[noumenon]

so, i just thought i'd share a few thoughts i had recently when using xbmc to listen to some music.

as it is now, when i'm surfing through the music library and i enter an artist folder (or whatever) and then back out into the genre view, the highlighted artist appears at the bottom of the page... even if it was in the middle of the page when i was hanging onto the right trigger. it would be nice if the artist/cursor was centered in the middle of the screen.

when using the playlist in shuffle mode, it would be pretty sweet if the screen would jump to the selection that is currently playing, instead of having to select "now playing" from the pop-up menu. (maybe you guys already thought of that and didn't like it)

also, when listing all songs by a particular artist in the library, it would be handy if the songs were organized by albums before track title (like itunes does). as it is, on my box the first track of each album appears together b/c all of my songs have track numbers in front of them.

with the new sounds in xbmc, the xbox is constantly putting out a sound signal or something. i have this big blue light on my reciever that turns on when dolby digital 5.1 is active and now when i am playing music that light briefly turns on between tracks and then back off. if i'm not listening to any audio, it is just on all the time, and well... it's kind of annoying.

also, i suggested this before and was told it wouldn't work very well, but... when viewing an artist folder in the library it would be totally freakin' sweet if it could be organized by album date rather than by name. (coda just doesn't look right at the top of my zep folder ) what if it just read the date on the first track in the album folder, rather than read info about the album itself? just a thought.

lastly, i often will just add my entire rock genre to the playlist and then shuffle through it. this amounts to about 4500 songs and xbmc goes through and puts up little album art icons for each one of them, which definately bogs down my box. also if i exit the playlist view and then come back again it starts doing it all over again. sometimes i think it even freezes my xbox (rather, i just don't know what else might be doing it) for a short period of time.

just some thoughts and suggestions i had, and i thought i'd just toss in my two cents. xbmc is definitely the highlight of my living room, and i greatly appreciate all the hard work you devs put into this thing.

keep on rockin' :kickass:

[jmarshall]

the library view has better view by additions (which sort by artist/album/track in that order if you sort by artist - just like itunes.)

yes, we're aware that it'd be nicer to have the selected list item centered - the code is supposed to do this (or originally did this) - i'll look into it when i get the chance.

year information is tricky as many albums contain tracks from different years (plus the album release date may well be different from the track's release date) and there is not enough metadata for this in most formats. not sure the best way to remedy this - thanks for the suggestion.

moving to where you are in the playlist while in shuffle mode is possible - itunes does this, and it's not too much of a pain in the arse.

finally, the large playlist issue is a problem - it shouldn't lock up your xbox if you are switching to playlist view. if you are switching to library view it will take a while as it has to redo the query. applying the thumbs doesn't take long at all (it used to take a long time until we added the thumb caching code) - it simply takes quite a long time to query a database for 4500 songs and format them up for display. there's a couple of "solutions" for this that have been investigated - basically caching the current view list to disk - which speed things up. not sure on whether this will be added or not - it needs further discussion.

cheers,
jonathan

[noumenon]

cool man, thanks for the reply. you've sated my curiosity.

[noumenon]

say, i just had another thought. this may be a skin issue... i'm not sure. as it is now, you can start to play a whole folder/genre/artist/whatever by highlighting it and pressing play on the remote. this isn't currently available via controller use only (best i can figure, anyway)... why not have that little control bar/pad thing come up when pressing start regardless of whether or not music is playing. that could then be used to activate the ad-hoc playlist feature.

in addition, it would be nice to have the selection on that control bar remembered between tracks. for example, right now if i start the ad-hoc playlist with the remote and then use the controller to bring up the control bar and hit next track, it then skips to the next track and moves the cursor over to the play button again... which makes skipping multiple tracks kind of a pain. obviously, it would be ideal if after the control bar is removed from the screen (hit back) and then brought back up the cursor position was not remembered.

i realize these are kind of nit picky minor gui details, but imho that is what makes xbmc so sweet, the amount of thought that went/goes into its functioning and user interface.

btw, what about the sound thing and xbmc outputting a sound signal all the time? just curious about that one.

[kraqh3d]

you can use enqueue as well on a an artist, genre, or album folder. the default mapping is zero on the remote, and (i think) y on the controller. enqueue is also available via the context menu.

the play button works a little differently than enqueue. play uses an adhoc playlist, thats deleted as soon as you hit play on something else. enqueue builds a true playlist.

the music play action is not mapped by default on the remote, but you can add it. the keymap.xml file controls what the buttons do in each window. you'll likely need to sacrafice something though. there are very few buttons on the controller.

and what do you mean by "the sound thing" at the end? if you're refering to the recently added navigation sounds, you can turn them off in settings.

[Bobbin007]

with the new sounds in xbmc, the xbox is constantly putting out a sound signal or something. i have this big blue light on my reciever that turns on when dolby digital 5.1 is active and now when i am playing music that light briefly turns on between tracks and then back off. if i'm not listening to any audio, it is just on all the time, and well... it's kind of annoying.

this has been corrected in latest cvs. gui sounds are now played with the same settings as music. you will notice this when you play with the "output stereo to all speakers" option in the audio settings. the big blue light should turn on/off when changing this setting.

greets

bobbin007

[noumenon]

kraqh3d - yeah, i know i could remap a button on the controller, but like you said, they are pretty much all used up. perhaps it isn't feasible to use the popup player controls, as apparently it is a dialogue window that is only displayed while something is playing. it just seemed to me that the popup controls might be something that could be utilized to start an adhoc playlist when only using a controller (what this is really all about is i just got myself a wireless controller and i'd like to do away with the remote entirely ). i don't know, i'm not a dev... just tossing ideas out there.

[kraqh3d]

in the library window, you can make the y button be "play", and use the context menu for queuing. it depends on what you use more often.

i'll also add "play folder" to the context menu when in library view so that it has access to use the ad-hoc playlists too.

[noumenon]

i'll also add "play folder" to the context menu when in library view so that it has access to use the ad-hoc playlists too.

that would be cool. and by cool, i mean totally sweet.

xbmc makes me pop like 16 boners.

real ultimate power