konttori | # 41 | 2007-03-31, 15:20 | Report

@Larry:
Thanks for the tip. I didn't even think that someone might even have mmc3 or 4. I've now added that support for future releases. And the idea to check MyDocs is very good! I added that as well. If you have other good ideas, keep them coming!

konttori | # 42 | 2007-04-01, 09:09 | Report

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa...0preview17.deb
New version focuses in support for non western languages, fixes a bug in shuffle mode and seems (subjectively) to retrieve more valid covers than previous versions.

EDIT: if you want to re-retrieve your covers, just delete the covers folder from your mmc.

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Last edited by konttori; 2007-04-01 at 09:12.

rok | # 43 | 2007-04-01, 10:52 | Report

I get an error and the program shuts down after scanning.

My SD cards are working properly.

konttori | # 44 | 2007-04-01, 11:41 | Report

Rok:

was it working properly on earlier version? Can you send me the mp3 that is the culprit? The albums id3 tags seem to be quite odd.

rok | # 45 | 2007-04-01, 12:47 | Report

Yes, with the previous version I had access to all of my mp3s.
How to detect the bad mp3? My SD card stores a lot of them.

Adam_n800 | # 46 | 2007-04-01, 13:37 | Report

I would love for this player to be successful like how the Canola app was successful.

If this takes off it could rival how to iphone works with album artwork.

To me the design of the player should be worked on. The album covers where almost decreased in quality and there are loads of bugs which crashed the app or I couldn't exit out or play the song.

This is constructive criticism not negative as it seems like a brilliant app to showcase the real potental for devices such as the N800.

It would be an idea to allow for the user to scroll through the albums instead of using the pointer.

konttori | # 47 | 2007-04-01, 13:51 | Report

Adam_n800:

thanks for the tips.
I didn't get the part about decreased quality of album covers.

I am aware of the bugs in playing songs. Sometimes the gstreamer calls just stall completely. I was hoping to fix this at the same time as I implement volume control.

Scrolling can be done using d-pad (arrows) as well as the finger scroll. I'd rather not add icons to go up / down, as there is no need to add unnecessary clutter to replicate dpad functionality.

rok:
I presume the problem is then in the handling of file names in the latest version. Latest version tried to support chinese songs better, but apparently it may have created regression problems. Can you send me an email to urho. konttori at gmail dot com so that I could send you a probable fix version?

Adam_n800 | # 48 | 2007-04-01, 17:45 | Report

Well most of my album covers I get myself as when the Windows Media player gets album artwork it can sometimes get the wrong one or low quality. So when I view the albums in the media player it seems to shrink the image to a point where it gets pixelated and the colour gets reduced with a dull coloured tint.

Is it programmed to resize the image, crop it or shrink it but still keep the dimentions the same.

Also I know you can scroll with the d pad but for example like the iphone you can flick your finger across the thumbnail it will scroll with an animation. Also like in Canola when you manover between sections there is a specific animation. I think if it was possible your media player could have some unique scrolling animation, im not saying copy Apple but stuff like that makes an app even better.

I wouldn't want arrows aswell, I agree but I think a scrolling animation which could also zoom into the album art while doin this would be helpful.

I'm so fustrated that we have to use open source and create our own apps rather than Nokia spending time and creating apps aswell as us.
What have they been doing with their time on this project?

Like the Canola media center type app should have been an idea Nokia did, but instead we are forced into doing it all ourselves.

konttori | # 49 | 2007-04-01, 19:42 | Report

Adam:
I actually agree on you that there should indeed be more focus from nokia on some of the apps. Although, at the same time, it seems that thay have been focusing on making the simplest possible apps with a single cordinated design guidlines. It works on most of the cases pretty well, but just doesn't compare too well against apples design.

Now, remember that Canola is nokia product. Just not an official one. And I think it's a great product, just not the one I needed.

At the same time, I feel compelled to also counter argue that it is great that nokia has decided to go for such on open approach. Make a platform and not force their apps to be the only ones. Leave room for innovation. Then, if the innovations are good, copy the idea, perfect it and launch a polished product in their own name.

About the animation, well, at the moment, it does support animation when you finger scroll, although it's not smooth. You just need to have ATM at least 21 albums for it to work. It seems that it may be that it's as smooth as it can get (although I'm hopefully wrong on this one). UK MP uses pygame for drawing the UI, which itself uses SDL to do the actual drawing on the screen. From what I've read, it seems that:
a) SDL isn't the fastest platform to be doing fullscreen updates.
b) SDL on maemo is only compiled and not assembler optimized (e.g. gp2x has optimized versions).

Anyway, I'm not ready to start optimizing UK MP yet. It needs to stabilize first. Also, after the player works otherwise well, I can then take a few days to add animation like eye candy.

About your covers,
UK MP retrieves all covers from the net by itself and relies on yahoos thumbnail images. I might add support to try to retrieve image from the mp3 itself, but I'm not sure if that's easy enough to do. That's why the quality is a bit lacking.

konttori | # 50 | 2007-04-02, 21:29 | Report

Preview 19 uploaded:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa...0preview19.deb

Includes icon and assorted bug fixes.