Dopamine

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

7 hours ago, dakn said:

Hi Raphaël,

It's been a long time since I've posted in here but have been keeping an eye on all your awesome progress - the new cloud screen is really cool and I like the added options for cover size and text placement. It's all looking very slick. Once you figure out resizeable columns it will be complete for me - but I know that issue is a thorn in your side, so I won't mention it!

 

A while back I mentioned about the 'date added' not appearing to be the same as it was in Zune and you mentioned it was just using the date that Dopamine adds albums to it's database, well I've done a few OS reinstalls recently which meant reinstalling Zune and setting up Groove and I have realised that they use the 'date created' info of the mp3, which was why it always appeared correct rather than just being A-Z as Dopamine is on a fresh install.

 

Is there any chance this could be changed if there are no objections?

If that's how it's done, I have no objections. I'll test it myself with Zune, and change in Dopamine accordingly.

Resizable columns is for soon  I've gone through my list of features for version 1.0 final. Resizable columns is one of the last remaining topics.

 

 

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

6 hours ago, Tejoenardo said:

Feature request : make the marked area below clickable and leads to the now playing screen 

I like. Will happen soon.

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

6 hours ago, dakn said:

To add to my reasoning for using date created, I have just been editing some album metadata after seeing albums with incorrect or missing bits of info. When I refresh the database in Dopamine these albums become the latest added albums even if they were old.

Even when using my own date, that behaviour is not ok. Thanks for reporting. I'll check it out.

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

9 hours ago, Raphaël G. said:

adds a new "Cloud" page, which displays your most played albums as an album art cloud.

 

What if you don't have MP3s, etc. with album art...why not make a version of the cloud that displays your most played songs for people who just have files and no albums?

[Ravensky]

6 minutes ago, Thomas the Tank Engine said:

 

What if you don't have MP3s, etc. with album art...why not make a version of the cloud that displays your most played songs for people who just have files and no albums?

most songs are part of an album though...

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

2 minutes ago, Ravensky said:

most songs are part of an album though...

I have no albums, just single files of almost 6000 songs, granted there are multiples of some songs.

[dakn]

3 hours ago, Thomas the Tank Engine said:

I have no albums, just single files of almost 6000 songs, granted there are multiples of some songs.

That sounds like a mess!

Surely you don't even need a player like Dopamine that is built to make your albums beautiful when you just have one long playlist?

Maybe you could define your own albums with those tracks or even bundle everything as one album?

[Setnom]

Feature request:

 

Windows Media Player has an option to sort our library by folder. Here is my example:

 

 

In my specific case, all my albums are sorted by directory -> artist -> album(s)

Take the band "30 Seconds to Mars" in the screenshot. It goes something like this:

 

E:\Music

|

------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars

     |

      ------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2002 - 30 Seconds to Mars

      ------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2005 - A Beautiful Lie

      ------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2009 - This Is War

      ------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2013 - LOVE LUST FAITH+DREAMS

 

With other albums, like soundtracks with multiple discs, it goes something like this:

 

E:\Music

|

------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST

     |

      ------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST\CD1

      ------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST\CD2

      ------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST\CD3

      ------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST\CD4

 

Is it possible for Dopamine to show our albums by folder? The way WMP does?

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

7 hours ago, Thomas the Tank Engine said:

 

What if you don't have MP3s, etc. with album art...why not make a version of the cloud that displays your most played songs for people who just have files and no albums?

I've played with the idea during the implementation of the cloud. But as it is cover-centric, I decided to make it for albums and not songs.

I'm interested to know how you organize your music in Dopamine, knowing that they're not part of an album and have no cover art. Feel free to send me one or more screenshots to illustrate. I'm asking this to check how I could improve the experience for people with your kind of music collection.

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

1 hour ago, Setnom said:

Feature request:

 

Windows Media Player has an option to sort our library by folder. Here is my example:

 

 

In my specific case, all my albums are sorted by directory -> artist -> album(s)

Take the band "30 Seconds to Mars" in the screenshot. It goes something like this:

 

E:\Music

|

------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars

     |

      ------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2002 - 30 Seconds to Mars

      ------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2005 - A Beautiful Lie

      ------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2009 - This Is War

      ------ E:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2013 - LOVE LUST FAITH+DREAMS

 

With other albums, like soundtracks with multiple discs, it goes something like this:

 

E:\Music

|

------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST

     |

      ------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST\CD1

      ------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST\CD2

      ------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST\CD3

      ------ E:\Music\1997 - Titanic OST\CD4

 

Is it possible for Dopamine to show our albums by folder? The way WMP does?

Does media player give you the option to choose the "depth" of the folders to group albums? Or how does that go?

[Setnom]

27 minutes ago, Raphaël G. said:

Does media player give you the option to choose the "depth" of the folders to group albums? Or how does that go?

How deep it goes, I don't know. Maybe it has no depth limit? If a folder exists, WMP can access it no matter what?

 

My library uses, at most, five "tiers". The fifth tier (optional) is needed when a specific album, by a specfic artist, has 2 discs. For example:

 

G:\Music\Pink Floyd\1995 - Pulse (Live)\CD 1\*.*

G:\Music\Pink Floyd\1995 - Pulse (Live)\CD 2\*.*

 

The way WMP works in "folder mode" is:

 

1st - G:\Music ("root" folder);

 

 

2nd - Upon double-click on the thumbnail, we arrive at the screenshot I posted earlier;

 

 

We double-click on the Thirty Seconds to Mars folder, and get:

 

3rd - G:\Music\Thirty Seconds to Mars

 

 

I need to point out if I had music files in any of these previous folders, WMP would show those files as well, not only the folders. But because all the songs are grouped by folder/album, they haven't shown up yet.

 

We then double click on the first folder/album and get:

 

4th - G:\Music\30 Seconds To Mars\2002 - 30 Seconds to Mars

 

 

And this is where the audio files are.

 

5th (optional) - If a certain album has more than one disc, I would sort them by creating other folders representing the disc number (for the Pink Floyd example above):

 

 

(and so on)

 

By the way, the contextual menu (upon right-click on the folder thumbnail) allows for all the songs, of all the albums, to be played.

 

 

Basically, that option adds all the music files in that directory (the songs in all the 30 Seconds to Mars's four albums) to the "now playing" section.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

ah I understand now, @Setnom is asking for Directory View. I 2nd this request  I do have some folders with mixed music and would like a view like that. I use that view on my phone music app all the time

[accuratecopy]

Hello!

 

I love the cloud thing, it's really nice! I never saw that before

 

I have a few problems with this release:

 

I have a problem with album artist tag, i just ripped a CD with 2 album artist in the tag and in Dopamine, it only show the first artist.

Another thing with this release is that tracks are long to start, around 20 seconds for some, i play files from my NAS. I hadn't this problem on older releases.

In the cloud, some covers are in bad quality.

[Neyht Member]

I think I can help you on the third point.  That depends on the cover that is pulled from the file.  If it's a low quality image it's going to be a resized blur.  You should be able to correct this with the built in tag editor.

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

4 hours ago, accuratecopy said:

Hello!

 

I love the cloud thing, it's really nice! I never saw that before

 

I have a few problems with this release:

 

I have a problem with album artist tag, i just ripped a CD with 2 album artist in the tag and in Dopamine, it only show the first artist.

Another thing with this release is that tracks are long to start, around 20 seconds for some, i play files from my NAS. I hadn't this problem on older releases.

In the cloud, some covers are in bad quality.

The album artist tag thing is a know issue. There is a long standing bug opened for that  Same goes for the Artist and Genre tags. Only the first Artist and Genre is seen by Dopamine. It'll get fixed eventually, but it requires some heavy internal changes. That's why I keep pushing it forward.

 

I logged a bug for the NAS thing. You're not the first to mention it. So I'll do some tests.

 

Can you check the quality of the cover on the now playing screen (in the showcase view)? It should be bad there too. If yes, the resolution is too small and you'll have to replace it by a over of better quality.

If no, then I made a mistake in the rendering of covers in the cloud view  

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

I'm working on resizable panes. Look at this:

 

Dopamine resizable panes on youtube

 

Still quite some work to do: remembering of the size and performance tweaks.

 

Edit: what you see in the video is 6 hours of work  First I tried the a default component of the .NET framework. Conclusion: it s*cks . Then I decided to create my own. I estimate I'll need at least another 6 hours to get it optimal. Good thing I'm motivated

[dakn]

Superb! 

[accuratecopy]

13 hours ago, Raphaël G. said:

The album artist tag thing is a know issue. There is a long standing bug opened for that  Same goes for the Artist and Genre tags. Only the first Artist and Genre is seen by Dopamine. It'll get fixed eventually, but it requires some heavy internal changes. That's why I keep pushing it forward.

 

I logged a bug for the NAS thing. You're not the first to mention it. So I'll do some tests.

 

Can you check the quality of the cover on the now playing screen (in the showcase view)? It should be bad there too. If yes, the resolution is too small and you'll have to replace it by a over of better quality.

If no, then I made a mistake in the rendering of covers in the cloud view  

Ah yeah i surely reported the bug a long time ago, i will have to wait for this one .

 

The NAS bug is really nasty, did you figure where the bug could be from?

 

For the covers, the quality is good on the now playing screen, it's only bad for little covers in the cloud. I have all my covers scanned from real covers of CDs and vinyls in my collection.

 

For the resizable panes, maybe you can add buttons or switch to hide panels, it could be nice.

 

 

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

22 minutes ago, accuratecopy said:

Ah yeah i surely reported the bug a long time ago, i will have to wait for this one .

 

The NAS bug is really nasty, did you figure where the bug could be from?

 

For the covers, the quality is good on the now playing screen, it's only bad for little covers in the cloud. I have all my covers scanned from real covers of CDs and vinyls in my collection.

 

For the resizable panes, maybe you can add buttons or switch to hide panels, it could be nice.

 

 

The NAS bug, is it for specific file types? Since which build does it occurs. I don't know yet what causes it. I changed the audio engine several times in the last few builds.

[accuratecopy]

40 minutes ago, Raphaël G. said:

The NAS bug, is it for specific file types? Since which build does it occurs. I don't know yet what causes it. I changed the audio engine several times in the last few builds.

I play mp3 320 kbps CBR files in Dopamine. Seems like it is the 626 build, i haven't this problem before.

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

5 hours ago, accuratecopy said:

I play mp3 320 kbps CBR files in Dopamine. Seems like it is the 626 build, i haven't this problem before.

From which build did you update to 626?

 

Edit: according to my tests, the problem starts occurring since build 620. The build before that (584) doesn't have the issue.

[accuratecopy]

I updated from build 622 as i test every preview build. But i don't remember having any problems with other builds. You're surely right, but i feel it a lot more with this build...

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

6 minutes ago, accuratecopy said:

I updated from build 622 as i test every preview build. But i don't remember having any problems with other builds. You're surely right, but i feel it a lot more with this build...

I'm going to try to release a fix tonight.

[accuratecopy]

Just now, Raphaël G. said:

I'm going to try to release a fix tonight.

You're the best! Have you received the FR translation file i sent you ?

[+Raphaël G. MVC]

1 minute ago, accuratecopy said:

You're the best! Have you received the FR translation file i sent you ?

Oh that's you! I didn't make the link with your Neowin identity  

I received it, thank you! It won't make it to tonight's release though, it is in the code for the build after that (I have to do some magic and roll back to the code of 626 to release the fix for tonight).