Talk:MythMusic

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New feature for v34: Play Now

I see several complaints below and elsewhere about usability. Would my new "Play Now" feature help you? Here is some documentation that is now added to the manual for the upcoming v34:

Play Now

Version:
34
Play Now was added in MythTV 34

Sometimes you care less about play lists and just want to play music now. The new Menu -> "Play Now" option of Playlist Editor is for you. Simply browse your collection by Album, Artist, whatever and select a song. It plays now! But wait, you wanted the whole album now? With the album name selected, hit Menu -> Play Now. All tracks below the selected node are queued and played in order.

You may leave your music browser open in Gallery View or Tree View to play any tracks at any time in this way. The Play Now menu option is also available in Search for Music.

Play Now still uses the working playlist (displayed below the browser in most themes), giving you an automated history of songs played. In fact, Play Now is identical to "Add Tracks" except that it immediately plays the added tracks. And "Replace Tracks" is identical to Play Now except that it removes all prior tracks. Therefore when the play history gets too long, simply Replace Tracks.

There is also a new "Prefer" toggle on the menu. This preference decides what happens when a single track is selected and which option appears first on the menu.

Play Now vs. Add Tracks Preference

The new Play Now adds tracks to the end of the list just like Add Tracks except that it immediately begins playing the new additions. Since checking a single track with the SELECT key can take only one of these actions, this "preference" can be toggled on the menu. The chosen preference for SELECTing single tracks also appears as the first option on the menu.

Prefer: Play Now Add Tracks
Optimized for: Playing tracks now Queuing more tracks for later
Menu options in order: Play Now, Add Tracks, Replace Tracks, Prefer Add Tracks Add Tracks, Play Now, Replace Tracks, Prefer Play Now
Checking one track: Adds track to the list and plays it now Adds track to the list
Shuffle Mode OFF unchanged
Repeat Mode OFF unchanged

Shuffle and Repeat modes are canceled for Play Now so that you get your selections played in order. You can reset your shuffle mode after Play Now or use Add Tracks to add to a shuffle.

Twitham1 (talk) 05:31, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Usability concerns

Ok, this may sound like a n00b question, but I have to complain about MythMusic's terrible interface for creating playlists and managing the music library. Although I am an experience user (as evidenced by my ability to install & configure MythTV in the first place) I have yet to figure out how to create a playlist!

So, I come to the wiki to 'RTFM' and what do I find? Instructions telling me to "setup the playlist as you normally would." I shouldn't have to point out the inadequacy of this documentation.

Rather than complain further I propose a deal: As I lack the necessary skill to modify the user interface on MythMusic, and there does not seem to be a competing plugin, I offer to write the documentation in a clear and concise manner -- if someone will just explain it to me first!

(The quote from 2007 doesn't exist in the manual today as it has been massively rewritten since then. The manual tells how to create the list and how to save it. Twitham1 (talk))


I totally agree. I guess people actually using their mythtv box for listening to music don't use MythMusic, as it is kind of nonintuitive. Personally I plan to change to amarok or something. This is also one (of many) reasons why I don't really recommend MythTV to any of my friends, only hardcore Linux hackers (yes I know, it's only a 0.20 release at the moment).

I too would like to contribute somehow - here's my first suggestion: Why is the key "O" (letter o) used for the "stop" action as default? It's really counter-intuitive when using a remote control, as "O" in LiveTV is used for program info...


Enough complaining - I like MythTV very much, and would like to thank all developers for their efforts ;)

--Judaz

(for me the I key is info in both and I just hit P to pause or ESCAPE to fully stop Twitham1 (talk))



I will third that opinion. The interface is absolutely wretched. It needs to be taken out, shot and buried. It probably made sense to the programmer from the point of view of writing code but from the user end it's horrible. Take a look at xbmc it's much better.

The best thing I like about mythtv is its DVR capabilities and the built-in video player. The plugins generally leave much to be desired.

Once xbmc is ported to linux, it may be better just use mythtv as a backend via the xbmc myth plugin.

(I find MythMusic easy to use but I am weird Twitham1 (talk))

Normalization

The article would benefit from providing information about what normalization MythMusic does / doesn't do, and what development plans exist around this. I intend to research and document this issue myself. If you would like to save me time, please add info/comments/links to articles here.... Bernard S. Jansen 07:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Remote Edit of MythMusic files

Mike, you added:

Thats it! now you can drag and drop album art to your mythmusic directory, or play the files remotely, or add and delete files all all streamed from your mythbox. 

I've personally had problems with MythMusic not properly dealing with changes that I've made from remote access. This includes keeping deleted files in the music list, and not changing genre and album info from id3 tags, etc. Is there another step to make this work? Bernard S. Jansen 01:58, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Bernard I haven't had any specific issues, I'll try and make some major changes to the file system and report back. I have a todo to look into the whole tagging and file organisation thing, but I dont tend to make a lot of changes to my library other than to add album art or remotely play. I think that this topic will need to be moved to its own page at some time, once it starts to fill. I have had problems with samba for instance such as audio stutter. --Mikec 20:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Building for AAC Support

At the moment, instructions for AAC support are missing. Unfortunantly, all is not plain saling for that that simply want to install faad2 from source. There is a little trick or two - check this post [[1]]. Eventually, it would be nice to put some comprehensive instructions on it here.

--Damien 13:28, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, it looks like one of the libraries needed for AAC has moved to faac - so I tried to download 1.25 and compile. As it turns out, some of the files are in DOS line neding ("\\r\\n") rather than unix line endings ("\\n"), so after some trawling, it looks like:

 * [[2]] ; (<<-- this and preceeding link is broken @Sep2009, anywhere else this can be found?) 

or

Run dos2unix on the following files:

 * bootstrap
 * configure.in
 * Makefile.am

OK, now, let's give this another go....