Hi,
first of all: Thanks a lot for this great piece of software. I got it
working on sidux which is Debian Sid, but with a mixture of package
installation and compilling, I finally got 0.3.5 working - the original
Debian package gave an unresolved pgm dependency error... I am using VDR
as PVR solution for several years, but due to some limitation with
Non-DVB-content, I think about using Elisa especially for MP3, DivX
(e.g. taken from a NAS) and YouTube playback.
Finally, here are some issues I got with Elisa 0.3.5
1) Problems with MP3s with APEv2 tags:
For tagging the MP3s, I use the windows tool MP3tag (www.mp3tag.de)
which I also got working yesterday with wine on linux. Among a lot of
features there is an option where I can tell what type of tags to write.
I previouly set it to ID3v1, ID3v2 and APEv2. The last one, APEv2,
caused Elisa to display some weird combination of numbers and destroyed
umlauts. After removing the APEv2 tags, it worked without problems. So
Elisa or one of the used components is not "compatible" with APEv2 tags.
2) No cover view from (embedded) jpegs
For getting the best "cover compatibility" on all hardware and software
players available, I stored covers in 2 ways.
- Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center look for a file called
folder.jpg oder Folder.jpg in the same directory as the MP3s. Looking
into coverindir_metadata.py, both names are not supported. Adding it to
the code in line 55 or renaming folder.jpg to cover.jpg did not work.
Furthermore, I don't want to include the same jpeg with different names
in the same folder - I would rather prefer this non-standardized M$ way.
- iTunes embeds the JPEGs directly into the MP3 file. I also did so with
MP3tag, but the covers are not being displayed.
Is the Album Art Plugin disabled at all? Amazon search often gives me
wrong results and the image quality is not the best (iTunes often gives
you 600x600px covers which I download with the iTunesVerifier and embed
manually). So I would prefer if Elisa looked for embedded or separated
jpegs before it searches the web - if it does the latter at all because
I might prefer rather a placeholder than a wrong cover.
3) Case sensitive sort order
Could you change the sort order e.g. of the artist list to a case
insensitive sort order? Having artists like "a-ha" on a very different
position than e.g. "A*Teens" is quite strange as a lot of people also
don't ever recall the correct spelling of some artists.
4) Navigating through a MP3 collection
If you have a collection with a lot of artists, scrolling through the
list is quite slow compared to the number of database entries -
especially if there are really several hundred artists. I see two
different ways accelerating this:
- Pressing the keys 1 to 9 to jump through the list with 5 jumping to
the middle of the list, 1 to the beginning and 9 to the last part of the
list/end.
- Jumping with an SMS style control using the numbered keys. Pressing
"2" will bring you to "2" on the first press, to "a" on the second
press, "b" on the third press and "c" on the fourth press etc.
- Some kind of search functionality using the SMS style control might be
the fastes way to find something. Although I am not a mobile phone
freak, an implementation of a search field might also help finding
videos in the YouTube plugin section.
5) No "working" sign when reading the database
As I have a big list e.g. of artists, selecting Audio/Artists causes
Elisa having a break when pressing the "ok" key. As a user, you don't
know if Elisa has reacted on pressing the key of if Elisa is busy
reading the database. So I would like to see the "working" sign before
anything is being read from the database.
I hope that you find any use of my feedback ;)
With kind regards
Joerg
