[mythtv] improvement to MythMusic RIP location

[Colin Guthrie]

WARNING: Big Email Alert!

I've not had the time to re-read this email as much as I would have 
liked, so apologies if I describe things unclearly at times!!


Isaac Richards wrote:

> I really don't understand how the current interface makes selecting a specific 
> album difficult.

I'm in "All my music" and I have random tracks, artists and such 
selected, when I come across an alubm I want to play on it's own.

To do this, I have to go all the way left to the root, untick "all my 
music", go back in, and scroll all the way to the album I want (which 
could take a while). and then select it.

Please correct me if I'm wrong and I've just not seen the commands to 
achieve this!! ;)


I sps you could say that I should have cleared my playlist first, but 
I've got some tunes playing in the background and I just kinda browsing 
and not really doing anything in particular and WHOOP! Yeah I've got to 
hear that album right now (probably Darkside of the Moon ;)).

I guess you could say that I should show the full tree on the playing 
screen and browse about that way but I may have started off casually 
making up a playlist or something and changed my mind.

I'm not complaining about what's there, I was just sympathising with 
someone else who finds it slightly lacking, and winding up to actually 
doing something about it!!

For what it's worth I've tried to do precisly what you ask, which was to 
provide some ideas on how to improve the current system:

How about combining the playlist selection and the player screens more 
seamlessly...
Effectivly set the "show enitre music tree" option as fixed ON.

Alter the split tree in the player such that when you go "far right" it 
grows to full size and fill the available width for a more attractive view.

Going left once from here will cause the list to split vertically as it 
does currently.

As we are expanding the "far right active play queue" to full width, the 
size bias on the split can be a little more even, perhaps 40/60??

The size bias on the split could follow the cursor? e.g. so if you are 
on the right pane (60%) and you move left one, the cursor moves across 
to the left and the size bias switches sides so it's now 60/40.  The 
actual screen switching would be the same as currently, with the bias 
followign the cursor.

Pressing the info button at any point would "popup" a little statistic 
about that entry, e.g. If it's an artist, how many tracks by that 
artist, total length, how many albums by that artist. etc. It could 
perhaps even bring up an album browser at this point? Back in the list, 
if the highlighted entry is an album then try and correlate the track 
metadata and files in the album's folder to bring up cover art etc. and 
perhaps a tracklisting with times or something maybe auto scrolling past 
slowly??

When on this information "popup", a hit of the play button could start a 
new active play queue with those entries in.

A "menu" key pressed at any time would give you a popup like the one 
that appears when pressing "i" on the "Active Play Queue" entry in the 
playlist editor as it stands currently. This would give you buttons to 
save the active play queue as a playlist, clear the active play queue etc.

The tree that appears here would have to include the CD/DVD drive and 
any saved playlists as these are only currently available through the 
playlist editor.


Allow fast switching of modes in this tree. e.g. from 
artist,splitartist,genres etc. Perhaps have them all available as 
different paths of the "All My Music" root node? I don't really know the 
memory implications of this? Probably not too much if the tree class can 
support nodes in mutliple locations, probably 4x if it can't! If it 
can't could it be impoved?? If not this way then definatly by a couple 
of key presses, e.g, "menu" -> popup -> first option is a select which 
alters which view you want -> enter takes you back into your tree, and 
if possible on the same element you were on before you switched views.

The ability to define on a per playlist basis, which layout to use use, 
e.g. splitartist, artist, genre etc.


Phew!



OK those are my suggestions for improving the current setup. Now for a 
small suggestion for a new feature.

* Regexp based auto playlists. The ability to define a playlist that can 
use all the different metadata components along with a regexp to match 
certain tracks. This could be automatically built at startup or when the 
"scan for new music" thing runs (e.g. on demand or after ripping a CD).

They would be shown slightly differently in the playlist tree (different 
icon?) and would not be editable (e.g. "d" does not delete).



I don't think any of these suggestions would be rocking the boat in any 
great fashion, in that the interface would remain much the same but just 
be polished slightly.

I don't think it would interfere too greatly with Thors stuff either as 
the GUI could be ported to the mfe player presumably???

The auto playlist may ask the question as to whether it should be client 
or server side, but nothing too complex I shouldn't think.


OK, this is a massive email, so thanks if you've read it all.


If these changes are agreed upon, then I will begin looking into it and 
perhaps recruiting some volounteers?

The other more novel ideas can also be developed in paralell I'm sure.

Cheers

Col.






-- 

+------------------------+
|     Colin Guthrie      |
+------------------------+
|   myth at colin.guthr.ie  |
| http://colin.guthr.ie/ |
+------------------------+