emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes!

Posted by: tonyc

emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 18:38

After a couple weeks of hacking, here is another emphatic release. This MAJOR release includes a number of bug fixes which should help out with some of the problems of the initial releases. Horizontal scrolling speed should stabilize better, and overall performance should be better because I'm using a new ID3 tag library, and because the reading of lyrics is now in a background thread. This library also reduces the bloat of the executable from 2+ megs to under 400k. Hoo hah!

But who cares about bug fixes? Well how about some new features! emphatic isn't just a lyrics viewer anymore. With a few additions to your config.ini (see examples in the README) you can have *customizable* full-screen info modes, which can also have lyrics on them. Fields on the custom info screens can scroll, and the scroll behavior can be configured (again, see the README, it's kinda complex at first.) If you want other ID3v2 fields available for the custom info screens, let me know.

Also new in this release is the ability to use remote buttons for emphatic's menus. Again, read the README.

Anyway, there are probably still a bunch of bugs. The custom info mode is experimental, and the new ID3 tag library works for me, but hasn't been widely tested yet. Let me know how you fare with this version, and as always, report any bugs right here.

Go get it, folks!

http://empeg.webhop.net/

Posted by: mlord

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 18:39

Killer, dude!

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 18:57

Thanks... Custom info stuff wouldn't have been possible without your help on reverse-engineering hda3. That's how I'm getting the plays count, last played, running order position, running order length, etc. for the custom info modes.

One thing I mentioned in the README, but should probably mention here so everyone doesn't think it's a bug. emphatic now hides itself when you change the volume or use the front panel down button, so you can see what playlists you're selecting, etc. Tap the knob and emphatic will show itself again. Also, to switch between modes (horizontal -> vertivcal -> custom) you can hold down the knob for a second or so. If you don't have any custom info modes defined (in config.ini) then the "custom" mode won't be available.

Posted by: mcomb

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 19:13

<homer simpson voice>Mmmm, shiney. Drool.</homer simpson voice>

But your readme file on the site is out of date (it describes the previous version still).

-Mike

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 19:17

Thanks, fixed now. README inside the gz file should be correct though.

Posted by: Yang

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:21

Bug report:
Selected the custom mode (used your Track Info-like configuration provided in the README)

Firstly, the track title doesn't show up. Everything else seems to be there.
Second. If I go into the Player menu, and hit the knob button, the display goes back to the custom mode, but if I grab the screen using Jempeg, it's still in the menu. If I press the left/right buttons, I can see the selection in the menu move around, and the track doesn't change. Only once I hit the top or bottom buttons will the display go back to the Player..
Third, I'd like to request the time as a field (maybe down the road, have it customizable too)

This is it so far.. more as I find it.

Posted by: 753

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:27

Dramatic performance improment. Great job, yn0t_.
And I'm finally able to access the ID3v2 comment field.

Well, actually I can't get emphatic to give me the custom info mode option when trying with a simple example. Anything wrong with my syntax?

[emphatic]
custominfo1=vscroll "comment" medium 0 0 128 32 10 0 -1

However, the flexible way you implemented this feature looks promising.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:29

Firstly, the track title doesn't show up. Everything else seems to be there.

Ack! That's a bug. But the title WILL display. I think the bug you're hitting is that when searching for the [emphatic] section, the first line after the section header is ignored. So put a blank line after the section header and I *think* you'll be okay.
Second. If I go into the Player menu, and hit the knob button, the display goes back to the custom mode, but if I grab the screen using Jempeg, it's still in the menu. If I press the left/right buttons, I can see the selection in the menu move around, and the track doesn't change. Only once I hit the top or bottom buttons will the display go back to the Player..

I have no idea what you're saying here. I've re-read it 3 times and I can't figure out what problem you're experiencing.. I get the first part, up until "if I grab the screen using Jempeg." What is the problem here?
Third, I'd like to request the time as a field (maybe down the road, have it customizable too)

Thought about that myself, it'll be in the next release.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:30

Well, actually I can't get emphatic to give me the custom info mode option when trying with a simple example. Anything wrong with my syntax?

Yeah, your syntax is subject to the bug I described in my previous response to Yang's bug report.

Put a line in between the [emphatic] section header and the custominfo line and try again.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:31

Cool!

The horizontal scrolling is much better now. The big blank spaces look much better now as short breaks.

I've noticed a couple things tho... I can't seem to get to the hijack menu when emphatic is running. Now I'm wondering if 1.0 was like that too.

The executable is smaller, but it still uses just as much ram:
#0 51 2.4 3.7 2804 552 ? S 20:36 0:14 emphatic
#0 54 0.0 3.7 2804 552 ? S 20:36 0:00 emphatic
#0 55 0.5 3.7 2804 552 ? S 20:36 0:03 emphatic
#0 57 0.0 3.7 2804 552 ? S 20:36 0:00 emphatic

is that unlikely to change?

Stripping the binary brings it down under 200K.

Ok, I've only read the readme and haven't created any custom info modes, but I'm impressed. That's a lot of flexability!

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:38

I have no idea what you're saying here. I've re-read it 3 times and I can't figure out what problem you're experiencing.. I get the first part, up until "if I grab the screen using Jempeg."

I assume he's getting a screen grab. Does "Jempeg" (I assume jEmplode) grab from /dev/display or /proc/empeg_screen.raw? I assume the former, which would explain this. It's not a bug. That's how it works, if that's where it grabs from.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:41

I've noticed a couple things tho... I can't seem to get to the hijack menu when emphatic is running. Now I'm wondering if 1.0 was like that too.

Hijack limitation. Can't do anything about it. The very act of emphatic looking like it's in the background is some minor trickeration also. (Technically it's running in a 2-pixel area on the lower left, which you can sometimes see if the play/pause icon is displayed.) I'm just working with what Hijack gives me.

Not sure if there's any smart way to improve Hijack in this regard, but right now Mark is busy enough with Linux stuff, sleds, and tuners that I don't think he's thinking about this kind of stuff.

is that unlikely to change?

I don't think I'm doing anything particularly memory hoggish... I'll ship it without symbols next time so the executable is a little smaller, but I'm not sure where I can save on RAM. If anyone finds any obvious bloat in my code, they're more than welcome to fix it.

Posted by: 753

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:41

That's been it. Now on to a more creative custom info screen than a one-liner.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:43

Cool, let us know what you come up with.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:45

Something's wierd with 1.1 and the lyrics for One Week (I grabbed the .lrc off your ftp server).

Using the 2nd sample custom mode (from the readme), no lyrics show up until about 1:35 into the song. Then for the next 30 seconds or so, they go flying across the screen in a mad dash to catch up. A ps right then shows that the most any of the emphatic threads has used is 0:29s of CPU time since boot (been scrolling lyrics for about 10 min so I guess that seems normal).

It's done the same thing twice now out of four times, the other two times it's been pretty normal.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:47

Hmm... uh... what's the ReserveCache value in your config.ini? If you haven't set it, make sure it's in the neighborhood of 32 or 48.

Man, Animaniacs and now One Week.. You trying to murder my little program?

Posted by: Yang

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:55

Erg.. yea.. I meant Jemplode.. (All those 'emp' names are getting me confused lately..)

I mention it because if the menu is still active, left and right change the selection in the menu, and not do previous or next track. As the Emphatic screen is up, it looks like nothing is happening.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 20:58

From the FAQ, I'm not sure I understand ReserveCache, but I have it set for 45 (without that, ttsd, emphatic and empire all at once was too much).

It looks like it tells the player to use less RAM for caching, is that about it?

Yeah, it's the torture test.

I like to push stuff to the limits. With ttsd, I started with a couple words, then went for Hamlet's soliloquy... it chose "not to be".

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 21:02

Okay well if you need all that other stuff running, maybe ReserveCache=64 will be better for you? The behavior you're describing (emphatic gets WAY behind) sounds like the player is fighting with all your user apps for RAM. When that happens, things get REAL slow and I've seen the player actually complain about not being able to get memory when my ReserveCache was set real low. I'm not guaranteeing this will fix your problem, but it's worth a shot.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 21:06

I mention it because if the menu is still active, left and right change the selection in the menu, and not do previous or next track. As the Emphatic screen is up, it looks like nothing is happening.

Hmm.. You mean when the *emphatic* menu is active... Oh... Hmm. I'll look into that. I'm trying it on my player now and when the emphatic menu is active, the left, right, and bottom buttons aren't working... Is that what you mean? That's a bug, but it's easy enough to just close the emphatic menu and then when you hit the bottom button, emphatic will hide itself. Right?

Posted by: Yang

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 21:13

Not really. When the custom mode is active, and the bottom button is pressed, emphatic goes away and the menu comes up set on playlist.
If the knob is pressed, emphatic comes back up, but since you never leave the menu, left and right then navigate the menu behind the scenes. Until you hit the top button to get out of the menu, left and right won't change tracks.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 21:19

Ah. Just use the wheel to navigate the menu, it hides emphatic.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 21:25

Not really. When the custom mode is active, and the bottom button is pressed, emphatic goes away and the menu comes up set on playlist.

That part is a feature, not a bug. The idea is that if people want to pick playlists, emphatic needs to hide itself so they can see what they're doing.
If the knob is pressed, emphatic comes back up

So you want to use knob presses to select items in the menu instead of the down button? Umm.. That doesn't work.

You'll have to train your brain to use the down button. You can still use the knob to quickly rotate the playlists, but when you want to select one, you gotta use the down button.
but since you never leave the menu, left and right then navigate the menu behind the scenes. Until you hit the top button to get out of the menu, left and right won't change tracks.

To give you an idea of what I'm working with here, I can't tell what state the player's menu is in. If Mr. Hijack wants to expose some userland calls to tell me whether the menu is active or not, maybe I can do something about this.. He does have some screen-scraping of some sort built into Hijack, I just can't get at it.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:01

Okay well if you need all that other stuff running, maybe ReserveCache=64 will be better for you? The behavior you're describing (emphatic gets WAY behind) sounds like the player is fighting with all your user apps for RAM. When that happens, things get REAL slow
Yeah, that's what's happening to me. So what changed when going to 1.10? On the prior version of Emphatic, I didn't need to put any reservecache in, and it worked fine.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:23

Really? The changes I made in 1.10 were designed to make it perform better. Basically, the lyrics are read in a background thread instead of the main loop (including the button input) having to wait. That's where you'd see things getting really unresponsive in 1.01.

Without ReserveCache, even 1.01 slowed down on me. You should at least have 16 cache blocks reserved, that's hardly stealing any from the player.

Though there are two variables here, one is the new thread, the other is the change in the id3 library. I wonder if I should release a version of 1.10 with id3lib instead of libid3tag. Maybe the extra 2MB in executable bloat is worth it if id3lib is overall faster.

I'll do some more experiments on my own player and report the results... I'm running on a Mk2a with the extra 4mb of RAM though...

Posted by: Yang

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:26

So you want to use knob presses to select items in the menu instead of the down button?

Not really.. The answer I was looking for was: Only turn Emphatic back on when it's out of the menu.

Now that I've thought about it, I understand that Emphatic is only a overlay and shouldn't be thought of as a player mode.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:29

Basically, the lyrics are read in a background thread instead of the main loop (including the button input) having to wait.

Maybe you compromized a bit too generously and that thread's at too low of a priority.

I did make sure I wasn't actively using ttsd (it was 98.5% swapped out), not sending IR, not typing in my telnet session, I hadn't recently touched any buttons on the player, nor had I just booted the player. pretty close to standard conditions.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:47

Umm.. hmm. Do you happen to remember if the area where the lyrics usually live was blank when this happened? Like, was that area blocked off, and just blank for the first minute or two? That would tell me a little about what you guys are seeing...

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:49

I was using a custom info screen and it kept updating the time/total numbers, but the lyric scroller area (bottom) was blank.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:50

Oh, so this is only when custom info mode is on? Tony, did you also have custom info mode on?

Did you have a lot of info fields doing scrolling and what-not? Not like that should matter, but that does add to the number of things the program is doing...

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:55

Now that I've been playing with it for a bit, here's a couple observations.

On custominfo, that large lyrics seem to have the bottom half cropped off. Maybe it's because I need to specify a height? I didn't see specs in the readme for what the options to a "lyrics" line are so I'm going by observation.

Using this custominfo is interesting and produces some odd behavior, but then it's an odd config so I say the bug is that I shouldn't try to do this:
custominfo1=lyrics lyrics large 0 3
custominfo1=lyrics lyrics medium 16 3
custominfo1=lyrics lyrics small 26 -1

The readme lists this twice: -s n --space=n Set the number of pixels the program tries to put in-between lines of lyrics in horizontal mode
Defaults to 30 pixels

I'm interested to see what types of custominfo settings people come up with.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:58

Tony, did you also have custom info mode on?
Negative.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 22:59

Come to think of it, it's not CPU... when it happens (and I've noticed now that it's not just that song, but the Animaniacs one too) I can pause/unpause the music and it's quite responsive. I can even pop up emphatic's menu. If I just pick "On", it goes back to the custominfo screen without scrolling the lyrics. But instead, if I change the mode to horizontal, the lyrics scroll (over top the player's vis) immediately. I quickly changed back to custominfo and it scrolled right away (could'a been a coincidence, dunno).

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 23:01

On custominfo, that large lyrics seem to have the bottom half cropped off. Maybe it's because I need to specify a height? I didn't see specs in the readme for what the options to a "lyrics" line are so I'm going by observation.

Nah, that's a screwup. medium gets chopped too. I never tested medium or large lyrics in custom info mode.. As I said, it's an experimental feature.

custominfo1=lyrics lyrics large 0 3
custominfo1=lyrics lyrics medium 16 3
custominfo1=lyrics lyrics small 26 -1

Okay, DON'T do that. I didn't think anyone would want 3 copies of the lyrics on screen, so I didn't mention it... Just one lyrics field on custom info mode, please.

I know you're just trying to do kooky stuff to make it crash, and doing stuff like that, you're definitely going to succeed! I appreciate the effort, but something like that isn't something anyone's going to really want anyway...

But I will fix the medium and large lyrics thing for the next release.

I'll also fix the readme. Thanks.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 23:11

Okay can you two do me a favor... Download this binary and tell me if your experience is different. It's 1.10 with id3lib instead of id3tag. It's likely to have its own bugs because I threw it together in 15 seconds, but it should be good enough to ferret out these dramatic slowdown problems you guys say you're experiencing.

FWIW this version doesn't seem any faster for me, but I wasn't seeing slowdowns in the first place. Of course, I don't have six other things running (TheAmigo), and I have ReserveCache (tfabris) so those two things are different in my case.

Can you guys at least confirm that changing tracks very rapidly is faster in 1.10 versus 1.01? Not like perfect, but in 1.01, changing more than 2 or 3 tracks ahead brought things to an absolute crawl, and buttons became unresponsive, etc. I kinda focused on this since it was a real drawback of 1.01, but I don't want to do that at the expense of performance under normal conditions.

Posted by: mandiola

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 18/02/2003 23:28

I agree with you on that one. Track changing is MUCH better. Last version it would lag even trying to change to the next track... no problems on this one.

Im still hoping for a boucing ball even though it seems near impossible without having to code every word with a time stamp... but it would be cool. Good work by the way. And thank you and everyone else who are developing these fun software/hardware add-ins. You guys are the reason for keeping this empeg scene alive and so great.

-Greg

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 09:14

Okay, glad to hear at least one user is reporting better performance. FWIW 1.10 is a lot faster in reading the tags, both when changing tracks quickly and under "normal" conditions. The sandbox version I built last night with id3lib instead of libid3tag seems a lot slower for me in picking up the info.

For now I guess I'll wait for tfabris and TheAmigo to test the v1.10 release against the sandbox v1.10 with id3lib. Then I can hopefully rule out the id3 library as the cause of this supposed drop in performance in 1.10. Then we can start adding ReserveCache or stopping other programs to see if those are getting in the way somehow.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 10:31

Okay can you two do me a favor... Download this binary and tell me if your experience is different.
Yes. It performs better than the original 1.1 binary did without the reservecache. Still a little sluggish, but at least I'm not queueing up button presses 30 seconds in advance like I was before.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 10:35

By the way. Something is really screwy with the way these programs (ALL of them, not just emphatic) hook into the Hijack menu.

For instance, when I ran Emphatic, I was getting graphics blitter from Emptris (I could see the text "you cleared 0 lines" on the screen briefly), yet I hadn't selected Emptris from the Hijack menu. All I had done was select emphatic from the menu.

This sort of thing also happens with GPSapp. For instance, if I run GPSapp after Empacman, I sometimes get things were the keystrokes don't work and then I get the Empacman screen when I try to exit and re-run GPSapp.

Posted by: oliver

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 12:01

are you using the launcher to start the programs? or just using hijacks exec feature?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 12:13

IIRC this was a side effect of launcher.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 12:15

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 12:18

IIRC this was a side effect of launcher.
I am not using launcher. Just @DC EXEC commands in Hijack.

All Hijack-bound programs have always done this, even back when I was using Preinit. I just figured it was a bug in either the programs, or in Hijack.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 12:22

Okay, can you put some ReserveCache on (say, 32 or so) and let me know what the results are?
A reservecache of 16 makes it behave quite nicely. Snappy performance.

Posted by: oliver

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 12:27

Well, if you use the launcher, the programs won't eat up ram when they are not being used. I have pacman, sokoban, tetris, telnet server (stop, start) file viewer, and lyrics viewer all in the launcher, with setting in the config.ini, and the hijack exec starting only the launcher. I also don't have any reserve cache set, and everything but pacman works while music is playing perfectly.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 12:54

A reservecache of 16 makes it behave quite nicely. Snappy performance.

Snappy on both the id3lib and libid3tag versions? I'm curious because my id3lib performance is much worse than my libid3tag performance. I kinda would like to lean towards libid3tag because of less executable bloat, and the fact that it performs better for me, but if you're seeing something different, I'd like to figure it out.

Incidentally, how much did you torture-test 1.01? I'm curious as to why you wouldn't have seen crappy performance in 1.01 without any ReserveCache. When I ran with no ReserveCache on 1.01, it was a complete dog.

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 13:05

Yes. It performs better than the original 1.1 binary did without the reservecache. Still a little sluggish, but at least I'm not queueing up button presses 30 seconds in advance like I was before.

Okay, can you put some ReserveCache on (say, 32 or so) and let me know what the results are?

I think that the previous sluggishness was CPU bound in the single thread rather than memory bound. Even with ReserveCache at 64 I could get emphatic to queue a horrendously large number of keypresses, and rapid multiple track changes could crash emphatic. I haven't seen either of these issues with this release.

On bizarre thing that I have seen is the lyrics disappearing, but only in horizontal mode. Switch modes to vertical, and they come right back. Back to horizontal and they're gone again. Nothing less than 'Quit' and restarting (from a command line) fixed it. I can't remember exactly what I had done prior to this happening, but I had been playing with how emphatic now sits in the background, and also with the new long knob press mode change.

I'll see if I can narrow it down more.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 13:06

I'll give it a try when I get home tonight.

Overall, I've noticed that 1.1 seems to have a much better response time and not cause the FF problems that 1.0 did. I'll also see what it's like to leave reservecache set and not run all the other apps.

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 14:42

After Installing the new emphatic, when i run it it says 1.01. his is the newly untarred file i just downloaded and uploaded to my empeg.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 15:06

Two suggestions:

1) is the new one trying to install to a different directory? Maybe you have both installed and it's finding the old one first in your path.

2) If you have emphatic running (doesn't have to be active, just listed as an option in the Hijack menu, you can't overwrite the file with the new version. Select it from Hijack so it's active, then press the knob again to get emphatic's menu and select Quit. Now try uploading again.

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 15:43

THe problem before was just a dumb mistake lol but now that i have the new emphatic running, (the menu says its v1.10), It will not read any of my lyrics. When you run the program the player works normally and you can reach the emphatic menu, but the lyrics just won;t appear. Nothing particularly interesting appears on the telnet console either.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 15:47

Nothing particularly interesting appears on the telnet console either

Try starting emphatic with the -d (debug) option. I tried to cut down on the number of things I was printing in non-debug mode to avoid slowdowns when the serial port gets clogged with meaningless print statements. The -d output should give me *some* clue as to what's going on.

A couple sanity checks though...
1) The lyrics were available using v1.01?
2) You used lrc2sylt to add the lyrics? v1.01 actually allowed Lyrics3 tags, by accident... So if you used some Winamp plugin to add Lyrics3 tags, instead of my lrc2sylt utility, those files would show lyrics in 1.01, but not in 1.10, which uses a new ID3 library.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 15:48

On bizarre thing that I have seen is the lyrics disappearing, but only in horizontal mode. Switch modes to vertical, and they come right back. Back to horizontal and they're gone again. Nothing less than 'Quit' and restarting (from a command line) fixed it. I can't remember exactly what I had done prior to this happening, but I had been playing with how emphatic now sits in the background, and also with the new long knob press mode change.

Thanks for reporting this one, I'll try to reproduce and keep an eye on it. Haven't seen this exact behavior, but I'll look for it.

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 15:53

The problem must be that I used the winamp plugin. Does that mean i have to reenter all those lyrics again? Cause i spent like a week inputting lyrics for 700 songs. PS. The lyrics did work in 1.01

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 18:10

700 songs! Wow! I hope you plan on contributing those to the LRC database that some folks are developing! That would be sweet.

No, you don't have to re-enter them. But the problem with those plugins is they mangle your MP3's. You might not notice it, but the Lyrics3 tag they're using causes a lot of MP3 decoders to stutter or choke. I believe the empeg decoder is smart enough to skip over these tags without a problem (or, maybe more likely, the lyrics data is so short that it's not noticable) but in my case, I don't want to bother with them when there's a more proper specification (ID3v2) which guarantees the data is written to the MP3 in such a way that nothing gets mangled. This is especially important to ensure gapless playback on albums.

But back to the lecture at hand. I'm not sure what WinAMP plugin you used, but it should have an option to export the tag to LRC format. Once you have them exported, you need to run the lrc2sylt utility which is in the Windows ZIP file on my page, or if you're running Linux at home, the Linux version is included with emphatic. I guess you'd also want to remove the Lyrics3 tag from your MP3's at that point.

Sadly I didn't build multiple file support into it, it just does one file at a time. I wa hoping someone out there would be writing either a WinAMP plugin which writes proper lyrics tags, or a GUI-based utility that could do the same job of adding the LRC files to the MP3's as proper ID3 fields. I think Oliver said he's give a shot, but I haven't heard anything recently. So for now, my cheesy command-line program is the only game in town. The author of MP3 Tag Studio threatened to include ID3v2 lyrics support in one form or another, but don't hold your breath.

The other option is, of course, to stay with 1.01, or find the 1.10 binary with the old tag library which I built last night for testing purposes (I linked to it earlier in this thread.) I am not going to officially support that version, but it should work for you until you can convert your MP3's to the new format. The tag library in 1.01 was real slow in reading tags, so I'm ditching it in the future. But I don't want to leave you hanging out to dry, either.

This was all explained in the README file, incidentally, so please don't go cutting my car's brake line because you have to do something manual to get your MP3's to work with future versions of emphatic!

Posted by: mcomb

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 18:20

Just a suggestion, but why doesn't somebody write a Lyrics3 to SYLT converter? That way you could use the existing winamp plugins to write Lyrics3 tags to your mp3s and then run the converter on the whole batch of them that would rip out the Lyrics3 and replace it with SYLT? It would be simpler than going through the intermediate .lrc file export step and come in awfully handy right about now for fink08. Since id3lib appears to support both formats and lrc2sylt already does most of the work it should be pretty trivial to write.

-Mike

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 18:23

Edit: Bah, I was being an [censored]. I'll give it a shot.

Posted by: mcomb

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 19:02

Edit: Bah, I was being an [censored]. I'll give it a shot.

Hah! Actually I was trying to refer to anybody but you as I figured there was probably something better you could be doing and you already provided a functioning tool. Actually, I'd also like to rule myself out as I don't have anything running windows (to use winamp on) and I am feeling like a lazy ass today anyways ;-)

-Mike

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 19:52

Okay guys, I think I have whipped up something that will work for those of you that seem to already have a massive library of Lyrics3-tagged files. It ended up being easier than I thought, the id3_reader and id3_writer stuff scared me, but it turns out they have a simple API which converts Lyrics3 to SYLT, though they don't make it obvious what's happening underneath.

HOWEVER. By default, it's leaving the Lyrics3 tag in along with the proper ID3v2 SYLT frame. I have no way to remove just the Lyrics3 tag without also removing the ID3v1 tag.

What this means is, if you have MP3's which are tagged with ONLY ID3v1 fields, my attempts to remove the Lyrics3 tag after converting it to an ID3v2 SYLT frame will will end up with MP3's with no artist, title, etc. info.

So what I'm thinking I'll do is try to add some intelligence to it, so it does the following, all automatically:

1) reads the Lyrics3 tag
2) writes it to a SYLT frame in the ID3v2 tag
3) if you've got ID3v2 fields, it will remove the ID3v1 tag (removing the Lyrics3 tag also)
4) if you've only got ID3v1 fields, it will copy the info over to an ID3v2 tag, and then remove the ID3v1 tag (Lyrics3 tag go bye-bye)

I'm not sure I'll be able to do the last part. If I can't, I'm going to release it the way it is, meaning it will strip your Lyrics3 tag AND your v1 tag, and you'll be responsible for making sure you've got ID3v2 Artist, Title, etc. information. Most taggers do this nowadays.

Is this good for everyone? Also, is there ANY reason why I should consider leaving Lyrics3 tags in the MP3's?

Finally, I'm going to try to include a facility for exporting the synced lyrics (in whatever form they're in) to LRC format text files. This will hopefully allow people to share lyrics more easily, i.e. nobody will have an excuse that it's too hard to export their lyrics to a text file.

So, for all this effort, I would like you guys that supposedly have all these Lyrics3 MP3's to assure me that you'll share your LRC files with us once the database is up. Can I get some kind of assurance that you won't just disappear after I release this utility? I'm going to have to put at least another couple hours into this thing so it can do the right thing with the Lyrics3 tags and also output LRC files, the least you could do would be to share your efforts with the community.

Deal?

Edit: Oh, does anyone *NEED* this on the Linux version of lrc2sylt as well as the Windows one? The reason I ask is that the Windows version uses the C++ interface to id3lib, while the Linux version uses the C interface to id3lib. I'd essentially have to back-port the C++ code I'm writing for the Windows version to C just for the Linux version. Anyone really need that? Is ANYONE using the Linux version of lrc2sylt to begin with? Besides me...

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 20:05

You could code in a portion that takes all of that information and posts it to a web site, or emails it to someone, so that every one that uses the tool automatically contributes.

Evil!

Okay. You could make it an option, to make it easier for people to share.

Posted by: ricin

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 20:27

Well, with plans to have a backend for lrcdb.com, this woulud be possible. Good idea too, sure would help the database grow, and save a lot of typing/submitting for others.

Even just an option to dump the lyrics out into a .lrc file would be killer.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 20:30

Even just an option to dump the lyrics out into a .lrc file would be killer.

I can guarantee that part. Soon.

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 20:32

I'm using lrc2sylt on linux, very useful.

I've noticed that it doesn't complain if the mp3 isn't writeable though - it appears to complete succesfully. That nearly had me tearing my hair out the other night.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 20:41

I don't have an Lyric3 tags or any ID3v1. Planning for a bunch of .lrc swapping, I've been pondering the batch aspect of running lrc2sylt. I'm thinking I'll modify some perl progs I already have. I have code that builds a hash of all the mp3s indexed by filename with the path(s) to that file as an array. The idea being to run through a directory of a bunch of .lrc files, the a .mp3 by the same name and run your lrc2sylt on each file pair.

Dunno how much time I'm going to have, but if anyone else wants to start, I can send them the code I've got to use as a starter. I use it for fixing playlists, building a folder of links based on a playlist (for burning a CD that matches a playlist) and a few other things like that.

Posted by: newguy1

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 20:45

Boy I'm having problems figuring out how to get this installed.here is what it says when i install it....Installing emphatic...

C:\Documents and Settings\maistomeadows1\Desktop\emphatic-1.10>ftp -s:install-em
phatic.ftp xxxxxxxxxx
Connected to xxxxxxxxxx
220 Connected.
User (xxxxxxxxxxxx:(none)):
230 Login okay.
ftp> quote site rw
200 Okay.
ftp> cd /programs
250 "/programs" directory changed
ftp> bin
200 Okay.
ftp> put emphatic
200 Okay.
150 Opening data connection.
226 Okay.
ftp: 348756 bytes sent in 0.40Seconds 869.72Kbytes/sec.
ftp> quote site chmod 755 emphatic
200 Okay.
ftp> quote site ro
200 Okay.
ftp> quit
221 Happy Fishing.

C:\Documents and Settings\maistomeadows1\Desktop\emphatic-1.10>pause
Press any key to continue . . .
And here is what i have in my config ini file...
[hijack]
fake_tuner=1
;@EXEC_ONCE /programs/emphatic
[output]
notify=1
Did I miss something?

Posted by: Yang

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 21:37

Can you not read in the ID3v1 tags, remove them from the mp3, then readd them without the Lyrics3 tag?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 21:48

Umm why do you want ID3v1 tags? They suck.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 21:52

Maybe he, like me, has some files in his collection that were tagged with an older tag editor which didn't do V2, and he doesn't want to go retagging everything just to add lyrics.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 21:53

Sigh.

OK. It'll be an option.

Posted by: mandiola

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 22:05

Why not just run throught them with a program that add the id3v1 to id3v2.. i've seen a few program that will do it for you whole collection.

-Greg

Posted by: utna

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 22:27

Awesome! Can't wait to try it! Great work!!!

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 23:06

Awesome _yn0t. I tried the file like you said. The only problem i have is syncing with emplode while emphatic is an active thread. I get a media check failure I'm guessing it has somethin to do with emphatics daemon? Thanks again. For now i don't have to redo 700 lyrics over again.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 23:06

Don't run emphatic from the music partition, or kill it before you try to sync.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 23:25

All your prayers are answered, guys.

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=hackers_prog&Number=142453

Except artist/title/album in LRC files. Not sure if I even want that.

BTW please post lrctool related bugs/questions in that thread. Let's save this thread for emphatic.

Posted by: Yang

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 23:26

Actually I just thought it would be a more useful tool if it didn't do unrelated operations.

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 23:32

The only problem i have is syncing with emplode while emphatic is an active thread. I get a media check failure I'm guessing it has somethin to do with emphatics daemon? Thanks again. For now i don't have to redo 700 lyrics over again.

As Derrick said - quit emphatic first.

ynot - can you put this in Big Words(tm) somewhere prominent in the README? I have a feeling quite a few people will otherwise stumble on it.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 19/02/2003 23:33

ynot - can you put this in Big Words(tm) somewhere prominent in the README? I have a feeling quite a few people will otherwise stumble on it.

I'm not the only program that's subject to these problems, but yes, I will add that to the README and the web page for the next release.

Posted by: mlord

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 07:33

Did anyone ever figure out WHY this is even a problem?

I regularly remount ro/rw filesystems while running off of them, so we know Linux doesn't care. Something in the sequence used by "sync" must be different.

??

Posted by: peter

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 08:05

I regularly remount ro/rw filesystems while running off of them, so we know Linux doesn't care. Something in the sequence used by "sync" must be different.

Sync unmounts the filesystems in order to fsck them. It must do so, in order for the kernel to flush data about any files or directories that fsck ends up changing.

Peter

Posted by: mlord

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 08:34

Ahh, yes.. that was it (we all discussed this earlier, I'd just forgotten the outcome).

There actually should be no issue in fsck'ing a filesystem that is mounted RO, except that certain errors require a complete unmount afterwards to guarantee consistency with in-memory data structures.

Under most situations, this will not happen, but when it rarely does happen, we could just reboot the player afterwards instead of always requiring full unmounts.

Mmmm... I wonder if this can be done inside Hijack without confusing Emplode?

Posted by: mlord

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 08:36

How does the player handle fsck of the / partition? If errors are found, does it reboot afterwards to ensure consistency?

-ml

Posted by: peter

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 08:42

Under most situations, this will not happen, but when it rarely does happen, we could just reboot the player afterwards instead of always requiring full unmounts.

Mmmm... I wonder if this can be done inside Hijack without confusing Emplode?

Confusing Emplode is exactly the problem: during a sync, Emplode is in charge of deciding whether to reboot, not the player; but we decided that having Emplode notice certain errors and reboot the player wasn't worth the risk (and it lays a heavy responsibility on the authors of third-party synchronisers: before the unmount behaviour was added in March 2001, several testers had their entire music partition wiped when fsck updated the root directory while the kernel held stale data).

Peter

Posted by: peter

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 08:47

How does the player handle fsck of the / partition? If errors are found, does it reboot afterwards to ensure consistency?

The player never fscks the / partition. As far as a completely-stock Empeg is concerned, the root partition is only ever written to by writing an entire disk image over it at upgrade time. "Adventurous" users who write to it at other times and by other means are assumed to be clueful enough to bear the fsck responsibility themselves.

Peter

Posted by: tms13

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 08:49

In reply to:
Umm why do you want ID3v1 tags? They suck.

They do indeed, but it's a fact of life that some tools (eg. "tagmp3 move $pattern $file") don't read ID3v2...

Posted by: mlord

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 08:59

Okay, that narrows down the possible solutions somewhat.

The best approach I see now is to have Hijack create a "shadow" device that overlays the disk partitions solely for the purpose of launching executables.

So things that EXEC/EXEC_ONCE launches would be launched from the "shadow" device rather than the actual (in this case) music partitions. The shadow device really just maps things to disk blocks on the music partitions, but without having the actual executables "open" on the music partitions.

That way the unmount/remount will work fine from emplode even with third party apps running. The fsck shouldn't have any effect on those apps, unless it actually relocates the data segments of the executables themselves -- which should not happen, but if it does, the executables will eventually just crash in all probability. No big deal.

Third party apps may have to be more careful with files that they open on the fly --> if they keep files open after startup then this will prevent Emplode from unmounting partitions, but I don't think this is an issue for many of them. Most apps are only really active when selected from the Hijack menu, something that generally is not done while sync'ing. GPSapp may be an exception there.

??

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 09:29

Third party apps may have to be more careful with files that they open on the fly --> if they keep files open after startup then this will prevent Emplode from unmounting partitions, but I don't think this is an issue for many of them. Most apps are only really active when selected from the Hijack menu, something that generally is not done while sync'ing. GPSapp may be an exception there.

??

Both GPSapp and emphatic read files, and can keep running in the background. GPSapp shouldn't be an issue for the vast majority of users - syncs are generally AC only, GPSapp DC only. And GPSapp could conceivably read the route and then close the route file (don't know whether it does at the moment or not), pretty much eliminating any problem.

emphatic on the other hand may be an issue. If emphatic is running, then it will be opening a new file for read every time the track changes. I'm sure it's not insurmountable though. I wonder, is it possible to implement the shadow device such that you could reference generic disk entries though it? And then also pass /shadow as a working directory to such apps when run from EXEC/EXEC_ONCE. Then it'd be possible to make 3rd party apps reference every file they need to read relative to the shadow, ie open "drive0/fids/xxx" or "/shadow/drive0/fids/xxx"

I don't know if this is technically feasible, but implementing a shadow of the whole fs that would be read-only and not impede an unmount of the underlying partitions would be powerful.

Posted by: peter

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 09:43

If emphatic is running, then it will be opening a new file for read every time the track changes.

So will the player itself. That's why playback, and thus track changing, doesn't happen during sync

Peter

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 10:28

True enough. IIRC, emphatic deals with tracks changes by watching the notify thread, and if playback was halted during that moment when emphatic was loading the file, I doubt that emphatic would know - I think that it only watches the notify thread for timing purposes, and wouldn't catch the halt. That raises the question of how long emphatic would take to complete the read, and how long the sync code in the player is going to wait before attempting the umount. I'm hazarding a guess that the player is only going to wait until any current cache load terminates or completes, leading to a potential race hazard if a sync is initiated just as the track is changing. (Obscure and infrequent to be sure).

Maybe I'm wrong - maybe emphatic completes the read fast enough for this to never be an issue. How long would it have?

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 10:57

And GPSapp could conceivably read the route and then close the route file (don't know whether it does at the moment or not)

It gets closed. Not really any reason to keep it open.

Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 12:00

So will the player itself. That's why playback, and thus track changing, doesn't happen during sync

Can emphatic just watch the player app and close when the player app closes? Or maybe Hijack can close any executables running on the music partitions when the player app closes.

Posted by: mlord

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 12:08

It would be very difficult to do this quickly enough to satisfy Emplode.

Posted by: mcomb

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 12:10

It would be very difficult to do this quickly enough to satisfy Emplode.

Catch the umount request and don't return until killing all the apps and unmounting the partition? The player isn't going to start the fsck until after the drive is unmounted right?

-Mike

Posted by: mlord

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 12:11

I don't think a shadow on the whole would be a good idea -- if the fsck modifies the directories/metadata under us, we'll crash. We can get away with it for executables because (1) they're never launched during fsck activity, and they're mmap'd to specific disk blocks (I think), so once running there's no more access to the directory/metadata to page them in/out.

Cheers

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 12:28

I don't think a shadow on the whole would be a good idea
Aw, darn, and here I was hoping you'd come up with a quick easy solution for running programs from the music partition.

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 12:56

I'm not sure that Mark meant that the whole concept of shadowing was bad, I read his statements as meaning that 'shadowing the whole filesystem' wouldn't fly.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 14:03

Maybe he, like me, has some files in his collection that were tagged with an older tag editor which didn't do V2, and he doesn't want to go retagging everything just to add lyrics.

For Linux there are batch V1->V2 converters. Are Windows users that unlucky?

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 14:11

The apps could actually be given a chance to shut down if they were able to devote a thread but it might have too high a resource cost. Have a thread block in (an ioctl? some other system call?) forever or until an unmount request comes in and then die when the ioctl returns.

Doesn't help old applications, applications with no source, or whatever, but it does mean that the app could clean up instead of unilateral death from on high. Probably not worth it, though.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 14:27

For Linux there are batch V1->V2 converters. Are Windows users that unlucky?

I could have written V1->V2 stuff into LRCtool, I just wasn't sure it was that central to what it's supposed to do. It's a "swiss army knife" kind of utility, but the kitchen sink doesn't really fit in...

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 14:32

Well, my thought was really that one already existed. If not, I think I'll be shocked.

Posted by: johnmcd3

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 15:35

They do, of course, exist. Two popular examples: Mp3 Tag Studio and Tag&Rename.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 15:44

I tried MP3 tag studio, but couldn't get it to do what I want... seems like a rather simple request too and I've tried quite a number of taggers.

I've got a large collection of mp3s. Most all of them have no tags (neither v1 nor v2). I want to create v2 tags based on the file name being "Artist - Title.mp3" and not create v1 tags.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 16:22

I tried MP3 tag studio, but couldn't get it to do what I want... seems like a rather simple request too and I've tried quite a number of taggers.
What exactly did you want it to do?

I've got a large collection of mp3s. Most all of them have no tags (neither v1 nor v2). I want to create v2 tags based on the file name being "Artist - Title.mp3" and not create v1 tags.
What, just that? I know that MP3 Tag Studio can do this. If you need step by step instructions, I'm sure either me or someone else on this board can help you.

The only tricky part is the "not create V1 tags" step. I'm sure it could be done in Tag Studio (or you could choose to strip all V1 tags as a later step), but why would you want to? Tag Studio writes synched V1 and V2 tags by default, and that's a good thing. It's always good to have both (as long as they're synched), just in case you open your file in a player that's not V2-aware.

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 17:24

No, it's not. There still exist a good number of mp3 decoders that can choke on id3v1 tags, whereas id3v2 tags are explicitly engineered to be transparent to any mp3 decoder. Add to that the fact that it's easy for them to be unsynchronized (due to fixed-length buffers in id3v1) and it should be easy to see that you should never have id3v1 tags.

Continuing to support id3v1 only supports lousy software engineering.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 17:29

There still exist a good number of mp3 decoders that can choke on id3v1 tags
Huh? I've never seen a piece of software have any problems with V1 tags.

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 17:34

You just don't notice because it's at the end of the file.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 18:25

Tag Studio writes synched V1 and V2 tags by default

I got it to do that, but then I have to go back later and get rid of all the v1 tags. The v1 tags are so terrible that for a non v2 aware player, I'd rather have it use just the file name than the v1 tag. Back before v2 existed, I made sure to delete all my v1 tags because WinAMP would use those for showing titles in the playlist, often truncating the title.

I could write a quick hack to check for v1 tags and lop them off, but I'd rather not create them in the first place. The only good thing about v1 tags is that they're easy to delete

Posted by: accept

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 18:55

In MP3 Tag Studio you have the option to write to v1 v2 or both

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 20/02/2003 21:19

In MP3 Tag Studio you have the option to write to v1 v2 or both

For an individual song, yes, but I don't see how to do that for several thousand.

The tab labeled "Auto tag (from filenames)" only seems to write to v1 and when I right-click a folder (or group of files) and select "Retag assumed format: <Artist> - <Title>.mp3", it adds both v1 and v2. Then I have to go back and delete all the v1s.... haven't found a way to do that without using a seperate program.

Posted by: loren

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 02:14

I know there's a way to get it to just write v2 tags... but I can't seem to recall where the setting is. But i DO know that failing that, after you do the tags and it writes both, you can just go to the "mass clean up tags" tab and check "remove tag" under v1 and make sure everything else is unchecked. That'll strip em right quick.

Posted by: johnmcd3

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 02:59

Have you tried Tag&Rename? As far as I know, you just click the ID3v2 button for v2 tags and it doesn't write v1 tags. A picture of the appropriate screen is here.

For MP3 Tag Studio, I'm not sure how you do it, but I bet it's possible. You could pm Magnus if you're really curious.

John

Posted by: 753

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 08:33

Technically it's running in a 2-pixel area on the lower left, which you can sometimes see if the play/pause icon is displayed.

Actually it looks more like a 2x4 = 8 pixel area on my player, which is unlit all the time. Sometimes when I return from custom info mode to horizontal the upper right 3 pixels of that 2x4 area are lit and stay that way. It is not 100% reproduzable for me, I havn't been able to track it down further yet, but it happens quite regularely.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 11:19

For an individual song, yes, but I don't see how to do that for several thousand.
(Assuming latest version)...

Uncheck "Custom file selection mode". Check "Include Subirs" (under the Execute button). It will do every single MP3 file in the directory tree below the specified working directory.

The tab labeled "Auto tag (from filenames)" only seems to write to v1
(Assuming latest version)...

File/Settings: Primary ID3 version= V2, Uncheck perform write operations on both tag versions when possible.

Posted by: decay

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 15:32

Nice software. But it ain't working!

Ok. Here's the deal.
I can make it show the lyrics. Ok. I have mk1. Can't access the menus. Here's a clip from the README.

<q1>Custom buttons are defined using the following syntax in config.ini:

button=menu 0x0020df12
button=left 0x0020df17
button=right 0x0020df13</q1>

ok. Obviously that's for Rio remote. I tried mapping my REW FF and Play/Pause buttons on my Kenwood remote.

This is what I put on my config.ini.
<q1>
[emphatic]
button=menu 80b9460e
button=left 80b9460c
button=right 80b9460d
</q1>
Can't access the menus. Can't get back to hijack-menu. Can't kill the emphatic w/o poweroff / serial connection.
Fiddled around the buttons while emphatic runnin' and now getting this on serial:
spindown_chunk_cache_runner.cpp: 294:Filling up space (9)
Dunno what it is or if it's important.
The mappings _are doing something_ since I can reduce volume with them (occasionally with continuous ff/rew), but can't access the Menu. Tried with few buttons.

Might be that I'm doing something wrong. Might be that I shouldn't fiddle with 3rd party apps at all with mk1... but still! d=)

Summary: Anyone got emphatic's IR-mappings right?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 15:52

This is what I put on my config.ini.
<q1>
[emphatic]
button=menu 80b9460e
button=left 80b9460c
button=right 80b9460d
</q1>

You're putting in the *released* codes for the Kenwood remote (beginning with 8.) Try substituting a 0 for the first digit of the codes instead of the 8 you have there. emphatic wants the "pressed" codes there.

Posted by: decay

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 15:57

Some things I just never figure out on my own. I always wondered why it shows the button code for each button twice. Heck, 0 or 8's..

Thanks. Fast support I'd say.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 15:59

No problem. Easy mistake to make.

Posted by: decay

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 16:08

Ok. Volumes work as should. But _still_ can't access the menu.
Tried mapping the menu for play/pause and for a VolumeDown buttons. The buttons act normally - no menü.
What to do?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 16:23

Ok. Volumes work as should. But _still_ can't access the menu.
Tried mapping the menu for play/pause and for a VolumeDown buttons. The buttons act normally - no menü.
What to do?

umm... uhh... You are selecting emphatic from the Hijack menu first, right? Also, how do you know the volume buttons are working to move the menu selection left/right if you can't open the menu? I'm confused.

I can't find my Kenwood remote around here, so I can't test that particular button scenario. I just know it works with my Rio remote.

Posted by: decay

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 16:32

umm... uhh... You are selecting emphatic from the Hijack menu first, right? Also, how do you know the volume buttons are working to move the menu selection left/right if you can't open the menu? I'm confused.

Yes, selecting emphatic from the Hijack. Only after that I can use the REW / FF buttons as Vol- / Vol+.. Before selecting emphatic from the Hijack menu the REW / FF buttons truly are REW / FF.
So the mapping works for those two buttons. Got it?

Try mapping your Kenwood from your apartment, then get some sleep, drink some coffee, do some stuph and I'll be getting back to you. d=) (it's 1.30am here, going to bed, now.)

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 18:33

Umm it should actually be 2x3 = 6 pixels now that I think about it. When I set up the geometry I can't specify the same beginning or ending row, so I go 0-2 vertical. Then I can't specify the sme beginning and ending column, and furthermore, all columns in Hijack geometry specs must be divisible by 2. So the best I could do was rows 30-31 and cols 0-2.

If/when Mark has some free time, I'm going to bug him for some Hijack improvements in the userland integration area which will hopefully make emphatic more seamless. I'd also like to see the ability for apps to write to the screen without necessarily running in the "foreground" and being selected from the hijack menu. That way emphatic could just start up and be active immediately. Then if other apps (say, GPSapp) could optionally go to the foreground in front of emphatic, they would be able to coexist simultaneously. I hope we can sneak this in before he heads off to the mountains come spring.

Posted by: TheAmigo

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 21/02/2003 21:27

Thanks for the pointers, that got it to do just what I wanted!

Now I just need to sit back and wait for it to tag all 14K songs

They're hosted on a linux file server, but with Gigabit ethernet to my PC, the network isn't the bottleneck.

I like the option in there to overwrite the first 0.03 seconds of audio with the new v2 tag, but I'm not in a hurry... I'll just let it run all weekend.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 22/02/2003 02:00

If someone happens to have Simon and Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade of Winter" and emphatic already installed, perhaps you might humor me and get the 2 files in ftp://lrcdb:[email protected]/dbrashear/?

The one with "broken" in the name seems to quickly display something when it should display "Leaves are brown" at about 24 seconds in, then erase it. If I don't tag a blank line after it, as in the non -broken version, it's fine. A quick reading of the code doesn't illuminate what the problem is to me.

I'm going to do some more extensive debugging tomorrow, but I was mostly wondering if anyone else sees the same.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 22/02/2003 04:35

Hrm. Same results here. I get the same results with "And look around" at ~0:46, "Look around" at ~1:10, and "at the sky" at ~1:51 with both versions of the LRC. No immediate idea what the reason is.

One variable here is that you've got a lot of blank lines. Not that they should matter, but they're really making the scrolling do way too much... scrolling. You know? Why put in all those lines that it has to re-calculate scroll speed so much (even though it's not adding any text.) I think without all those extra lines, the scroll speed would be a little more stable, because it wouldn't be adding in extra space so much. My algorithm tends to throw space in to try to get the current "line" across the screen and also give you some space in between lines. Putting the blank line is putting this gap in twice, not necessary if you ask me. Still, my program shouldn't be having lines disappear just because of this, though in all instances I mention above, the "problem line" that's quickly disappearing is immediately preceeded and followed by a blank line (but so are other non-problematic lines in the song.)

<sarcasm>Why do I have a feeling this is going to be a really fun problem to debug.</sarcasm>

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 22/02/2003 12:30

Some of the blank lines are needed for the (short) instrumental portions, IMO, but the rest were there just so it looked sane in the XMMS singit plugin. (which highlights a line, then moves to the next one, in this case a blank, when that hits.)

Nothing seemed special about the just over 1 second delays between the lyric before, the blank line, and again to the lyric after; Not even something that should reduce to the same timestamp.

I was actually doing to use some printfs and debug to stdout.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 22/02/2003 12:51

I wasn't saying the lines were causing anything here, it's just something I noticed.

Hmm, short instrumental portions shouldn't need a blank line... I mean I did suggest using a blank line for much longer solos, etc. just so the current line doesn't scroll too slow. One improvement I hope to make (though it's not an easy calculation) is to have the scrolling target column 64 (the middle of the screen) instead of column 128 (the far right.) The problem is I have to begin drawing the next line prior to the moment the current track time hits that line's timestamp, but depending on the speed of the current line, that delta time (between when I draw the next line at column 128 and when that next line becomes the "current line" at column 64) is different each time. I haven't yet struggled with trying to make it work just right, and I'm not sure it'll be trivial.

So once I (hopefully) implement that, you should not need so many of those blank lines to make sure the words are on the screen at the right moment. The current workaround is to call emphatic with a -o parameter, say, -o 1000000 to have it start scrolling the next line a full second before it's supposed to -- that way, the line is somewhere closer to the middle when we hit that line's timestamp.

Anyway, this is tangential, I just don't want to see everyone adding hundreds of blank lines to their lyrics just because they don't line up correctly. I still have no leads on why the lines are disappearing for you, but I'll continue to look into it (probably not today though.) If you find something, let me know.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 22/02/2003 13:07

I wasn't saying the lines were causing anything here, it's just something I noticed.

I would actually guess the lines were causing it. I pruned a bunch of them now and am about to go get lunch. I'll see if that worked, and look at it some more later.

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:01

Would anyone care to speculate why I'm not able to sync with emphatic running? I'm not running it from the music partition; it's in /usr/local/bin. With the last version of emphatic, I was running it from the music partition, found out it broke syncs, and moved it. Now, with the new version, it's broken again, even though it's not anywhere near the music partition. I get the same fsck error as if it was. Help!

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:01

What else do you have running from the music partition?

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:20

Incidentally, after a fsck failure I got into a situation where one of the music partitions never fscked cleanly, and fsck appeared to be dying because it was out of memory. Instead of trying to determine what was going on I killed the player (after making sure init couldn't respawn it) and fsck'd by hand. I probably should have figured out what was actually going on. Nothing was running from the music partition, but something had been on the first fsck that failed.

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:26

What else do you have running from the music partition?

Haha. Funny. The answer is, nothing at all. My steps to reproduce are very simple: comment out ";@EXEC /usr/local/bin/emphatic" and I can sync. Uncomment it and I can't.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:27

Umm I wasn't trying to be funny, but okay...

I'll try to reproduce this at home tonight. But if it turns out it prevents syncs, the easy solution is to quit out of emphatic before you sync, no?

Nothing I'm doing is causing this, and I can't detect when you're going to sync your player, so even if there was something I could turn off during sync, I'd have no idea when to do so.

These gripes about syncs are really starting to get to me.

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:31

No, I know you weren't, but it certainly would have been funny if I had been running something else from the music partition that was the culprit.

I don't know if you'll be able to reproduce it, since no one else has reported any problem yet. For everyone else, if they can't sync, they just move it out of the music partition and all is well. The only reason I'm having problems is because of the curse on me, my family, my house, and my descendants for as long as my line shall extend.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:34

If you don't mind showing me a serial log of what happens when the sync fails, that would be helpful in diagnosing the problem.

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:34

I don't know whether or not this well help, but I'll manually fsck all the partitions and see if that catches anything that wasn't caught before. I'll report back in an hour...

Posted by: djc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:34

oh, well that explains it. you should have mentioned the curse in the first place.

--dan.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:35

For some reason I get the idea that I should build lsof for the empeg.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:35

Sheesh do I now need to disclaim myself from damages resulting from a prior curse???

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:43

For some reason I get the idea that I should build lsof for the empeg.

Actually that seems quite helpful, if not for this problem, than for some other ones I'm sure. But, is there any way to get information like that out of the kernel without something like lsof? One of the /proc entries perhaps?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 11:52

Does the arm linux distro contain "fuser"?

Posted by: siberia37

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 12:03

If you uncomment that line the player tries to read the @EXEC line which it can't, only hijack can. You should leave this always commented out, it should work commented out because that is how hijack expects it.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 12:06

Hmm. I interpreted "comment out" as "added an extra semicolon" meaning it would be
;;@EXEC

If he was removing the semicolon, then yeah, that'd be a problem.

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 12:30

Yeah, I meant add an extra semicolon

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 12:35

Okay, running an fsck of everything manually doesn't help anything. It still fails to sync.

Here's what happens: I initiate a sync. Emplode gets as far as "Checking Media: Waiting", then after a few seconds, gives "Synchronize failed while checking media. Error 0xc0041010".

In the meantime, the serial output is thus:

Adding Swap: 16596k swap-space (priority -1)

e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09

ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/

hda4 is mounted.

hijack: removed menu entry: "emphatic"

Restored terminal settings

Remounting first music partition read-only

Remounting second music partition read-only

Restart code received

Starting player



hijack_exec("/usr/local/bin/emphatic"), rc=0 (okay)

Using non-standard cache size 102 (adjustment 32)

opening display...

starting notify thread...

notify thread started (tid=1026)...

lyrics thread started (tid=2051)...

emphatic v1.10 (built Feb 18 2003 20:15:18) running as pid 43

  player.cpp        : 385:empeg-car 2.00-beta13 2002/07/24.

Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Jul 24 2002

Vcb: 0x4066d000

Basically, fsck poops for some reason and the player restarts.

Any more ideas?

Posted by: mcomb

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 12:59

Any more ideas?

Just to cover the obvious, /usr/local/bin isn't a symlink to someplace on your music partition is it? Some people may not understand the distinction (or lack therof).

-Mike

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 13:14

I certainly don't recall making it that way, but checked anyway, and it's not.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 15:35

So what's in /etc/fstab?

The ext2fs_check_if_mount is going to be no mtab file because / was mounted ro and so it couldn't be created. The other thing you could do is from a shell on the player:

rw
(mount each filesystem in /etc/fstab so an mtab entry gets created)
ro

try sync again

but i don't know why this would matter.

Posted by: mcomb

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 15:46

So what's in /etc/fstab

And while your at it, what is the output of 'cat /proc/mounts'

-Mike

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 19:34

Here's my /etc/fstab:



#
# /etc/fstab
#
# <device>    <mountpoint>   <filesystemtype> <options> <dump> <fsckorder>
/dev/hda5       /               ext2          defaults,ro    1      1
/dev/hda4	/drive0		ext2	      defaults,ro    1	    1
none             /proc          proc          defaults

I don't recall modifying this ever, so this should be what the player was installed with. I can't fully follow the grammar of your post, because I think there must be a typo in there. But, it seems like you're saying that an mtab file's not getting created, and that's because / is ro? And that might be something causing ext2fs_check_if_mount to fail?

I'm connecting to the player via ethernet right now, but I'll try to force the creation of the mtab entries the next time I drag the player into the dungeon to connect to serial. I'll report if that changes any behavior at all.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 19:41

You can create the mtab entries with a shell via ethernet.

rw
mount -o remount /dev/hda5 /
mount -o remount,ro /dev/hda4 /drive0
ro

cat /etc/mtab and see if it's reasonable. it should be something like:
/dev/hda5 / ext2 ro 0 0
/dev/hda4 /drive0 ext2 rw 0 0

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 19:43

And here's /proc/mounts:



/dev/root / ext2 ro 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
/dev/hda4 /drive0 ext2 ro 0 0
/dev/hdc4 /drive1 ext2 ro 0 0

Nothing looks out of the ordinary to me, but I don't really know what I'm looking for. Poking around elsewhere in proc, am I going to find anything that indicates what files might be open? Like if I look at the PID for emphatic in /proc, is anything in there going to tell me anything? I ask because /proc/41/fd/ gives me:



dr-x------    2 0        0               0 Feb 26 02:40 ./
dr-xr-xr-x    3 0        0               0 Feb 26 02:40 ../
lrwx------    1 0        0              64 Feb 26 02:40 0 -> /dev/ttyS1
lrwx------    1 0        0              64 Feb 26 02:40 1 -> /dev/ttyS1
lrwx------    1 0        0              64 Feb 26 02:40 2 -> /dev/ttyS1
lrwx------    1 0        0              64 Feb 26 02:40 3 -> /dev/display
lr-x------    1 0        0              64 Feb 26 02:40 4 -> pipe:[45]
l-wx------    1 0        0              64 Feb 26 02:40 5 -> pipe:[45]
lr-x------    1 0        0              64 Feb 26 02:40 6 -> /drive0/var/config.ini

Does this mean that emphatic has config.ini open for some reason? Or does this show something completely unrelated?

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 19:48

You can create the mtab entries with a shell via ethernet

Are you assuming a telnetd is running, or is there an easy way to pass shell commands in the HTTP query to hijack? I'll probably just get telnetd running, because I know I can do that and configure hijack to launch it all without touching serial.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 19:55

You get the gold star for today. I'm opening config.ini and not closing it. This will, of course, be fixed in the next release.

Welcome to the world of perpetually beta software!

I'll make it up to you guys with a few new features to play with. And probably a few new bugs!

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 19:58

You might want to add
/dev/hdc4 /drive1 ext2 defaults,ro 1 1
to /etc/fstab

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 19:59

I'm assuming a telnetd is running.

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 20:25

You get the gold star for today I'm opening config.ini and not closing it

You get *my* Gold star for today too for the simplest bug that can disrupt official empeg behaviour

This is one of those bugs that should be remembered by as many people as possible. It's exactly the sort of bug that will be forgotten just as someone else re-implements it in another application...

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 20:33

This is one of those bugs that should be remembered by as many people as possible. It's exactly the sort of bug that will be forgotten just as someone else re-implements it in another application...

Probably. I focused very heavily on freeing all my mallocs and trying to avoid memory leaks, evidently I didn't focus quite as intently on closing open FD's when they're not needed.

Ah well. Expect another release within a week or so.

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 20:58

While the gold star is nice and all, I guess I still don't get it. Am I the only one seeing this behavior? I know lots of people have posted that they have trouble syncing, but they're running stuff from the music partition, and when they move it, it appears to be okay for them. Other than the curse on me, is there any reason why this would be happening to me and not others?

This illustrates why I'm very well suited for QA work. The curse that I have means something breaks just by me going near it. With software I consistently expose bugs that no one's seen before on the very first time I run it. I'm not as much help in diagnosing the problem, but I'm glad to see that my blind stumbling in the dark will lead to a solution.

Now that I can move past that, here's a couple more things I was wondering about. First, there are command line options for horizontal and vertical mode; how about one for the custom mode?
Another thing: you said the next version would hadle milliseconds, right? Does lrctool already handle milliseconds in the SYLT frame writing, or does that come later, too?
And one more: --newfid seems to only look at the new fid structure. If you have things in the new way, emplode will still write songs in the old way, so you'll soon have a mix of old and new. Is there a way to make --newfid look for the new fids in addition to the old fids?

That's all for me for now, I hope...

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 21:11

I focused very heavily on freeing all my mallocs and trying to avoid memory leaks, evidently I didn't focus quite as intently on closing open FD's when they're not needed.

LOL. I've worked with coders that could learn from that.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/02/2003 21:36

While the gold star is nice and all, I guess I still don't get it. Am I the only one seeing this behavior? I know lots of people have posted that they have trouble syncing, but they're running stuff from the music partition, and when they move it, it appears to be okay for them. Other than the curse on me, is there any reason why this would be happening to me and not others?

I think they're just being good little soldiers and closing emphatic before they sync.

First, there are command line options for horizontal and vertical mode; how about one for the custom mode?

There is. emphatic -m 3. I forgot to add it to the README but it's there. If you're so suited for QA work, I'm assuming you would have tried that!
Another thing: you said the next version would hadle milliseconds, right? Does lrctool already handle milliseconds in the SYLT frame writing, or does that come later, too?

Yeah, lrctool 1.0 supports it. I forget if the lrc2sylt included with emphatic v1.10 has millisecond support, but lrctool 1.0 definitely does. Untested though...
And one more: --newfid seems to only look at the new fid structure. If you have things in the new way, emplode will still write songs in the old way, so you'll soon have a mix of old and new. Is there a way to make --newfid look for the new fids in addition to the old fids?

Umm... Nobody told me that supporting a mix was required. That's a dicier issue. I was going for quickest access time, so I didn't have it trying both. Again, being a QA guy, you're familiar with what happens when requirements are incomplete, no?

I'll see if I can come up with something next time, but this isn't very high on my list. I kinda thought people would use the one FID structure, then when the new one becomes the default (in the next release, I guess?) they'd switch. Having both seems kinda yucky to me. Thanks for pointing this out though.

Posted by: adavidw

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 26/02/2003 00:08

There is. emphatic -m 3. I forgot to add it to the README but it's there. If you're so suited for QA work, I'm assuming you would have tried that!

Yeah, well suited for QA work, but also lazy. Don't forget I was fighting with syncing all day. I can only break 1 thing at a time. Good to know it's there, though.

I'll see if I can come up with something next time, but this isn't very high on my list. I kinda thought people would use the one FID structure, then when the new one becomes the default (in the next release, I guess?) they'd switch. Having both seems kinda yucky to me.

Definitely my bad for not specifying that in the requirements. I don't know if there's ever a real world situation where someone will end up with a player like that. Mine's like that, though, and the explanation goes back to the aforementioned laziness. I switched everything to the new layout for kicks and giggles, then when playing around with the lyrics, just moved my test files back because I didn't want to rewrite my script to move everything back. Hijack and the player both look in all 4 places for the fid, so I didn't see any problems until playing with emphatic again.

Now, whether or not you want to do that in emphatic comes down to whether you think any normal people (i.e. not me) would run into this situation. There must be some possible way for this to happen, or else they wouldn't have backported the code to read the new directory structure to the 2.0 player right? I guess someone out there is adding music with a post 2.0 system but then loading 2.0 betas on it.

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 05/03/2003 14:46

I finally finished converting all my songs. DIdn;t take as long as I thought it would. With the help of making batchfiles etc. I am however hacing problems with the lyrics displaying. After one or two songs the lyrics no longer display horizontally and will only appear in the vertical mode. Have any ideas?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 05/03/2003 15:20

Haven't seen this happen, and nobody else has reported it... Does this happen consistently?

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 05/03/2003 16:26

Yes it happens consistently on my empeg

Posted by: genixia

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 05/03/2003 17:47

I think that's the same thing that I reported earlier. Maybe it's related to number of tracks played and not to buttons pressed.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 05/03/2003 18:27

Hmm I have 20+ tracks with lyrics in them, and I haven't seen this. Wonder what's different...

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 05/03/2003 22:15

I have those 700 someodd songs and after about 2 or 3 of them have played without fail:), emphatic will fail to display the lyrics. There is still a black blank space at the top of the screen, when the player menu is activated emphatic doesn't hide, but when it is switched to horizontal mode all is well.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 06/03/2003 06:09

Hm I guess you meant to say "when it is switched to vertical mode." I will try to test things out some more... Anyone else seeing this?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 06/03/2003 09:10

Okay, I think I reproduced this one. I'll look into it. Thanks for the tip.

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 06/03/2003 17:21

I've also had this happen 2 times today. After having emphatic display lyrics for an even longer period of time after the horizontal display ceases to work....It hangs the display of the rio all together with the buttons on the rio also not working. The remote still works however. Just wanted to let you know. Actually i think it happened 3 times. Figures I would have all the wierd problems seeing as i have so many lyricized songs:) Thanks _yn0t, your an awesome programmer and give great support.

Posted by: rearviewmirror

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 10/03/2003 00:50

Hi Tony,

I finally got a chance to install emphatic. It's very very cool, especially the custominfo part. Thanks!

I made a custominfo with 3 lines (title, album, artist) and the lyrics scrolling below the artist line. Couldn't figure out how to reproduce that dotted horizontal line which shows time elapsed (the one in Info:Track) though. Is there a way to do it?

I know you've reproduced it, but just wanted to let you know that I'm also hitting the bug that fink08 reported.

Thanks,
~Yogi.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 10/03/2003 06:39

I made a custominfo with 3 lines (title, album, artist) and the lyrics scrolling below the artist line. Couldn't figure out how to reproduce that dotted horizontal line which shows time elapsed (the one in Info:Track) though. Is there a way to do it?
I would like to reproduce the line and the little blinkie dot that accompanies it, but haven't given it a shot yet. More important right now is the bug that you and fink are seeing, and as of yet, I haven't had time to nail it down. Stay tuned...

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/03/2003 12:04

Any new news on the project? Bugfixes, lyrics storage, or otherwise?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/03/2003 13:13

Any new news on the project? Bugfixes, lyrics storage, or otherwise?
Yes. The news is that the author is approximately 5 weeks away from completing his Masters degree, and is thus spending all of his available time completing his final project.

Stay tuned, though. Come May I have BIG plans for this. I'll try to squeeze out those bugs in horizontal mode, and I have several cool features planned. I also want to work closely with Mike Schrag (when he has some free time as well) to get LRC embedding into jEmplode, and eventually, submission to LRCdb.com (when that gets off the ground.) Of course, the weather starts getting nicer around that time, but since I won't be in school, I do anticipate having a lot more time to work on this.

Posted by: fink08

Re: emphatic v1.10: Custom info modes! - 25/03/2003 16:07

Congrats on your degree! Thanks also for your work in the Empeg commnity.

Posted by: Daria

emphatic wish list item... - 26/04/2003 21:26

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 27/04/2003 21:48

that I'll probably do myself unless someone convinces me it's a bad idea:
a way to link tracks. when we see a track that should lead into another, play it. When we come from a track other than the one before this track, if this is a child-only track, skip it.
Ah, the classic Brain Damage - > Eclipse, Heartbreaker -> Living Loving Maid, We Will Rock You -> We Are the Champions problem. Actually, it could even be extended to more than 2 songs. Could even address the lack of a "Never Randomize Contents" flag, if implemented properly... You could just chain a bunch of songs together.

Hmm.

[Bar Napkin Design]
1. I guess lrctool could be modified to support the creation of two ID3v2 TXXX (user defined text) frames, like NextFID and PrevFID.
2. emphatic then loads up the ID3v2 frames when the song first comes up, so it could read in these frames to figure out if there are any links to other songs.
3. If there's a "NextFID" defined, then it does an "Insert" of that FID. Easy enough.
4. If there's a "PrevFID" defined, then check if the last song played was that FID. If not, then we came in in the middle, and should skip this track entirely.
[/Bar Napkin Design]

I think the above gets us started. Now, to do an "insert" we need to use the /proc/empeg_notify method of sending an insert command. Back in the day, you could do something like
echo "SERIAL #100" > /proc/empeg_notify
and it would play that FID. That no longer seems to work, and I can't figure out what the new syntax is. Anyone know if this still works or not, and if so, what the syntax is?

The other problem is that in step 4 above, if we find out we "came from" the wrong track, there's going to be a blip of some sort when we skip it. To avoid this, we would have to have the tags for song N+1 read while song N is playing. Then if song N+1 has a "PrevFID" entry and song N isn't that FID, I guess we could send a "Swap Next" command to get it out of there. In order to read song N+1's tags, we need to read the running order off the dynamic partition, which uses code I've written, but not yet integrated into emphatic.

So... In short, with some work and creativity, it seems doable... If you wanna give it a start, I won't stop you!

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 27/04/2003 21:56

Ah, the classic Brain Damage - > Eclipse, Heartbreaker -> Living Loving Maid, We Will Rock You -> We Are the Champions problem.

Damn Golden Slumbers medley got me today. Again

echo "SERIAL #100" > /proc/empeg_notify
and it would play that FID. That no longer seems to work, and I can't figure out what the new syntax is.

I don't remember, but my unfinished cron project was going to insert liners at the top and bottom of the hour, and I know I referenced how it works in some thread here.

we need to read the running order off the dynamic partition, which uses code I've written

So I should be talking to you, since somewhere I have code to do the same (though not for this item).

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 27/04/2003 22:11

I don't remember, but my unfinished cron project was going to insert liners at the top and bottom of the hour, and I know I referenced how it works in some thread here.
If you can locate the thread, that'd be grand.
So I should be talking to you, since somewhere I have code to do the same (though not for this item).
Yeah. Here's what I came up with:


int getFidFromRunningOrderIndex(int iIndex)

{

        int iPlaylistLength=0;

        int iRunningOrderLength=0;

        unsigned long ulOffset;  // location of playlist length

        unsigned long ulFidTableIndex = 0;

        unsigned int uiFid = 0;

                 

        if ((fpDynData = fopen("/dev/hda3", "ro")) != NULL)

        {

                ulOffset = 0x10;

                fseek(fpDynData, ulOffset, SEEK_SET);

                fread(&iPlaylistLength, sizeof(int), 1, fpDynData);

                //printf("playlist length: %ld\n", iPlaylistLength);

                

                ulOffset = 0x18;

                fseek(fpDynData, ulOffset, SEEK_SET);

                fread(&iRunningOrderLength, sizeof(int), 1, fpDynData);

                //printf("running order length: %ld\n", iRunningOrderLength);

                

                // 0x200 is the second sector, which contains playlist entries

                // But we need to skip past these for now to get the running order

                // indexes, which are after the 8-byte playlist entries

                ulOffset = 0x200 + 8*iPlaylistLength + iIndex * 4;

                fseek(fpDynData, ulOffset, SEEK_SET);

                fread(&ulFidTableIndex, sizeof(unsigned long), 1, fpDynData);

                //printf("fid table index: %ld\n", ulFidTableIndex);

                

                // now we know the index into the fid table (which starts at 0x200

                ulOffset = 0x200 + 8*ulFidTableIndex;

                fseek(fpDynData, ulOffset, SEEK_SET);

                fread(&uiFid, sizeof(unsigned int), 1, fpDynData);

                printf("fid: %x\n", uiFid);

                

                fclose(fpDynData);



                return 1;

        }

        else

        {

                return -1;

        }

}

.

To actually use it, you need the running order index, which is available from the 128-byte flash save area. This is incidentally why I asked Mark to fix Hijack to allow multiple readers on the flash save area. So if you're on the 0th track in your running order, you pass in 0 to this function and it gives you back the current FID. That's not very interesting, since that's available in /proc/empeg_notify. But if we're on the 47th track in the running order, we can pass in 48 to figure out what the next tune is. I originally wrote this for Now & Next, and figured that some point, I'd read and cache the ID3 information from 2 or 3 of the next tracks to improve speed in changing tracks, etc. This would be a good side benefit of such an animal.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 27/04/2003 23:18

I was working on a library which was intended to be extensible, but whose functions would initially be reading tuner and eq settings, and then would be extended to writing them.

I'm on my third iteration of the code, and I still don't have a useful API.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 27/04/2003 23:22

I guess it was SERIAL=#.

Did you remember the number is in hex, though?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 06:38

Did you remember the number is in hex, though?
Yeah, but I didn't have the equals sign. At least I don't think I tried that. I'll give it another shot tonight probably.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 10:00

Ah, the classic Brain Damage - > Eclipse, Heartbreaker -> Living Loving Maid, We Will Rock You -> We Are the Champions problem.
Better yet... One Week -> Jerry Springer, Lola -> Yoda, Desperado -> Eldorado...

I remember years ago someone asking for a Weird Al shuffle. That could be made an extension of this.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 10:08

Bah.

Posted by: tfabris

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 10:11

Bah.
You need to hold up your paw when you say that, Dogbert.

Posted by: JeffS

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 10:19

I remember years ago someone asking for a Weird Al shuffle.
Of course there's an easy way to setup a playlist to do this already (by creating a sub-list for each pair and then selecting "always randomize" at the parent level), as long as all you want is originals and Weird Al songs bound together. Don’t think I’d want a straight diet of this though . . .

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 11:09

Of course there's an easy way to setup a playlist to do this already (by creating a sub-list for each pair and then selecting "always randomize" at the parent level), as long as all you want is originals and Weird Al songs bound together. Don’t think I’d want a straight diet of this though . . .
The flaw in this strategy is that it requires that shuffle is turned off. Shuffle modes will also randomize within each sub-playlist, which is not the desired effect.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 11:21

You have compelled me to turn on my TiVo and watch some Dilbert.

Now I'll get nothing done today.

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Posted by: JeffS

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 13:24

The flaw in this strategy is that it requires that shuffle is turned off. Shuffle modes will also randomize within each sub-playlist, which is not the desired effect.

True, though shuffle could be easily turned off when in a "Weird Al" mood. For my part I almost never turn on shuffle (though I've been toying with some of the custom shuffle modes lately), instead using this method of sub-playlists to build up my random lists weighted the way I like, binding songs together, and spacing out songs by the same artist.

Posted by: cushman

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 18:06

Serial commands sent to /proc/empeg_notify don't work if the player is started with the -s- option, which in all latest versions of Hijack it is. This is to allow userland access to the serial port, but makes it hard to tell the player you want to do something new.

See this thread.

Edit: Forgot to mention that Hijack only starts up the player with -s- while in the car, not on AC power.

Posted by: Daria

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 18:10

Right. I forgot. And it's annoying, because I really want to use the serial port for GPS, and still inject commands into the player. This shouldn't be a big deal, because it's not like the commands are coming in serially.

So uh, maybe I should write some code to lie to the player and convince it opening the serial port worked, even when you're using it for something else?

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 28/04/2003 18:13

Edit: Forgot to mention that Hijack only starts up the player with -s- while in the car, not on AC power.
Okay, but for clarification, is that "real DC power" or "virtual DC power"? I'm docked in one of mlord's docking stations... I know that it's really on power via the docking connector, but it fakes the player out to home mode. Is empeg_notify disabled under these circumstances? Other Mark?

Posted by: ibcnu

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 29/04/2003 06:52

Hi Tony, I still can't find the install bat on your web page for windows. Is there something I'am missing on your web page and if not could you e-mail me those files needed?

Thanks,
Ibcnu

Posted by: tonyc

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 29/04/2003 07:01

Hi Tony, I still can't find the install bat on your web page for windows. Is there something I'am missing on your web page and if not could you e-mail me those files needed?

They're inside the emphatic distribution archive, emphatic-1.10.tar.gz, which you can unzip with WinZip and most other archiving programs.

Posted by: cushman

Re: emphatic wish list item... - 29/04/2003 08:39

I'm not sure about "real" DC power or the docked power, I seem to remember Mark messing with the pins on the docking connector and changing Hijack to think that it was AC, though.

I agree with dbrashear. We need a way to send commands to the player and also have use of the serial port. Would that be a modification to Hijack?

Posted by: Daria

lsof for the empeg - 22/09/2003 17:54

For some reason I get the idea that I should build lsof for the empeg.

Ok, so, I guess I did, finally.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: lsof for the empeg - 23/09/2003 18:36

Ok, so, I guess I did, finally.
Dude, you are on fire lately.

(other stuff moved to proper thread)

Posted by: Daria

Re: lsof for the empeg - 23/09/2003 20:22

Dude, you are on fire lately.

Procrastinating on work. Hey, if I had time to maintain this activity level for a while I'd have been special enough to be an alpha tester