natedawgg

from everything that i have read about coverflow, the .itc file is what makes it fast. not actually the file itself but the fact that itunes doesn't have to extract the image from the music file before displaying. essentially i am going to have to do the same thing for speed reasons. i will have to have a separate file/location for the images to let the app quickly find the images and display them. The good thing about the coverflow component that i am using is that it will cache the images so that it is not having to run out to your drive everytime that you switch images. another thing that i like is the fact that it only renders the picture when there is no movement. as soon as you start an animation, the 3d engine reduces the amount of rendering to almost zero until the image comes to resting position. all in all it is pretty neat and quick.



yeah that is one of the options that i am considering, however i am trying to keep the app portable. there are plenty of applescripts and such that will go out and grab the artwork, but what about windows? now dont misunderstand me, i am building my project primarly for everybody in this forum, so if it came down to it i would use those and make the app nearly osx only. but it would be nice to use the app on any os you choose.


i agree itunes is really killing me here. i think that i am leaning towards what NBB is doing, in that he is just pointing to a folder with music in it and going from there. I think i may do the same thing. im thinking of just having the user point to their music folder and then my app will traverse the folder and sub folders, looking for music and artwork, and then build out my own xml file to speed the process of finding a particular song/album/artist. i will make my itcdecoder a seperate app that the user can use if they don't want to redownload their artwork. it will be up to the user to place the correct album art inside the album folder.

either way there will be some user involvement but i guess when you think about it, even with iTunes there is user involvement if you want album art so i am just not going to kill myself trying. if someone, someday comes up with a better solution i will be more than happy to try it out.

thank you everybody for your input and suggestions.

NeonDev

ummm. NBB doesn't do that. it uses the itunes.xml exclusively. the reason NBB can display album art that is not embedded is because I use leopards quicklook framework that knows how to associate itc files with their respective albums.

I think it would be sad to see your FE become mac only over a rather trivial issue. Im sure there are 3rd party apps for windows users to embed their art somehow.

do you ever plan on supporting linux since adobe has said it is porting AIR to linux? I know there is no itunes for linux however...

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Bugbyte

There must be. Plus, your point about Linux is well taken. For this to be a cross-platform app, it would be a shame to unnecessarily base it on a different app that isn't available on that platform!

Make sure you put lots of error handling in there so it runs on Linux!

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natedawgg

sorry about that, i guess i misunderstood a previous post.


Yeah i agree. the whole purpose of this project to be built in AIR was for the whole cross platform. i just been to busy getting the app to work in one os before i can start searching for apps to streamline the process in another os.
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i havent given it a whole lot of thought, mainly because i don't have a linux box (could be quickly fixed with bootcamp). my plan is to make sure that the app works well in mac, then test in win and then linux (sorry linux fans). but yeah i will try to support it.



this is true. this is why i am starting to lean towards having my app just look into a folder and build a list from whats inside. if the album art is in the album's folder then everything should work just fine, without iTunes. my secondary app will only be needed by users that don't feel like re-downloading all their artwork.


done and done!

NeonDev

so I'm thinking that maybe it would be a good idea for you to simply have your app traverse a folder hierarchy since that seems to support not only itunes structure but also those of win/linux based media players. that way your app isn't dependent on itunes.xml or any other itunes file. Its prolly not terribly difficult either.

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natedawgg

yeah that is exactly what i am going to do. AIR makes it really easy to traverse a folder and all of its sub folders. in fact that is what i am already doing with my album art app. what i am going to do is traverse the folders and while i am doing that i will build my own xml to map out the artist/albums/songs/album art/etc. this way i can get away from iTune's horribly formatted xml file. this will actually give me nice performance boosts since i wont be having to make ridiculously long e4x queries to find a given song. as you have pointed out earlier, this will also allow me not have to do a import (what AMP had to do) to add new music.

natedawgg

oh and here is a pic of the new cover flow up and running

Attached Images

 

natedawgg

here we are everybody, i have here a stable version of my new front end for you guys to try out. this is a near complete version, meaning, all the audio functions should work, but there are still some features that are not complete with the rest of the app.

with this build, i have officially given itunes the boot. my app no longer relies on itunes to get its info. when you first install the app it will ask you for the location of your music folder and it will build out a xml file accordingly. one note on that, i built my app using a Artist/Album/Song music folder structure. this is how my app will look at your folder. Also if you want to use the cover flow function, you will need to make sure that inside of the album folder (along with the album's songs) you will have the cover art for that particular album. if you don't have the album art and you want to use the album art downloaded by itunes then my app will decode all the album art from itunes and will put it in a folder named "NASArt" in your documents folder. you can then use those images to copy them into the corresponding albums ( i know that this is kind of a pain, but there just is no other way to associate the images with the album).

in this release, the app will play mp3, m4a, aac. it will not play protected files. i have only done minor bug testing, so if you run across a bug please let me know.

i hope you guys enjoy!

pepsibobby

what are the system requirements? will it only run on leopard?

I download it, and it unzips to a .air file. Any ideas? what does it need to be?

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NeonDev

it means you need adobe air installed?

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natedawgg

sorry guys i forgot to mention that part. it will run on any os. you need to download and install adobe air from here http://get.adobe.com/air/?promoid=BUIGQ

it should be able to run on tiger or possibly even panther, i have only tested on leopard and windows xp.

ok here are the official sys req for air sorry for not posting earlier

Windows

* Intel® Pentium® 1GHz or faster processor
* Microsoft® Windows® 2000 with Service Pack 4; Windows XP with Service Pack 2; or Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise
* 512MB of RAM

Mac OS X

* PowerPC® G4 1GHz or faster processor or Intel Core™ Duo 1.83GHz or faster processor
* Mac OS X v10.4.910 or 10.5.1 (PowerPC); Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later, 10.5.1 (Intel)
* 512MB of RAM

For Adobe® AIR™ applications featuring full-screen video playback, the following hardware configurations are recommended:
Windows

* Intel Pentium 2GHz or faster processor
* Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4; Windows XP with Service Pack 2; or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise
* 512MB of RAM; 32MB of VRAM

Mac OS X

* PowerPC G4 1.8GHz or faster processor or Intel Core Duo 1.33GHz or faster processor
* Mac OS X v.10.4.9 or later or 10.5.1 (Intel or PowerPC; Intel processor required for H.264 video)
* 512MB of RAM; 32MB of VRAM

Joarek

Nothing happens when i try to select iTunes Music Library.xml file. Double click seems to do nothing nor hitting enter. Any sugestions?

NeonDev

choose your music folder instead

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natedawgg

yeah you have to choose the actual folder. my apologies for the confusion. originally i had it where you selected the xml file, later i made to use the actual music folder instead, and forgot to change the text at the top. sorry. that has already been fixed for the next release

Joarek

Ok