appending playlist/track using the knob

Posted by: borislav

appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 03:20

Please see wish 4 on my list of top 3 wishes for background.

The attached utility modifies the player executable to implement this functionality exactly as suggested in the above post: browse the tree and enter a playlist as usual. When the triangle is highlighted, pressing the knob will append this playlist after the current one. Pressing the bottom button replaces the current playlist as before. Appending individual tracks works the same way.

Installation and usage instructions are the same as with my earlier menusort hack (except this time I've zipped it to avoid download problems - uncompress before sending to the empeg). Note that knobappend is a lot more invasive than menusort and will only work on the version of the player I developed it on - 1.03 mk2 developer.

Before people ask how - it involved reading a lot of assembly code, taking many register dumps at various points of execution of the player via a kernel hack and, in the final stretch, entering machine code into a hex editor. All very messy stuff that I'm not looking forward to doing again when 2.0 comes out...

Anyway, enjoy.

Borislav

Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 03:52

WOW!

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (96GB Smoke)
Posted by: bonzi

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 04:30

I was more than impressed by menusort, now I am speechless!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green
Posted by: cwillenbrock

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 08:28

This is fantastic!

What a wonderful birthday present this is. How did you know?

--Chris Willenbrock
MK2 | 12GB | Queue Registration # 2 (really!)
Posted by: tfabris

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 09:31

I am totally speechless.

___________
Tony Fabris
Posted by: rob

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 10:20

Smart arse *grin*

We've been trying to come up with a consistant UI for doing this in 2.0 so maybe you won't have to go through it all over again, but in the meantime I think you just made a lot of friends!

Rob


Posted by: msaeger

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 13:11

this is great just what I wanted

thanks !

32Gig MK2 In 2001 VW Golf TDI
Posted by: Henno

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 15:29

I might even come to Italy to say thanks personally. Just as great as menusort

Henno
mk2 6 nr 6
Posted by: Taym

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 15:55

Borislav is from California, but If you do come to Italy I can offer you a drink somewhere...

Taym
_________________________
MK II BLUE/RED 12GB #923
Posted by: borislav

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 17:05

We've been trying to come up with a consistant UI for doing this in 2.0 so maybe you won't have to go through it all over again, but in the meantime I think you just made a lot of friends!

Woohooo! Now I'm happy.

Borislav


Posted by: borislav

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 17:11

I might even come to Italy to say thanks personally.

Yeah, as Taym said, I live in California (the Bay Area) but if you are coming here for any reason, let me know.

Borislav


Posted by: msaeger

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 17:13

if you guys are going to do it I would be great to make it the same except don't make the playlists dissapear after appending a track

I really like how borislav did it because I can either select or append without switching on and off anything just use the down arrow for select and the knob button for append

32Gig MK2 In 2001 VW Golf TDI
Posted by: Terminator

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 11/08/2001 23:57

This is really cool!! Too bad empeg didn't implement this functionality a long time ago.

Thx
Sean

Posted by: tonyc

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 12/08/2001 08:35

Awesome!

Let's see someone do that with a Neo 35!

-Tony
MkII #554
Posted by: crazymelki

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 12/08/2001 11:03

Thank you very mutch,

And after 32k Songs in the playlist I reached the limitation from the Empeg ;-).

Status today: I have now on my device about 3200 Songs and use about 20GB HDD Space.

Question: Is the limitation from the device 200GB = 32k Songs?

bye

CrazyMelki
Posted by: tfabris

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 12/08/2001 11:34

The number of songs is a different limitation from the size of the disk.

The size of the disk determines how many megabytes' worth of music you can store. The number of songs would be an internal database indexing limitation. The two would not necessarily have anything to do with each other.

I seem to recall that there was a database limitation somewhere, but I forget the exact parameters of that limitation. Anyone from empeg want to clarify?

___________
Tony Fabris
Posted by: fredq

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 12/08/2001 15:36

Sweet!!! This has been my biggest peeve. I appreciate the work you went through to get this to work.

-fred


Posted by: Henno

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 12/08/2001 15:44

Yeah, as Taym said, I live in California (the Bay Area)

[shame on]I should (could) have known[shame off]
But *if* you come to Italy, I'll say thanks personally

anyhow, kudoos

Henno
mk2 6 nr 6
Posted by: fredq

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 12/08/2001 15:51

I love it! I just downloaded it to my player and it works great!

-fred


Posted by: bootsy

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 12/08/2001 18:34

Wow... I think it's time to overcome my fear of non-empeg enhancements!

if only I had brought the serial cable to work...


Brian H. Johnson
MK2 36GB Blue
"Honey, you're wasting ammo..."
Posted by: muzza

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 12/08/2001 20:42

Sorry I can't clarify on the actual limit but I think Rob/Hugo/programmer-x said that they were rasing the limit in version 2. It has something to do with the scratch area on the disk I believe

Murray 06000047
ust increasing my post count
Posted by: Sheetzam

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 13/08/2001 06:54

My God! I believe you have earned the title King Hacker. Machine code and hex editor indeed! Long live the King!

Now if only you could figure out how to do that for a Mk. 1! Perhaps a hack to the ir hack?

Posted by: tms13

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 13/08/2001 06:59

Sheetzam wrote:

> Now if only you could figure out how to do that for a Mk. 1!

It takes a real hacker to write software that adds a knob to a Mk1...

--
Toby Speight
Posted by: drakino

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 13/08/2001 22:53

Excellent work. I'll definitly be installing this tomorrow when I get my serial cable back at work (since I somehow broke telnet). This is definitly bringing back the days of beta testing where we had a new feature quite often to admire and play with.

Posted by: jwickis

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 14/08/2001 17:08

Took me awhile to figure out what this was for, I didn't notice any difference at first, but this really cool. It was like OK push knob squint my eyes OK nothing abnormal nothing happened at all but wait. OK the current playlist didn't stop playing & jump to another, it's not what it did do so much as what it didn't.

#695 empeg-car Mk2/Green/Amber/Neon Red/Clear/Smoke-12Gig needs tuner,2.x, VR

"No buyers regret"
Posted by: borislav

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 16/08/2001 16:54

it's not what it did do so much as what it didn't.

Good thinking - that's more or less how it works. If the last button press was the knob it calls the routine for appending to a playlist rather than replacing it, then it doesn't call the normally invoked routines for going back to the first track in the playlist and resuming playing it from the start.

Borislav



Posted by: borislav

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 16/08/2001 17:03



This hack relies pretty heavily on having two buttons (bottom and knob) that normally do the same thing, so not sure at all how it'd work on the mk1...

Borislav

Posted by: rob

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 17/08/2001 00:54

We're considering implementing this functionality utilising press-and-hold of the bottom button (while in the Playlist menu). This will either perform an append immediately, or open a sub menu with Replace, Insert, and Append options.

Rob


Posted by: morrisdl

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 17/08/2001 05:33

Borislav -
SO COOL!! Thanks for sharing!

I hope empeg/SB has made you an alpha tester (or rewarded you in some other fashion), you have come up with some great enhancements for their product.


-Doug
Mk2-12G Blue (Now A/R Green)
Posted by: loren

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 17/08/2001 10:03

Hrm... my immediate reaction is to have it just append when you hold the button down, but the more i think about it the more i like the idea of having the menu to choose which action i'd want to take. I know there are times when i'd want to append and times when i'd rather it insert, so having both options there without any extra steps would definitely be a plus. Either way... you should DEFINITELY have this functionality available without the remote.


|| loren.cox ||
Posted by: tfabris

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 17/08/2001 10:27

Sounds like a great solution. Works for both the Mk1 and Mk2.

As long as it was context-sensitive (i.e., only when in the playlist menu), it would be perfect. I don't want to lose the info-screen toggle, as I use that one a lot.

This opens up other possibilities for extended button interface stuff. If the press-and-hold funtionality of other buttons was context-sensitive, you could do a lot more with the front-panel buttons.

Although, making the UI any more complex would be a bad thing, of course.

___________
Tony Fabris
Posted by: morrisdl

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 17/08/2001 10:53

[my 2 cents] I know many users like the 3 button down seq to get all songs. I would hope that this result would become no more difficult than 4-5 down buttons presses. [/my 2 cents]

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Doug
Mk2-12G Blue (Now A/R Green)
Posted by: tanstaafl.

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 18/08/2001 18:22

my immediate reaction is to have it just append when you hold the button down,

Hmmmm... that's funny. MY immediate reaction is just the opposite -- I would always want it to insert rather than append, because when the mood strikes me to re-order my playlist, I want it to happen now, not some indefinite time in the future when my current playlist has finished playing.

As you point out, best option is to bring up the sub-menu so we can choose. Even if the way you would choose is totally incorrect. (juuusst kidding...)

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
Posted by: loren

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 19/08/2001 12:05

Haha, actually, i agree with you 100%, i'd always rather it insert than append with just one click, but given the options that were given.... it struck me as easier to hold it than go through a menu. =]



|| loren.cox ||
Posted by: rmitz

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 20/08/2001 08:09

Default to menu, but I'd say that having the ultimate behaviour be configurable would be nice. I'd actually want "tap" to be append, and "hold" to be insert.

Fly me to the moon...
Posted by: rob

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 20/08/2001 08:44

We have decided to implement the following functionality in 2.0:

Press & Hold "Playlists" menu option (in main menu) : Open playlist menu at the last accessed position

Press & Hold any music selection within the Playlists menu : Open action menu "Insert, Append, Replace"

Press without hold functionality will not change. Note that this new functionality will work with the front panel buttons and the Rio branded remote control, but not with the Kenwood remote.

Rob


Posted by: peter

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 20/08/2001 10:14

Press & Hold any music selection within the Playlists menu : Open action menu "Insert, Append, Replace"

IWBNI this menu always opened with the current search-window insert mode selected...

Peter


Posted by: loren

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 20/08/2001 10:30

wounds good to me, especially being able to pop back to the last menu position.


|| loren.cox ||
Posted by: tfabris

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 20/08/2001 11:57

Cool !!!

___________
Tony Fabris
Posted by: borislav

Re: appending playlist/track using the knob - 22/08/2001 07:23

Very cool, indeed!

Borislav