Thread: Browse-By-Cover....it's here!

Hahaha in line with my last post, I got an email from Nathan:

"What do you require permission for? The source?"

I think he was confused about why we would be asking to use his source to create a flash applet hahha

Originally Posted by farolfo

Do you realese source code when software will be complete ?

No. Per the disclaimer on the site, it allows to download, alter the source, and create an application with it, but NOT to then re-distribute that source code without the authors (Nathan's) permission. This is simply to keep someone from altering it, and re-distributing it as their own work, and is totally understandable.

When it is completed juve021 can always send a copy to Nathan, and he could possibly give his permission to share the altered source, but that is entirely up to him.

Thanks for your patience all. File is ready to DL, see post #1

Thanks for your work on this, Juve.

Am I correct that a separate playlist file (m3u) must be made for each album in order for this to work? With many of us having 1,000+ albums, this could be prohibitive.

Originally Posted by kbreeden

Thanks for your work on this, Juve.

Am I correct that a separate playlist file (m3u) must be made for each album in order for this to work? With many of us having 1,000+ albums, this could be prohibitive.

Yes right now it looks for a playlist file in each album folder. Each playlist file must be named with the same name.

I know, it really is a pain. My VB program, included in the zip file for download, generates these playlist files for you already though! Maybe I can just make a standalone app, without any of the XML stuff, to solely generate the playlist file, would that help?

hmm i'm gettin a runtime error 429 using the builder tool

EDIT: Nevermind didnt register the dll first

EDIT AGAIN: For some reason the builder is cutting off the first letter of every <trackname> listing. Also is it not possible to add subdirectories?

Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

hmm i'm gettin a runtime error 429 using the builder tool

EDIT: Nevermind didnt register the dll first

EDIT AGAIN: For some reason the builder is cutting off the first letter of every <trackname> listing. Also is it not possible to add subdirectories?

Whats your music structure look like?

Can you post a snippet of the xml file?

I suspect the cutting off has something to do with the subdirectories. I haven't figured out how to deal with subdirectories yet like (c:\music\Notorious BIG - Life After Death\CD1 and ...\CD2). How do people have music organized in this situation?

Originally Posted by juve021

Thanks for your patience all. File is ready to DL, see post #1

Kewl! Fantastic work!

I am however, going to have to create a script that will work with more of the majority of users file structures. From what I have seen, in most, but not all cases, music is structured like this: (And the way that most rippers I have seen create the structure)

\Mp3\
------\Blue Man Group\
------------------------\Audio album
-----------------------------\Song 1.mp3
-----------------------------\Song 2.mp3
-----------------------------\Song 2.mp3
-------------------------\The Complex
-----------------------------\Song 1.mp3
-----------------------------\Song 2.mp3
-----------------------------\Song 2.mp3

With the folder structure you described in the readme.txt, if an artist has 18 Albums, they are going to be listed 18 times in the Root Folder, and that would make it a real hassle when scrolling through a normal directory list looking for something.

I just checked my collection and have 541 Artists/folders in the Root MP3 folder, its a chore already scrolling down the list. Now if I put each and every album in the root folder, I would have 1429 Folders in the Root MP3 folder! Now THAT whould be hard to scroll through heheh

This is going to be a really tricky script to write, as I will try to make it work with any folder structure. I have some code I wrote for the media copier in my skin, that checks to see if the item in the directory list it pulls is a folder or a file. If its a folder, the script can recurse a level deeper and check each folder in there and so forth. The more I think of it the more complex it is going to have to be!

EDIT: Active board this morning, 4 posts made while I was writing this one!

The easiest way to check for sub directories with a script, is to get a dir of each and every file/folder into a text file and work from that. When that text file is created, go line by line with the script and do a right$ of the line getting the last 4 characters, and then check to see of the first one is a . (period). If so, then this is an extension, and not a folder. This works for any files and folders. Sure you could just compare the last 3 to "mp3" or "m3u" but that could let jpg's, png's, .ico, .txt files slip through the cracks. I guess you could also do an InString and look for a period anywhere in the line, as I personally am not aware of many folder names with a "." in the name, other than the windows temp stuff and all.

Originally Posted by JohnWPB

Kewl! Fantastic work!

I am however, going to have to create a script that will work with more of the majority of users file structures. From what I have seen, in most, but not all cases, music is structured like this: (And the way that most rippers I have seen create the structure)

\Mp3\
------\Blue Man Group\
------------------------\Audio album
-----------------------------\Song 1.mp3
-----------------------------\Song 2.mp3
-----------------------------\Song 2.mp3
-------------------------\The Complex
-----------------------------\Song 1.mp3
-----------------------------\Song 2.mp3
-----------------------------\Song 2.mp3

With the folder structure you described in the readme.txt, if an artist has 18 Albums, they are going to be listed 18 times in the Root Folder, and that would make it a real hassle when scrolling through a normal directory list looking for something.

I just checked my collection and have 541 Artists/folders in the Root MP3 folder, its a chore already scrolling down the list. Now if I put each and every album in the root folder, I would have 1429 Folders in the Root MP3 folder! Now THAT whould be hard to scroll through heheh

This is going to be a really tricky script to write, as I will try to make it work with any folder structure. I have some code I wrote for the media copier in my skin, that checks to see if the item in the directory list it pulls is a folder or a file. If its a folder, the script can recurse a level deeper and check each folder in there and so forth. The more I think of it the more complex it is going to have to be!

Great news! Yeah that was my problem, the more I thought about the music structure the crazier I was becoming!
If you could write a great script that would cover the majority of peoples files, that would awesome and I think I might even have to convert my collection into that format! It makes more sense your way.

Either way however, it will probably be a chore to go through the album covers if you have the amount of music you do!

my structure is the same..a nd it seems it would be easy to create a better "builder" script that essentially searched every folder in your music directory.. if the folder contains .mp3's.. an .m3u would be created in that folder and the folder would be deemed a "album". If the folder did not contain mp3's it would be considered a plain directory. Doing it this way could pretty much ignore the actual structure needed. Changes to the source would also need to be done for subdirectories. If a album folder clicking the album would load it into winamp, but clicking a non-music directory would simply enter that directory so you can see its subdirectories.

Here's my xml file. I have no idea why its cuttin off first letters.

Code:

<artworkinfo>
    <albuminfo>
        <artLocation>cdimage.jpg</artLocation>
        <trackName>enny Williams</trackName>
        <artist />
    </albuminfo>
    <albuminfo>
        <artLocation>cdimage.jpg</artLocation>
        <trackName>tar Wars EPIII OST</trackName>
        <artist />
    </albuminfo>
    <albuminfo>
        <artLocation>cdimage.jpg</artLocation>
        <trackName>iller Kuts from Core</trackName>
        <artist />
    </albuminfo>

other than that good stuff the swf takes ALOT of CPU cycles.. even on my amd 2800. Something's gotta be done about that.