[mythtv] improvement to MythMusic RIP location

[Isaac Richards]

On Friday 10 December 2004 03:17 pm, Colin Guthrie wrote:
> 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 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 ;)).

Why would you be browsing the playlist if you had no intention of changing 
things in the first place?  If you _had_ thought about changing the current 
queue, why not just clear it to start off with?  It wouldn't be hard to add a 
keybinding to clear the current queue, though, or just use the play button 
there to indicate 'play now'.

> 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.

I like them separate.  Listening is a different task then selecting, to me.

> 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.

That's not consistant.

> 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??

I don't see how that'd help playback selection at all, but, a good idea..

> 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.

Don't see the point of that - getting to the active play queue item is fast 
enough.

> 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.

Fairly easily done.

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

Too complicated, UI wise.

>
> 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).

At one time, someone was working on sql-based rules for playlists, but never 
finished.  This wouldn't be very useable from a remote, though.

Isaac