Help me love frodoplayer

shakes · 03-28-2005, 03:04 PM

Alright guys ... I'm finally trying to get out of the MediaCar comfort zone I've been in for the past year. I've made peace with the fact that MC is dead and am ready to move on.

I've been playing with FP this weekend trying to warm up to it. So far there's some things I'm loving, and some things I'm not. My hope is some of you old time FP users can give me some tips to make me love FP more than I do MC.

- First off, the interface feels much more modern than MC ... and much more feature rich ... so kudos there.

- I don't really like interfacing with a DB to listen to music, I almost always listen to an album straight through (I'm not a top 40 kinda guy). So I've been using the Directory and Directory2 modes. These are cool but here are my issues:

If I'm listening to files in one directory, and i go to browse for something else, the list of files that are currently playing go away. If I change my mind and decide to keep listening, the only way to get back to where I was is to manually browse back to that folder. Am I missing something? To me it seems like a better option to have separate 'browse' and 'currently playing' modes.

I also think this would really help changing music while driving. The current boxes are so small it's hard to browse through the folders then double click them and stay safe at the same time. With a separate browse mode more screen real estate could be dedicated to displaying directory lists.
If the PC hibernates while in this mode all comes up just fine. But if I close frodoplayer and re-open it, it will return to playing the same song where it left off, and in the same mode, but the 'currently playing' list is blank. So once again I have to browse to the folder where the files that are playing exist.

These might not be a problem for some of you ... but it irks me to have blank space on the screen and not to have a list of what's playing (and what will be).

- Regarding OGG and M4A files ... I have installed the OGG and Quicktime alternatives. FP will play the files, but I get a WMP warning before each file stating "the contents of the file do not match the extension, playing the file could cause world wide destruction" ... I get that for every file, even when I click 'never ask me again' (thank you M$). Suggestions? (Other than convert to MP3)

- A dropdown or menu style list of modes would be helpful.

- I'd LOVE it if the items in selection lists were single clickable.

- When I have the music vis mode set to 'album art', and then switch to an MPEG, I have to manually change the VIS mode to see the video ...then when I go back to music I have to change it again. Any way around this?

- and along the lines of feature request ... It'd be great if the text lables on skin buttons were changeable via the skin files. So if one guy made a button labled 'radio' and I want to rename it to 'phone' I wouldn't have to rework his JPGs.

I think that's it for now. I'm mighty impressed with how feature rich this player is for being so 'new'.

welthqa · 03-28-2005, 03:10 PM

not sure if you know this, but Road Runner has picked up where Mediacar left off, so if you aren't ready to switch yet, you can check that out.

Pestilence · 03-28-2005, 03:12 PM

What he said exactly - there should be a play queue that new selections are added to or removed from, which should be completely independent from whatever you are browsing through to find music.

shakes · 03-28-2005, 03:28 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by welthqa

not sure if you know this, but Road Runner has picked up where Mediacar left off, so if you aren't ready to switch yet, you can check that out.

Yes I am aware ... I tried it and didn't love it. No offense to the developer meant. I've got a lotta love and respect for his efforts. Just not for me.

nappyjim · 03-28-2005, 09:17 PM

just wait for take 4 , the line starts around the corner, down the block, past the highschool, under the highway overpass, along the stream, and over the apalachians

shakes · 03-28-2005, 09:21 PM

yes but I'm willing to bet no one in that line has any more of an idea of what that entails than I do

TimmyM · 03-28-2005, 09:39 PM

Just curious, what didn't you like about Road Runner? I sadly removed MC this weekend, replacing it with RR 3-20-05.

shakes · 03-28-2005, 09:45 PM

ummm ... well the spinning logo and a few other things were a little too 'bling' for me.

and the size/proportion of some of the fonts and the way it displays the track names and such just didn't sit right with me. I know a lot of it is configurable but while I was messing with it it just didn't feel right ya know?

TimmyM · 03-28-2005, 10:26 PM

the spinning logo can be removed really easy, but yeah, I know, it's more then a frontend, it's the feel of it. Which could also be from the skin.

mhermann · 03-29-2005, 07:36 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by nappyjim

around the corner, down the block, past the highschool, under the highway overpass, along the stream, and over the apalachians

Nothing but net.

(reminded me of an old commerical)

shakes · 03-29-2005, 09:12 AM

another 'bug' people are probably aware of but just in case ...

in the directory 2 listing ... it's aparantly doing a case sensative ordering of the directories. All the capital letters are listed A-Z and then lowercase a-z ... this should be sorted case insensative.

jcdillin · 03-29-2005, 03:25 PM

Have you tried the browse by album art mode? thats what I use and it's a lot easier than using directory and directory 2

as far as some of your other complaints thats just this version which should be fixed in the next update