Hijack fasttrack feature consideration

I'm hitting 70GB on my empeg, and I'm finding it a PITA to move through my collection without the remote. It might be nice to trigger an alphabet listing (maybe through a longer delayed knob push), allowing one to select a letter jump point into the playlist. Scrolling would be significantly reduced.

I'm generally not fond of increasing the size of the kernel, reducing the size of the music cache, but I would probably use this feature often.

With or without this feature, Hijack is awesome project.

Have you tried pressing one of the letters on the remote control?

My remote usually stays in my center console otherwise it would launch somewhere :-) Finding and fumbling with the remote at night while driving a stick isn't fun. I considered a a column stalk, but this wouldn't mitigate the required scrolling. A pop-up alpha jump menu could be initiated by touch, and could possibly require a single glance to arrive at an artist selection.

How would an alpha-jump menu be better than twisting the knob to scroll through the playlists? I can scroll through the playlists menu pretty fast with the knob, and I don't see how another layer of alphabetic listings could be faster. You'd just be trading one kind of scroll for another, and adding another selection layer to boot.

I've gotten pretty good at scrolling through the playlists menu, in fact. Today, a certain Paula Cole song came up in the shuffle. I was reminded of another Paula Cole song that I wanted to hear. While the last few bars of the first song was playing, I was able to open the playlists menu, scroll to the "P"s, select Paula Cole, select the desired album and tune, and insert the song. All with the front panel, and all within the last few bars of the first song.

Why not just reorganize your playlists, and put another layer of indirection in... Instead of TOP-> By Artist -> Aardvarks, make it TOP -> By Artist -> A -> Aardvarks. This will give you a way to scroll by letter without the remote... It seems pointless to integrate this into the software (and nearly impossible to integrate into the kernel) as a special feature...

Matthew

That's a good idea, too. Would essentially do the exact same thing as a letter scroll would.

Some have even taken it a step further and done groups of "A-F" "G-K" etc.

That's what I ended up doing because I didn't want to scroll through 36 top level options (A-Z and 0-9.) My main Artist playlist is now subdivided into ABC, DEF etc., then each of those is subdivided -> A, B, C etc

This makes most things very quick to get to and as there are less spins of the knob I can do it all while 4-wheel-drifting round a corner

Admittedly it was a pain to reorganise from my original flat structure, but was necessary once I got too many different artists.

The stalk has not worked for navigating menus since Beta 11. Since Beta 13, the stalk button for shuffle (On/Off) does not work either.

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_general&Number=97752 may help.

i also think an alpha scroll would be a good idea. i want to keep my artists in a flat hierarchy for when i am randomly browsing, but would also like the alpha scroll for when i want to get to a specific artist (i dont want to have to use the remote).

my solution (which i havent implemented yet) is to use hijack to remap the left and right buttons to scroll say 10 items at a time. this way i can use the buttons for a coarse scroll to get me to a general area, and the knob for a fine scroll.

-ted

But twisting the knob fast does do a coarse scroll. At least that's the way it works on mine.

It appears to only scroll one item at a time because of the screen animation. But take a look at which letters it's landing on. I can go from the A's to the T's in two or three quick twists.

...playlist is now subdivided into ABC, DEF etc.,

I agree, this is the best way (for me, at least) to do this -- a "steep" tree tructure, rather than a flatter one that requires lots of scrolling.

My tree is even steeper than yours. Before I get into "Artists A-C", I have to select genre ("Audio Books", "Car Talk", "Classical", "Comedy", etc.), the sub-genre ("Composers", "Concerto", "Symphony", etc.) and then finally I am at "Composers A-C", "Composers D-K", etc.

It sounds cumbersome, but actually it is a lot easier to press the down arrow one time then to scroll horizontally across 30 selections. You just have to have a pretty good working knowledge of your playlist tree in order to navigate to a specific location quickly.

tanstaafl.

Well, I'd have to say that I don't think the "I want to keep my songs organized like..." argument works because with a little extra time, you can easily put them in two places, and have them organized both ways. My By Artist tree contains nearly the same tracks as the By Album tree... If you want two different views, just make them...

I've also been considering messing with emptool to see if I can automate my uploading of albums, so that I can specify where the multiple coppies go... But I've never even downloaded emptool, so I don't even know if it'll work...

Matthew

As someone else implied, you could create an alpha-styled playlist and make copies of your existing tracks and playlists in whatever manner you wanted. Remember that, in most cases, copies are more like links or shortcuts than actual copies.

Maybe I'm not twisting it properly: I get into these modes where it seems to buffer my twists, so I see the area I want to stop at, but the list keeps on scrolling by me!

-T

<<How would an alpha-jump menu be better than twisting the knob to scroll through the playlists?>>

I have been storing music by artist & album. With over 500 artists, that's too much scrolling with my eyes off the road.

I envisioned being able to activate the menu by touch, a quick glance and single twist to arrive at a character, then a quick glance to select the artist.

I'll look into reorganizing my playlists.

In reply to:

---

Maybe I'm not twisting it properly: I get into these modes where it seems to buffer my twists, so I see the area I want to stop at, but the list keeps on scrolling by me!

---

Yes, that's a bug that affects some (all?) the rotary knobs. I'm not sure if it's a hardware or software problem, but it's really annoying. It generally happens when you twist the knob too fast - it goes into a mode of sending 3 signals a second for a long, long time, and there's not a lot that can be done about it. Sometimes giving the knob a brisk twist in the other direction will sort it, but not always.

Basically, you need to turn it fast, but not that fast.

A.

I get into these modes where it seems to buffer my twists, so I see the area I want to stop at, but the list keeps on scrolling by me!

You must be running beta 11. This problem seems (to me) to have been significantly reduced in beta 13.

Also, the other comment about twisting it "fast, but not too fast" is accurate. If you twist it too fast, it kind of mis-reads the clicks and gets throttled.

Upgrade to beta 13 and give it another try. I can quite literally get to "S" or "T" in just a few twists.

i've been running beta13 since the day it came out, but havent thought to revist the issue. i'll check it out. thanks for the advice

-ted

Why not just go the easy route and just implant the remote in your forearm with each button connected to specific nerve endings. So 1 long twitch and 1 short twitch of the pinki and you're in search by artist. It works for me.

This would be near impossible to do in Hijack...Playlist re-organisation is your best bet for sanity.

I have over 600 CD's on my players and I have my music organized like some of the others here do. I have no trouble surfing through to find what I need quickly. First, I have to select from my "CD Collection" or my compiled "playlists". Once I've selected CD Collection, I have the tree in alphabetical order (A, B, C, D.....).
The artists are arranged in these A, B, C, D... lists. Each artist is in itself is also a "playlist" containing the artists albums which can be selected individually or as a group by pressing down twice on the artist. This method works great for me, although it was a bitch to setup initailly!

Ok, who's thinking of "A Beautiful Mind" thanks to that picture?

Calvin

I was thinking, oddly, of The Man with the Golden Arm. Why does that conjure up ABM to you? Oh, the subcutaneous implant....

It's funny you mention that because the Russians keep trying to sabotage my empeg. They're jealous of it because the C__ [bleeped out for security reasons] hired me to entertain them with music from my empeg while they decipher codes and conduct cover ups. It's a small world.

> The stalk has not worked for navigating menus since Beta 11. Since Beta 13,
> the stalk button for shuffle (On/Off) does not work either.

I got my stalk while at Beta 11, so I hadn't realized that menu navigation had ever worked. I did however map that ability to the stalk. I too realized the shuffle function disappeared after upgrading to beta 13, so I attempted to fix that by adding the following line to the config.ini file's [ir_translate] section:

KBottom.M=Shuffle

Unfortunately that did NOT work. What am I missing? I have several other ir translation instructions in that section that worked before beta 13 and which still work. I really miss my one button shuffle...

Here is the rest of my [hijack] section in the config.ini file. I cobbled them together from the faq and various posts, and find the mappings works well for me. Maybe others with a Sony stalk can benefit (or suggest better mappings). Hopefully someone more adept at modifying the config.ini will see why my map to "shuffle" doesn't work too. Thanks, Mark

[output]
notify=1
[hijack]
supress_notify=1
disable_bassboost_FM=1
time_offset=-240
[ir_translate]
initial.C=null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,20DF0B ;Power ON in Car
initial.H=null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,null.L,000000.L,ffffff ; Power OFF at Home
;initial.CTA=Info ;(C)ar, (T)uner, (A)ux ... (H)ome
PopUp0=Clock,Shuffle,Info,Mark,Swap,Repeat,SelectMode,NextSrc,PopUp1,Search
PopUp1=Time,Artist,Album,Genre,Year,Cancel,PopUp0
KAtt.L=Clock
; === PLAYER ===
KPrev.M=NextTrack.N,Right.U
KNext.M=PrevTrack.N,Left.U
KOff.LM=Detail
KOff.M=Info.N,Cancel.U
KSource.M=Tuner ; toggle to Tuner
KSSource.M=Source,null ; toggle to Aux
KBottom.M=Shuffle
KBottom.LM=Detail
; === TUNER ===
KPrev.LT=NextTrack.L,null
KPrev.T=KSPrev.N,Right.U
KSPrev.T=NextTrack
KNext.LT=PrevTrack.L,null
KNext.T=KSNext.N,Left.U
KSNext.T=PrevTrack
KOff.T=Info.N,Cancel.U
KRear.T=NextTrack.L,null ;Quick Seek Forward
KSource.LT=Source,null ;Toggle to Aux?
KBottom.LT=Tuner ;Switch between AM/FM
KBottom.T=Tuner.L,null ;Change Bank