[mythtv-users] MythMusic - Is there a simple way to just tell it to play an album?

Mark Greenwood fatgerman at gmail.com
Fri Nov 2 21:35:02 UTC 2012


On Friday 02 Nov 2012 15:02:18 jedi wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 07:46:07PM +0000, Paul Harrison wrote:
> > On 02/11/12 17:46, Chris Lewis wrote:
> > >
> > >    Well I don't want to drag up old ground so I guess I'll just set
> > >    about making playlists for the albums.  I have to say it seems
> > >    counter intuitive though.
> > >
> > >    Chris
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >No I must be stupid.  If i create a play list for a whole album
> > >how do i tell mythmusic to just play it!
> > >
> > >Chris
> > >
> > 
> > You don't have to create playlists for every album that would be
> > silly. MythMusic has an active playlist or play queue you add tracks
> > to. You basically find the album you want to play or a track from it
> > and then add the tracks from the album to the active play list. You
> > can find the album by browsing through your music on the  Playlist
> > Editor - Tree or Gallery views or use the search view to find a
> > track from the album then use the Quick playlist -> Tracks from
> > Current Album option. If it's an album you play regularly you could
> > save the active playlist to a regular playlist or create a Smart
> > Playlist which would allow you to quickly add the album to the
> > active playlist later.
> > 
> > Once you begin to understand how it works it becomes easy find what
> > you want to play simply by browsing through the music tree and
> > adding or replacing the tracks on the active play list.
> 
>     There's nothing simple about taking something that used to be
> just selecting a single entity and turning that into an interface
> where you need to select n+1 child entities instead.
> 
>     There's nothing simple about creating a bunch of extra busy work.

That's taking it a bit far. From what I can tell, as the developer of an mpd frontend who did some serious research before starting out, there are two types of music player these days: One that demands you create and save a playlist before it will do *anything* (thus making it impossible to say 'I'll just listen to this album'), and one that keeps an 'active current playlist' that you just add stuff to and it plays it. Some players fall into the second category but hide that fact so you never see the word 'playlist' but that's basically how they work. Mythmusic falls squarely into the second category. The first category is dominated by the appalling pile of guff that is iTunes and I pray to whatever authority you hold dear that no Linux player ever goes down that street.

FWIW I don't like either the old or the new MythMusic. But this is entirely because (a) my IR remote is really rubbish and I have 15,000 albums and scrolling through them on any mouse-less interface will take longer than I have left to live and (b) the speakers on my TV are really, really awful :)

In fact as someone who has used a couple of hi-fi MP3 player boxes I heartily applaud both versions of the MythMusic interface as being head and shoulders above what several high-end audio manufacturers can offer. It's actually a very complicated job, creating a music player interface, even more so when you have to make it opreable with an IR remote. I'm not actually sure I could have remained sane if I'd tried to write it. I don't like it, but I do appreciate it. Keep up the good work.

Mark

> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list