Thread: Coverplay - an alternate coverflow clone

Originally Posted by juve021

I've come across this windows cloverflow clone from Clem @ http://labs.beffa.org. Its an exe which I believe is written in C and has very basic features (scroll forward/backward through albums using left/right arrow keys, spacer bar shuffles album selection) and controls winamp to play a selected album cover. Its great because its simple, i.e. no flash = no constant high cpu usage, no xml files but it probably needs a bit more tweaking to make it really great in our cars. Unfortunately, Clem is not further developing it as I've spoken with him about this. I'm trying to get a few pointers from him using the sendkeys though. Right now the program:

1) Looks for any *.jpg file in a specified music directory and displays each as album art (might work with png and gif, I don't know haven't fully tested)
2) Accepts keyboard left/right arrow keys and mouse wheel for scrolling
3) Has built in shuffle for albums
4) Directly loads songs of selected album as new playlist and starts playing in winamp
5) Has lower cpu usage than flash coverflow clones
6) Comprise of only a few files, small size

A few limitations:
1) Not really resizable
2) I cant' pass sendkey messages to the app to use with buttons in RR
3) With lots of albums, takes a bit to scroll from 1st to last album
4) Studders a bit with transitions between albums (again with many albums)

For me, this is actually pretty close to what I want in my car, something not too complicated that works quickly and is practical for selecting albums. I've already integrated into my skin as an embedded app using the "A" tag and window name "CoverPlay v0.1 alpha" and its working fine.

Try it out yourself and see what you think:

1) Download here:
http://labs.beffa.org/coverplay/
2) set the music path in the ini
3) set the path to winamp in the ini
4) run coverplay.exe
5) use the left/right arrows to scroll through albums, use space bar to shuffle albums and hit enter to select album and send to winamp for playing!

you forgot the biggest limitation of all.. it doesnt enter subdirectories.. which is gonna make it pretty pointless for me and countless others who have are music in directory structures. Its also SUPER slow for me.. slower than the flash program ever was..and i'm only goin thru my rock genre in testing.

Originally Posted by juve021

Yeah, I thought about you guys and your genre style music collection. I'm sure that you could make something up to modify the ini file tho.

Slow? Really? I've tried it on my 3 computers and it runs a ok. What are the specs of your PC? Hows your CPU usage?

Another thing I've noticed about the studdering, once you go through the albums the first time, scrolling through subsequent times is alot smoother, at least for me it is.

does the program read the ini in real time or just once during start up?

I'm using a AMD running at 2.8ghz with a gig of ram.. my Rock genre folder has about 20GB worth of music in it. CPU spikes at 98% when the albums are moving and it takes roughly 10 seconds to get to the next album once the arrow key is pressed

Its just the same thing i refered to in this post = http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/1082164-post58.html months ago when i was trying to get moahdib to work on the other 1.

I don't think its a viable alternative to the flash 1.

Originally Posted by juve021

Crap Griff, I didn't see your post! Woops.

Well, until the flash one is working MUCH BETTER than what is working for me now, this one actually works well for my needs.

That doesn't matter Juve,i'm not gonna burn you at the stake for not reading everything i post,lol.
I was just hoping it was gonna be something new thats all,it probably does have potential if you can get the source code,did you ask for it?

is not that bad, the only mayor issue is the sub folder. works ok. i bet any via m10k will be capable to handle it. mine does. some bugs in it, will see how it goes.

EDIT:this is how i use it in my skin for now(testing: "next", "prev", "jumpt to", "sub folder" working. database builder works 100%) TRY IT