Browse by Cover (Coverflow) - Updated 11/8/07

moahdib · 09-19-2007, 05:36 PM

Coverflow (moahdib's version)

3/17/08 - v5 : Version that has a scroller to the side of the list. Might be very buggy since it was heavily modified to fit the needs of my skin but you're all welcome to try it.
11/16/07 - v4: Yet another update to the scripts.. just download scripts.zip and update your files. This should have genre builder fixed.
11/13/07 - re-download the zip file (coverflow-moah v4.zip). Scripts and DLL were updated.
11/8/07 v4.0 (Finally...the real thing)

INSTRUCTIONS:
** The coverflow.html file might give you an error regarding AC_ActiveContent.js. If that happens try opening the swf directly in I.E. by right clicking on it and Open With Internet Explorer.
Pictures below also have some explanation of the layout and what the buttons do.

- Copy coverflow.swf and coverflow.ini to your skin folder.
- Copy coverflow folder to the skin folder.
- Edit coverflow.ini to your liking. ( if you are using builder-artist.exe, change genreswitch to "off", "on" for builder-genre.exe)
- Add exectbl.ini content to your skin exectbl.ini file.
- Run builder-artist.exe (if your albums are organized by artist name), or builder-genre.exe if they are organized in genre folders. (read below for more details). You will be asked to enter the path to your music the first time you run it. If you need to change it, edit builder.ini.
- Create your skin file by adding coverflow.swf.
- For a quick test after you build your files, open coverflow.html with your browser. If you get an error about AC_ActiveContent.js, open coverflow.swf directly in Internet Explorer ( Right click -> Open with Internet Explorer). You can browse through your collection as well as play mp3 files via flash internal mp3 player.
- Add these lines to your skin file:

L,0,0,0,0,,,,,,"RRSCREEN",
S,-400,-400,1,1,255,255,255,0,0,0,0,0,0,80,80,80,0,255,0,, 20,"Arial"

INI settings:

&reflection=on&
&background=bg40.jpg&
&albumartalpha=100&
&playlistalpha=100&
&flipdirection=off&
&flipspeed=12&
&genreswitch=on&

-reflection changing this to off will make the whole thing a lot faster bc it won't have the reflection image of the albums.
-background is the pic you want loaded when it loads. (in backgrounds folder)
-albumartalpha - transparency setting from 0-100 for the album art cover.
- playlistalpha- transparency for the playlist from 0-100.
- flip direction- off/on this will change the direction in which the playlist will turn when it closes back to the album art.
- flipspeed- anywhere from 0 to 100. Speed the album will flip over.
- genreswitch- on if you are using the builder-genre.exe and off if you use the builder-artist.exe. Mostly depended on how your music is organized in your folders.

Well its been a while and this is a HUGE update. Let me see if i can list the changes:

- Everything is integrated in the flash. Just embed it using the F label.
- Albums can be "flipped" (iphone style) to display the songs list.
- The songs list is scrollable just like in the iphone. Just drag it with your finger to move it. Clicking on a song will play the song and load the rest of the album. Dragging the list from left to right, takes you to the bottom of the list. Opposite will take you to the top.
- Pressing down on the top left button (Genre or Artist) for 3 seconds, will rebuild your xml's and reload the skin automatically.
- Settings can be set via coverflow.ini such as transparency and album reflection.
Turning reflection off and leaving transparency at 100% for album and playlist vastly improves performance for those with slower carPCs.
- Selectable background image.
-XML's and M3U are created in UNICODE, but reading mp3 tags from foreign language files will break the builder.
- The xml's can be created in two ways. Alphabetically or by Genre. For the genre builder to work correctly you will need to have your albums in genre folders. If you have them in genre folders, you can switch via top left button from Genre to Artist (2 sets of XML's will be created).
If they are organized only by artist name, only one set of xml's are built and you can't switch to GENRE list.
- Support for albums in mp3, wma and flac formats.
- Automatic registration of cddbcontrol.dll if not already done so.

If you have any special albums that doesn't display correctly such as those in Greek, Asian, Arabic, Russian languages, it is because those languages need to be embedded in flash directly. The only ones embedded at the moment is English, Greek, and Latin. I may acomodate special requests and build swf specifically to your language.

Few more things to keep in mind:
- The builder specifically searches for folder.jpg in your albums. In case your songs are in CD folders (CD1, CD2), put the folder.jpg in the directory above the music files. Or you will have two identical albums one with CD1 songs and another with CD2.
-xmlparser.exe is specifically for creating artist alphabetical xml's FROM the genre xml's. It is called automatically when you use builder-genre.exe
- You can open the swf directly in a browser window and play songs!!! Not much control over the playlsit tho. It will just play the song you click on then move on to next on the list. No playback controls either. I did this bc i wanted to run it on a personal webserver to play my music wherever I am.
- I recommend using Tag and Rename program to fix all your mp3 files. You can use it to create id3 tags and get albumart from amazon.com automatically.

Enjoy!

9/21/07
Forgot to include CDDBcontrol files for the builder to work. Download cddbcontrol.zip , unzip to road runner directory in a folder and run register.bat.
You only need to do this once.

9/20/07 (coverflow-moahv3.zip)
- builder has been updated to remove certain characters from album and artist tags. (< > / \ % $ # @ ^ & etc..). This was causing the app to stop working.
- "genre" buttons now has a slider with limitless # of buttons.
- genre.txt format has been changed.

Remove the old version and/or overwrite with this.

*** the coverflow2.swf is another version which has a toggle button for the genre menu to make more space for the album art.

9/19/07 (coverflow-moahv2.zip)

FYI Old thread is here:
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/rr-s...ts-here-9.html

Since it was in the wrong section and I've been updating this a LOT, i decided to start a new thread here.

There are several improvements in this version.

- No need for playlist m3u's in each album folder.
- Artist and album information is gathered by reading id3 tags. Make sure you have them set at least on the first mp3 file.
Characters such as /,\,<.>,? in the folder name and as well as in the id3 tags might "break" the app, so watch out for these.
- No need for loadlist.exe anymore. The load album call is done inside flash.
- All albumlist xml's are created automatically.
- Genre.txt, which has the button names in flash, is created automatically also.

Make sure all your album folders have a folder.jpg. In case of multiple CD's, place it in the main folder.

This is meant for playlists that are organized by genre in this format:
Asterisk indicates where your folder.jpg should be located.

C:\MUSIC\GENRE1\ALBUM1*\CD1
---------------------------\CD2
------------------\ALBUM2*
----------\GENRE2\ALBUM1*
-------------------\ALBUM2*

Copy skin files to your skin directory and the coverflow folder as well.
Make sure you rename or get rid of the older coverflow version if you have this installed.

In your exectbl.ini in the skin directory, put these lines:

"COVERFLOW","LOAD;coverflow_browser.skin"
"CVRFLOW_SELECT","CLEARLIST||!SELECT||AUDIO"

The builder.exe will scan your music path directory set in RR. It will ask for the subdirectory level your albums are located.
In the case above, its 3.

Once the scan is done, you will get a message. After this you can edit genre.txt to your liking.
genre1 is linked to albumlist1.xml and so on... if you don't want a specific genre in there just rename the xml to the corresponding number.

Add / replace menu.txt in FSR skin with this:

&sidebut11=LIST@COVERFLOW||VISEMBED@icons\list.png &

Double clicking on top of the album selected will load the album and take you to audio player screen.

That's all!

Download, read the instructions, install and enjoy.

Griff1 · 09-19-2007, 06:28 PM

Nice work,i'll try this as soon as i get the carpc up and running again.
Thanks for the effort.

EL CAMINO · 09-19-2007, 06:48 PM

seems that you really are making this possible thanks!!,but i think that including the tags info in the flash object, will cause mayor problems, a lot of people have tons of mp3, so if a tag or path name has those special characters, they will cause the very infamous issue, the album art not showing and breaking the library. thats why i didnt include that info in the old version, and also the generate_xml was not putting that info in the xml, dont get me wrong please, i'm very happy that a real fla guru is putting some work in this, one more thing why not keep using the old xml generator, it has a very good search function? it dosnt need a specific folder structure, if a folder has a "folder.jpg" will be added to the xml. the special characters can be fixed in the xml, i remeber having one generator with like 8 fixed characters. dont know if i uploaded or send it to someone.

moahdib · 09-19-2007, 07:07 PM

Hey el camino, yeah i hear you. i couldn't decompile your generate_xml.exe. Gave me an error.
I don't think the major problem in flash being slow are the tags. It is with loading all the art etc...
Splitting the albums by genre works much faster bc the xml is separated by genre.
I think I can tweak the fla to accept those characters, i just probably need to embed the font with those chars.
There was nothing wrong wtih your version of generate_xml.exe. I just wanted to be able to build all the multiple xml's and include artist and album tags within the flash.
Oh..and the old generate xml was creating both entries in the xml for an album with subfolder CD1 and CD2. I wanted to just be able to have one album and the directory list CD1 and CD2 instead of having two albums one being cd1 and another cd2.
Hopefully some ppl will try out this version and give me feedback on speed and functionality with different music structure.

JohnWPB · 09-19-2007, 07:33 PM

Will this work correctly, if you do not have your albums separated into genre folders?

90% of people I have seen post, and asked, have their music in this format:

MP3/Artist(*)
-------------\Album 1(*)
-------------\Album 2(*)
MP3/Artist 2(*)
-------------\Album 1(*)
-------------\Album 2(*)

The genre tag, is just that a tag, and there is really no need to have to sort your directories on the hard drive in order to accommodate it, any more that it wold be necessary to sort them on the hard drive based on the composer tag or any other tag.

moahdib · 09-19-2007, 10:31 PM

well the thing is you are only limited to your 16 favt artists or genre with this.
I'm sure most ppl listen to more than 16 artists at a time. To me makes more sense to organize it by genre.

davidp · 09-20-2007, 02:00 AM

very nice, this version is much more stable/easy to use than the version i was putting in my skin previously. also it shows all my cds unlike the last one. thanks a lot!!

david

JohnWPB · 09-20-2007, 04:02 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by moahdib

well the thing is you are only limited to your 16 favt artists or genre with this.
I'm sure most ppl listen to more than 16 artists at a time. To me makes more sense to organize it by genre.

So if I do organize my music by genre, it can only handle 16 genre's? What about progressive, Alternative, Rock, Punk Rock, Acid, Country, Latin, Electronic, Soundtracks, Vocal, Heavy Metal and the other 40 or so other standard Genre's?

This looks like a great plugin, don't get me wrong! It just seems that you are limiting it's full potential.

Griff1 · 09-20-2007, 04:46 AM

so what your saying john is you want 40 or more genre buttons stuck across the screen?
This is about album art and the genre buttons are a bonus but let's not over do it,maybe another slider for genre buttons.

moahdib · 09-20-2007, 04:46 AM

I already thought about that. I might just get my hands really dirty in flash and do some fancy menus instead of static buttons for adding as many genre's or artists as one might have.

Nomader · 09-20-2007, 05:19 AM

moahdib, since you r one of the few macromedia flash experts here..may i ask U..?
why is it that the vars in the coverflow fla do not handle foreign characters..i have greek text in my paths..and it is unable to process it..I use greek contents in vars fine (i have to compile them in my machine with greek regional settings..but they work fine)..

Naesstrom · 09-20-2007, 05:20 AM

Damned, I was really hoping that this version was going to work since the last one made my carpc die everytime I tried it...

was trying it out on my "bigpc" since I just wanted to try it out but I can't get the xml to work...
The music folder is just simply e:/Music and on this comp I just have the different albums inside that one. When I run the builder.exe I enter 1 since my albums is at lvl 1, after about 1 sec it boots up RR and when I press the List icon I just get undefined everywhere... I can see all the albums in the left side though but the xml file is just empty:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
    <artworkinfo>
    </artworkinfo>

gonna start checking all the tags to see if that's the problem...

davidp · 09-20-2007, 12:53 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Naesstrom

Damned, I was really hoping that this version was going to work since the last one made my carpc die everytime I tried it...

was trying it out on my "bigpc" since I just wanted to try it out but I can't get the xml to work...
The music folder is just simply e:/Music and on this comp I just have the different albums inside that one. When I run the builder.exe I enter 1 since my albums is at lvl 1, after about 1 sec it boots up RR and when I press the List icon I just get undefined everywhere... I can see all the albums in the left side though but the xml file is just empty:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
    <artworkinfo>
    </artworkinfo>

gonna start checking all the tags to see if that's the problem...

i think that might technically be level 2, e:\ is level 0, music\ is level 1, and the album folders would be level 2.
just a thought.

david

kbreeden · 09-20-2007, 04:04 PM

Subscribed.

JohnWPB · 09-20-2007, 06:01 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Griff1

so what your saying john is you want 40 or more genre buttons stuck across the screen?
This is about album art and the genre buttons are a bonus but let's not over do it,maybe another slider for genre buttons.

No,

thats not what I am saying at all.

The original version simply had the album art, and that was it. It worked well but was VERY CPU intensive, rendering it useless on most CarPC's, including my 2.4 Ghz CarPC. It was clean, simple, and had no genre buttons on it. Simply the album art, and a slider. Someone was working on a "JTT" row of buttons, so you could press "S" and it would jump to the artists beginning with S to scroll through. That was a great ide, as I have 900+ albums, and trying to scroll to the "S's" would take an eternity.

What I was saying, is that with the genre buttons, it limits what genre's you have, therefore making it "incomplete", and that it will not work with the standard Music/Album folder structure that most people use, unless you just want 16 artists to choose from the way it is now.

Quote: Originally Posted by Naesstrom

Damned, I was really hoping that this version was going to work since the last one made my carpc die everytime I tried it...
The music folder is just simply e:/Music and on this comp I just have the different albums inside that one.

This is also what I was saying, with the folder structure you have (and me as well as many others), this plugin will not work.

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