[In v1.9] Music playback

[Teddyboy]

I just stumbled on MMBrowser in the MyMovies forum. I currently use MyMovies through windows media center. All movies either play through total media theater for blu-ray or windows media player. I have stripped down the MCE interface to only display MyMovies and music. All my CDs are ripped into MP3 format and are played through windows media player. I’d like to see a section similar to what MCE has for music.

[Pauven]

Hey Teddyboy,

Music playback is something I have considered, but I wasn't sure if there was a user demand for this. A long-long time ago I used to play music with WMC, but have since migrated to non-TV based streaming solutions like Sonos.

I remember in WMC that there was an artwork slideshow/coverwall of album covers, right? I also remember with programs like WinAmp some very nice animations that would play.

Do you have any thoughts on how this functionality would behave in MM Browser?

Any other users out there interested in music playback?

Paul

[modenwalder]

Just saw this and you can add my name to the interested list. I used WMC for music ripped to the HTPC which is running through my AVR and therefore my full sound system. I do miss that.

[Teddyboy]

Hey Teddyboy,

Music playback is something I have considered, but I wasn't sure if there was a user demand for this. A long-long time ago I used to play music with WMC, but have since migrated to non-TV based streaming solutions like Sonos.

I remember in WMC that there was an artwork slideshow/coverwall of album covers, right? I also remember with programs like WinAmp some very nice animations that would play.

Do you have any thoughts on how this functionality would behave in MM Browser?

Any other users out there interested in music playback?

Paul

Hi Paul,
I like the way the music was originally displayed. The default was by album cover, and when you played a track. You could allow display genre, artist, etc. The background would fill with album covers from my collection and slowly scroll foreground would alternate btween the album cover and track information switching sides, I’ve attached some screenshots that I found on the net.

[lovehtpc]

Music playback would be great! I know with spotify, pandora, etc, having huge music libraries may be a thing of the past, but many of us still have thousands of albums on our home networks.

I remember how many comments i used to get with the WMC album art background scrolling through. That was a really nice feature MS included.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uizd5Z ... u.be&t=21s

[Pauven]

I've added music playback to the roadmap.

I'm anticipating this will be implemented in two phases: Phase 1 is basic music playback, but no background animations. In a later version, Phase 2 would add background animations.

I did a quick check of a few mp3's that I have, and it appears that many have the artwork embedded inside of them. That helps.

Playing back a MP3 file is super easy. The hard part is creating a nice GUI, and handling various playback strategies like playlists and queues, plus creating animations.

Paul

[Pauven]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to share that Music playback coding is in progress, and will be included in v1.9.

I'm currently listening to music in MM Browser while I code MM Browser. Mind trip.

There's a lot of coding yet to go...

Paul

[Pauven]

It's been a productive week, but still a long way to go. Here's a look at the progress:

MM Browser Music 3 Rows.jpg (663.49 KiB) Viewed 8944 times

[Pauven]

Today's the day, v1.9 is available. And so is the Music Library.

MM Browser v1.9 Music Library Instructions:

Only MP3, WAV and WMA audio files are supported in v1.9. If you want support for other formats, please let us know.

Your music files should be organized as \<MUSIC FOLDER>\<ALBUM ARTIST>\<ALBUM>\<SONGS>

C:\Music\Aerosmith\Big Ones\Walk on Water.mp3
C:\Music\Aerosmith\Big Ones\Crazy.mp3
C:\Music\Nirvana\Best of Nirvana\01 - Smells Like Teen Spirit.mp3
C:\Music\Various Artists\MTV Unplugged Collection 1\Paul Simon - Graceland.mp3
C:\Music\Various Artists\MTV Unplugged Collection 1\R.E.M. - Half a World Away.mp3

For best results, compilation CD's should have their ALBUM ARTIST tag set to 'Various Artists', 'Soundtrack', or whatever is appropriate for each CD.

v1.9 cannot read embedded artwork, so all album cover artwork should be stored as 'folder.jpg' in each <ALBUM> directory. For best results, we recommend artwork that is at least 300 pixels for best clarity. Anything larger than 500 pixels will not improve quality, and will result in slower performance to load larger files.

Enjoy!
Paul

[Teddyboy]

Wow! I’ve been away for a while. I was actually disappointed with the state of MyMovies. Thank you very much for incorporating the music feature. It’s a good start. It looks like it’s pretty much plug and play for me. I don’t do anything special with my music folders. I just rip them to mp3 format through windows media player, and I let the player add the artwork, titles, artist etc. Now I need to work on my movie server and replace its aging motherboard and hardrives.