Playlists and things...

ACX

Hi rst1, as you may know we are close to release the next 0.3-beta version, and many of the features you mentioned have already been introduced/fixed:

clear playlist button: DONE
save and load playlists: DONE
bigger playlists: this will kill your browser From my experience, loading more than 4k elements in the DOM results in a very sluggish performance and occasional browser hangs/crashes. My advice for an optimal performance is to use smaller playlists and use the load/save features
the ability to load a complete mountpoint: DONE
changeable behavior on double-click on a song: maybe in the future
multiroom w/ synced play: that's in our roadmap for the future
toggle autoplay on startup: if you shutdown your device while playing, MPD should autoplay the last track you were listening to
WIMP: we are going to add YouTube audio streams in the future...
something else that just browse folders: ? (currently the UI only browses folders...)

rst1

Hi ACX,

ACX wrote

bigger playlists: this will kill your browser From my experience, loading more than 4k elements in the DOM results in a very sluggish performance and occasional browser hangs/crashes. My advice for an optimal performance is to use smaller playlists and use the load/save features

Yes, I have noticed that the playlist tab only shows 4083 or so entries. Maybe something like limit playlists to ~5k and then load multiple playlists and not show the complete songlist in the playlist tab but the playlists as some kind of tree? I'm used to have random music playing from my complete collection when I'm too lazy to think about what I like to hear (and it helps me to discoverlong not heard music again)
Or, different idea, create something like a random button, which simply goes through your complete collection and picks randomly songs to play, without that playlist overhead?

ACX wrote

something else that just browse folders: ? (currently the UI only browses folders...)

so no "group or select by Artist/album/genre/Year/.." is planned then? (yes, I can use the search)

-Ralf

ACX

1) browse by file is now the default and the only enabled way. We are going to restore the browse by Artist/Album/Genre/Year in the 0.4 I think
2) true random play mode (without the need to load huge playlists): DONE

jotak

Hello there,

Just a thought about big playlists "killing" the browser. I think it's worth it to implement something for this issue, because you could run in similar issues if you want to browse by artist / album etc. Maybe some "lazy loading" list through javascript would be interesting, don't you think? Hiding and showing elements as soon as you scroll next to them...

ACX

jotak wroteHello there,

Just a thought about big playlists "killing" the browser. I think it's worth it to implement something for this issue, because you could run in similar issues if you want to browse by artist / album etc. Maybe some "lazy loading" list through javascript would be interesting, don't you think? Hiding and showing elements as soon as you scroll next to them...

Hi jotak, I've considered many solutions and none of them were perfect. I still have to try a last one that would allow to keep all the elements in the DOM but without loading all the structure, a sort of smart virtual list. Solutions like infinite loading and lazy loading don't work well with the scroll/centering feature.

jotak

Nice to see such fast answers

Thanks

I understand lazy loading can raise other issues... it's not an easy problem

By the way I wanted to share also some work I've done on browsing / playlist management ; I am not (yet?) using RuneAudio, I'm still on the older "Raspify" on top of which I've copied-pasted the Volumio Web-UI (tried the same with RuneUI, but it didn't work, I guess it's related to the changes in linux distro ; I'll upgrade my rasp.pi one day...) ; anyway feel free to checkout my work if you find it interesting, it should be quite easy to integrate in RuneUI, and it's on github (my own WebUI fork, which is itself based on your own work if I've understood everything : https://github.com/jotak/Volumio-WebUI/commits/act_library ) Cf. screenshot attached.

The work is still under progress, not yet functional.

The idea is to show a multi-pane filtering view to allow combined filters (by genre, artist and album) and multiple-selection filters.

Here again the performance hit of displaying very large DOM may happen for large music libraries (it's ok with my thousands of files).

Attachments

: Screenshot - raspify.jpg (158.21 KiB) Viewed 12161 times

ACX

I just took a quick look to your work and I see some interesting things that could be useful for the current RuneUI development. As you may know (I disclosed some details in this blog post some time ago), we almost completely rewrote the code base for the upcoming 0.3-beta, and I already solved most of the performance issues that affected RaspyFi's UI (and still affect Volumio's too, of course). Would you be interested in being involved in its development?

jotak

Just read this blog post, I didin't see it before ... it looks like a great step you completed! I'll have to install it.
And I'd be glad to contribute then

I see only a few commits on github / RuneUI , does it mean it's not the latest version there?

ACX

We are currently working on a separate repo because it has been a drastic rework, but the code will be published soon together with the 0.3-beta.

brotheroak

I've searched over forums and the wider internet for an answer to my simple playlist question, but not found it - I suspect the problem lies with me and that the answer is obvious, but I'll ask anyway...

Is there any way I can import playlist files (m3u or pls or whatever) in a way that RuneAudio will be able to play? Even if I need to manipulate them before adding them (e.g. to change filepaths), or treat them as 'albums' by adding them to the music directory (I play from a NAS). Then they can be added to the 'on the go' playlist in the same way as adding a complete album works at present.

I have a number of playlists (smart and otherwise) from iTunes and would like to be able to use them on RuneAudio.

I know there's mention of being able to save and load playlists in the new version, but I didn't know if that means you have to create a playlist in the GUI first, then save it, or if an existing playlist can be imported / copied.

I've just switched from Volumio, by the way - for some reason that was giving me regular dropouts playing from a NAS. Thought I'd give RuneAudio a try and so far no dropouts at all - great stuff. I'm hoping it will work easily with my HiFiBerry when it arrives....

jotak

If I remember well (can't try it right now), playlists are M3U files saved in /var/lib/mpd/playlists, so yes you should be able to get all your existing playlists without much work.

brotheroak

Thanks Jotak, appreciate that. Just tried it and it seemed to work when I added a .m3u (though not a .pls for some reason) - the playlist appeared at the top level of the browse window. A great start! Now I just have to figure out what path to use for the entries in the playlist (relative or absolute, windows "\" or linux "/", etc, etc. If anyone knows, I'd appreciate it, or when I get it to work (at the moment the playlist is listed, but selecting to play it adds nothing to the 'on the go' playlist) I'll post here, for completion.

brotheroak

Ok, I'm about to give up. I have stripped down to a basic m3u file with a single entry (and no extended m3u tags), and tried many different permutations of the directory path to the single mp3 file, and none of them work. The m3u filename appears in my browse page, but clicking on it to add to the playlist fails (despite a bubble saying "Test added"). Looking at the logfile always gives "db: no such directory"

The single mp3 file has no spaces in the filename, nor does any of the directory path (to remove another possibility of a problem). The mp3 file itself does appear in the browse window in the right place, and does play when the mp3 file is clicked on (just not when the playlist file is clicked on)

I read that the playlist entries need to be referenced relative to the music path (/mnt/MPD) which is why I tried that. My NAS area is called HDD

I've tried all of the following single line versions:

\mnt\MPD\HDD\Muse\Absolution\TimeIsRunningOut.mp3

/mnt/MPD/HDD/Muse/Absolution/TimeIsRunningOut.mp3

\HDD\Muse\Absolution\TimeIsRunningOut.mp3

/HDD/Muse/Absolution/TimeIsRunningOut.mp3

HDD\Muse\Absolution\TimeIsRunningOut.mp3

HDD/Muse/Absolution/TimeIsRunningOut.mp3

(as well as a few other variants, but I think one of the above should have worked!). What am I doing wrong?

jotak

Can you try this :
- put your simple m3u file in /var/lib/mpd/playlist
- I think path in this file should be the full filesystem path, linux-style ; for instance /mnt/MPD/HDD/Muse/Absolution/TimeIsRunningOut.mp3 (make sure this path exists indeed)

name this playlist for instance "test.m3u"

now run :

mpc clear
mpc load test
mpc play

Tell us if you get errors printed on the terminal, or if it works...

Good luck!

brotheroak

Thanks Jotak,

That works nicely from the command line. No terminal errors (just info line displayed) and the track plays.

Selecting the same playlist from the browse tab in the GUI still doesn't work though (bubble pops up saying "added to playlist test" but nothing in the playlist and nothing plays

I used a more complicated playlist (with extended info, multiple tracks, spaces in the filenames) and used the path you suggested. Again, from the command line it all got loaded correctly and played. From the GUI it didn't.

mickburke

And for the 'non linux guy' what's the easiest way to copy a .m3u from my PC to that folder on my Raspberry pi?

Thanks!!

janui

Hi mickburke,

mickburke wrote...And for the 'non linux guy' what's the easiest way to copy a .m3u from my PC to that folder on my Raspberry pi? ...

If you are using 0.5b you can switch samba on with read/write access in the Settings UI. Then you can open the file share on your PC, it should appear automatically in the network directory. Most important directories are mapped, then it is just copy and paste or drag and drop.
You should switch read/write access off when it is not needed.
janui