clear association between the album and any file, until you actually select it. The idea is that your songs could be scattered all over the harddrive and the library would still find and associate it, but the art file could not necessarily be with any of the files, or more than one art file could exist...
2.This feature would be very memory inneficient OR very slow, depending on how implemented. That's why if you want to go back, you should start over.
3.The audio browser returns exactly where you left it. Again, making RR search the library for where you left off would be slow and/or innefficient, needless to say not everyone uses the library, although many (like me) have it setup.

Believe me, if those were simple things to do, I'd have done it already.

Guino,

I am a recent convert to RR from Centrafuse and am trying to get my arms around it.

Am I correct that your reply means that I am unable to browse through my albums by their covers even with the most recent version of RR? In Centrafuse, when entering album view it allows me to scroll through all my albums by cover. It works quite well in Centrafuse and doesn't appear to be a resource hog.

**guino** · 11-28-2005, 04:49 PM

If you organize your albums by folders then you CAN browse by album art... this thread is about the LIBRARY functions (winamp library)... this is an indexed reference and doesn't show any kind of album art info until you highlight songs... the Album Art browser can only be done by FOLDERS in RR..

**kbreeden** · 11-28-2005, 05:01 PM

Okay, Guino, thanks.

I have my albums organized as follows:

f:\genre\artist\album\songs with a folder.jpg file with the songs in each album folder.

So I should be able to browse through all my albums via album covers? I've tried but haven't been able to make it work.

**guino** · 12-07-2005, 10:31 AM

every album folder you select SHOULD display an album art. If it doesn't then the file name (or settings/attributes) are not correct, or the files are hidden. This is bugging the hell out of me already so I may just enable hidden files to be used and let the mess begin.