Hi All, I've noticed one or two postings on here from people wanting to using MClient to play flac files.
My main music repository is also in flac format. Playing individual tracks through the file browser is fine, but that's obviously a bit limiting if you want to play a whole album. I tried a slightly different tack to get around this. My music is organised by artist, with album title folders at the next level each containing a set of tracks (named "<track no.> - <track title>.flac" so they appear in the same order as the original album). I produced a simple bash script to create a playlist structure, mirroring the music structure with one folder per artist at the top level, each containing an m3u file for each title. The m3u files contain a complete list of tracks for the album, pointing back to the flac file in each case. This works really well. I can make the bash script available to anyone else who is interested. I have one or two thoughts arising from this relating to the file and m3u browsers, in particular some points around intuative use for my less technical girlfriend - interested to hear what others think / any suggestions: 1) It doesn't appear to be possible to default the file browser path to anything other than root, without entering the file browser at start-up. It would be useful to set the default path such that it shows the top level of the playlist structure. Even better, make it possible to create a dedicated menu entry where the user is only able to see what is under a specified top level path, (e.g. a Music menu option which displays the contents of /music/playlists) 2) I tend to find the method of navigating up the folder structure slightly unintuative (selecting ../ at the top of each folder navigates up, Back/Exit navigates back to the main menu, whereas within the MythTV screens, Back/Exit always takes you up one level). I can see the logic behind why it is the way it is and this comment is perhaps more about the way that I'm using the functionality, but even replacing ../ with [Up] or [Back] would make it easier to understand for the non-technical user. 3) It gets more confusing when you consider that Back/Exit takes you out of an m3u track listing, back to the file browser (effectively taking you back up a level from track to album), but pressing Back/Exit again takes you out to the main menu, rather than back up to the artist level. 4) When playing a track within m3u, the OSD panel shows the name of the m3u file rather than the track name - minor point, but displaying the track name would seem to be slightly more logical. 5) Another minor point - having the option to hide extensions within the file browser would also be quite useful - the only files within my structure are .m3u files, an extension which means nothing to someone who doesn't understand the internal workings. I accept that most of this arises from the way that I've chosen to use the functionality. So no critism implied by any of this - indeed the option to be able to do this at all is a bonus, since I set it up mainly as a cheap front end. -- Mark Smith - Surrey, UK http://www.chez-moi.org.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Mvpmc-users mailing list Mvpmc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mvpmc-users mvpmc wiki: http://mvpmc.wikispaces.com/
