Player unpauses when it shouldn't

There is a small problem in 2.0b3 with the pause logic. If you are at the end of a playlist, with the player paused and you then put the player into suspend mode, when you press a button to wake it it behaves wrongly. Pressing a button should just wake the player up, but instead it wakes it AND unpauses it.

I think this was on purpose, so that if you have a full-screen visual up, you don't think you've got a dead player (power up to blank screen and no sound).

Personally I'm glad it works that way.

I don't think that is the reason, there is a big "End of playlist" banner showing whatever info/visual mode you are in. Also, if that were the reason then surely the same would apply to when the player was just paused normally ?

Hmm, I gues I misunderstood your bug report then, sorry.

Did this issue ever make it onto the internal bug list and if so has it been fixed for the next beta ?

(this is my biggest annoyance in the player UI)

Did this issue ever make it onto the internal bug list and if so has it been fixed for the next beta ?

I don't know. I'll stick it in there now just in case. If it's "behavior is by design", then they can mark it that way and be done with it.

I obviously still haven't described it well enough if anyone thinks this is the way it should work.

When I have my empeg on my desk at work I generally play individual albums. My tastes are a little too eclectic for some of my co workers to do my preferred option of playing randomly for a large playlist (I need to get my Wendy filters sorted out at some point).

While I am away from my desk the album and therefore playlist comes to an end. At this point the state of the player is stopped/paused.

I come back to my desk sometime later and want to play another album. My screen is now off (presumably because of HiJacks screen blanking). I press a front panel button (not the top play/pause button) to wake it it.

At this point not only does the screen come back on but the player starts playing the playlist again for the beginning.

If I had paused the player manually mid way through the playlist this would not happen, pressing a button to bring the player out of standby leaves the player in the state I chose to leave it in (in a much earlier version of the software this didn't happen, it was bugged and fixed).

I run into this problem at least 4 times a day, meaning I get to "accidentally" re-play the first couple of seconds from the beginning at least 4 playlists a day.

Hopefully I have explained myself fully this time...

My screen is now off (presumably because of HiJacks screen blanking). I press a front panel button (not the top play/pause button) to wake it it.

Wait a minute. Now it sounds like you're complaining that the player software interprets your button press because you're using a button press to get out of the Hijack screen blanker.

That's not empeg's problem. The hijack screen blanker is a third-party product and is unrelated. Remember that the Hijack blanker is NOT SLEEP MODE, it's simply a screen saver. When you use a keypress to wake the screen-blanker, it passes that keypress on to the player software. This is completely intentional and by design. At this point, your complaint is about this behavior in hijack, not the behavior in the empeg software.

So if you use either the left-button or the right-button when the player has reached the end of a playlist, it starts playing. This IS DEFINITELY BY DESIGN, because it's more irritating to have to press "next track" followed by "unpause" to restart the playlist than it is to just press either of those buttons.

Now, if turning the volume knob makes it unpause from the "end of playlist" state (don't know if it does, haven't tried), I'm not sure if that's by design or not. Does it do that?

I realise that HiJack causes some confusion here...

However I was pretty sure that I had tried pressing other keys that up/left/right, I thought the button I normally reached for was down. I will have to check again.

Okay, I'm trying this out myself now. Independent of Hijack, we're talking only the empeg player software here:

- Load up my 10-song "DEMO" playlist.

- Turn off repeat (all my playlists are set to auto-repeat).

- Temporarily get wrapped up in the songs (damn these sound good on the player).

- Advance to near the end of the last song. Let it play to the end. It reaches the end and "End of playlist" is displayed".

(NOTE: At this point what it has done is go back to track 1 of the 10-song playlist and then paused.)

- Press down button: Menu opens, song does not unpause.

- Turn volume knob: Volume changes OK, song does not unpause.

- Press volume knob: Sound settings appear, song does not unpause.

- I know that pressing the pause button in this (non-slept) state will unpause it, but that's not contested, so I'm not going to bother to try it here.

- Press right-button. It advances to the next track but does not unpause. (Damn, I thought it unpaused in this situation. Actually, I think it SHOULD unpause in this situation!)

- Press left-button. It goes back to the first track but does not unpause.


Okay, let's go through this again, this time with the player slept each time...

- Get to "End of playlist" screen by playing the list and advancing to the end of the last song.

- Just for the heck of it, pull the power and see what it does when I re-apply: Player boots, and is still paused. Although it does not say "end of playlist".

- Just to make sure, I re-queue the playlist and make sure that "repeat" is off. I think that one is still not saved across power-pulls, gotta double check that one sometime. Go back to the End of Playlist screen.

- Sleep the player with the top button.

- Wake the player with the right button. It comes up still paused, and End of Playlist is still displayed.

- Sleep it again and wake the player with the left button. Same. Does not unpause.

- Sleep it again and wake the player with the down button. Same. Does not unpause.

- Sleep it again and wake the player with the top button. Same. Does not unpause.

You know what, I can't get it to fail. According to all these tests, it's behaving the way you say you want it to behave.

Are you sure you're (A) running 2.0 beta 7, and (B) not doing anything in third-party additions (such as Hijack) that might cause this problem?

:-)

I've just finished going through the same process and my results don't match yours Tony.

I have downgraded to 2.0b7 without HiJack to make sure this is not a HiJack issue. I have a playlist with two 5 second tracks (not set to repeat or anything) that I am testing with.

Ok, I play the playlist. Pause it. Sleep the player with the top button. Wake the player by pressing any button (including the top button). Player stays paused. This is good, this is the expected behaviour.

By the way, I disagree with your suggestion that left/right should unpause when player is paused. If it did that there would be no way of silently advancing through a playlist, i.e. I wouldn't be able to pause it, advance a couple of tracks and unpause it (which I do quite a bit) without getting to play the start of each track. At least with the way it works now you get the choice, either you can advance while paused, or you can unpause then advance.

Ok, now I unpause my playlist and let it run to the end. I put the player into standby using the top button. Now if I press ANY button it comes out of standby AND unpauses.

I have no idea why this behaves differently on my player Tony. I didn't have this behaviour in pre 2beta7 builds, back then it did what I expect it to.

The only think that I can think of is that you are running a later build in which it has been fixed ?

The only other difference I can see is you skipped to get to the end of the playlist and I ran it all the way through.

By the way, I disagree with your suggestion that left/right should unpause when player is paused. If it did that there would be no way of silently advancing through a playlist

That's not what I meant exactly.

I mean that only when you hit the end of a playlist and "repeat" is off, and the player is sitting there silent with "End of Playlist" on the screen, I think that hitting the "next track" button should start the playlist at the beginning without having to unpause it.

The lack of this behavior always confused me in the past. Before I tagged my playlists as "Always Repeat", I would often reach the end of a playlist and want to start it over by looping around to the beginning by pressing the next track button (like you would with a CD player). Instead it went to track two and stayed paused.

I put the player into standby using the top button. Now if I press ANY button it comes out of standby AND unpauses.

This is very odd. Maybe your top button is sticking or is making intermittent (noisy) contact and isn't being debounced properly? Spilled a Mountain Dew on the player lately?

I can see why you want the behaviour that you have asked for, but I think it is better that the behaviour when paused should be consistent and when you get the the end of the playlist it does should as paused.

This is very odd. Maybe your top button is sticking or is making intermittent (noisy) contact and isn't being debounced properly? Spilled a Mountain Dew on the player lately?

I try not to...

I think it happens on my Mk1 as well, I'll have to check.

Right, just checked my Mk1. Same behaviour there, it always unpause from "End of playlist" when coming out of standby.

So it seems unlikely that it is a sticking button.

Does anyone else see this behaviour ?

Tony-
From memory: (My player is three stories down in the parking lot...I'm sure yours is right in front of you

If you skip past the end of a playlist, the player will pause itself when you hit the end of the playlist and stay paused.

IOW, from the middle of a non-repeat playlist, hit the right button enough times to wrap around. The player will now be paused.

While we're at it, the end-of-playlist pause doesn't cause a pause indicator to show up in Info:Track.

I'd like verify this before I file it, so if you can reproduce it, go for it.

-Z

it always unpauses from "End of playlist" when coming out of standby ... Does anyone else see this behaviour ?

Gosh, so it does (and I'm not running Hijack). It's a bug. I'll look into it.

Peter

Hurrah ! Thanks Peter, that will make me a happy bunny.

FITNR.

Peter

Gosh, so it does

So why couldn't I reproduce it?

So why couldn't I reproduce it?

Good question. Are you sure you tested what happens when you reach the end of the playlist by playing? Reaching the end by skipping is different.

Peter

Are you sure you tested what happens when you reach the end of the playlist by playing? Reaching the end by skipping is different.

I hit Next to reach the last song, then fast-forwarded to very near the end of the song and then allowed it to come to the end. I did not play the entire playlist without fast-forwarding.

One possible difference is that all my playlists are tagged as "Automatically repeat", so I had to manually deactivate the "repeat" feature before performing the test.

While you're at it Peter, on beta3 (haven't looked recently), the "notify=1" serial output always shows the wrong play/pause status after powerup.. It shows S0 even when playing, and doesn't "fix" it until one hits pause/play twice.

-ml

On beta 3 even the screen showed the wrong state - this was fixed recently (although I recall Tony mentioning that it is still not fixed in all cases..?)

Rob

(although I recall Tony mentioning that it is still not fixed in all cases..?)

Just this morning, with the internal beta8 code, I was watching the Info:Track screen with a perfectly good track playing a perfectly good song counting up a perfectly good time-index... with a perfectly good PAUSE INDICATOR telling me it couldn't possibly be doing those things.

The latest beta has the same issue I just reported above (wrong S0/S1 indication on serial notify).