Beernutz and his creativity strike again | The Coffeehouse

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

W3bbo wrote:
Hence why I love Winamp and its "Jump to File" command. Just load your entire library into your playlist (which you should be doing anyway), and at any time want to play a song? Press a key-combination you assigned to Winamp to give it focus (Mine's AltGr+Ins) , press "J" to open the Jump to File Find-as-you-type window, enter some criteria, use the arrow keys to select the track, and then either Enter to play the track immediately or Shift+Enter to queue it up (Winamp has queues-within-playlists, which is cool).

Get a playlist with 2M songs and wait for that window (and maybe even winamp) to open... hell I tell ya. Use the media library instead.

Sidenote: UTF-8 filenames and titles.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Bas wrote:
Wait, what? If I open WMP, it starts with the Media library.

Only if you configure it to, the default is the advert-laden "Media Guide". WMP still takes 5 times longer to open than Winamp with identical libraries.

Bas wrote:
If I want to play a song, I press Ctrl+E, type some search criteria

I just tried that now. I had to press Enter after typing in my criteria since it wasn't Find-as-you-type. Additionally, WMP froze for a few seconds whilst performing the search.

Bas wrote:
use the arrow keys to select the track, and press Enter to play it immediately, or Shift-Enter to add it to the playlist. How is that different?

Enter destroys your current playlist, Shift+Enter appends it to the bottom.

There's a load of other issues I have with WMP, I think it's the ethos of the program, WMP is meant for a top-window for playing a presentation piece, like a DVD or something. Besides the half-arsed taskbar player (which breaks the taskbar in classic mode) it doesn't sit well as a "background music player" (note: memory consumption and main-window UI non-optimized for staying "out of the way").

But that's just me.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Dodo wrote:
Get a playlist with 2M songs and wait for that window (and maybe even winamp) to open... hell I tell ya. Use the media library instead.

Somehow I doubt your collection is 2 million files strong.

Assuming an average 256kbps MP3 file size of ~5.5MB, that would require a massive 10 terabytes of storage capacity.

I'd be more concerned about the limitations of Win32's ability to enumerate such a large quanity than how any program is going to manage the library data for that.

Which is a key difference between winamp and wmp: Winamp doesn't load the library when it's opened, just the current playlist (a simple M3U file), whereas WMP does.

Dodo wrote:
Sidenote: UTF-8 filenames and titles.

"UTF-8 filenames"? Explain. Programs cannot tell NTFS what encoding method to use.

evildictaitor
if( !succeed( try() ) ) { while(true) try(); }

Dodo wrote:
Get a playlist with 2M songs and wait for that window (and maybe even winamp) to open... hell I tell ya. Use the media library instead.

Now say that each file has a kilobyte of data in it, wouldn't it just be easier for you to personally go through each of those two million records and hand copy-and-paste it into a file, so that a badly coded program could work it's wonderous O(n²) desktop search over it?

Think about it! Instead of your media player being able to search a logaritmically indexed file and start playing it after as much as two or three seconds, you can wait upwards of a minute for the desktop search to give up and crash! It's an experience you'd never forget.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

W3bbo wrote:

Bas wrote: Wait, what? If I open WMP, it starts with the Media library.

Only if you configure it to, the default is the advert-laden "Media Guide". WMP still takes 5 times longer to open than Winamp with identical libraries.

Which version are you using? Because WMP11 no longer has the Media Guide (or at least hides it under a series of menus). I can't recall explicitly configuring my version to open with the Media Library, by the way.

W3bbo wrote:

Bas wrote: If I want to play a song, I press Ctrl+E, type some search criteria

I just tried that now. I had to press Enter after typing in my criteria since it wasn't Find-as-you-type. Additionally, WMP froze for a few seconds whilst performing the search.

WMP11 is find-as-you type.

W3bbo wrote:

Bas wrote: use the arrow keys to select the track, and press Enter to play it immediately, or Shift-Enter to add it to the playlist. How is that different?

Enter destroys your current playlist, Shift+Enter appends it to the bottom.

True. Destroying your current playlist is a non-issue, though, because it allows you to resume playing the previous playlist.

W3bbo wrote:

There's a load of other issues I have with WMP, I think it's the ethos of the program, WMP is meant for a top-window for playing a presentation piece, like a DVD or something. Besides the half-arsed taskbar player (which breaks the taskbar in classic mode) it doesn't sit well as a "background music player" (note: memory consumption and main-window UI non-optimized for staying "out of the way").

This, I agree wholeheartedly with.

evildictaitor
if( !succeed( try() ) ) { while(true) try(); }

Bas wrote:

W3bbo wrote:
There's a load of other issues I have with WMP, I think it's the ethos of the program, WMP is meant for a top-window for playing a presentation piece, like a DVD or something. Besides the half-arsed taskbar player (which breaks the taskbar in classic mode) it doesn't sit well as a "background music player" (note: memory consumption and main-window UI non-optimized for staying "out of the way").

This, I agree wholeheartedly with.

It would be nice if there was a WMP11-lite that came with windows that minimised to tray (and had an interface simmilar to the Volume Control - i.e. not normally visible) and could basically start playing immediately after double clicking a file or starting it up. Although thinking about it, it's probably limited by disk speed more than memory.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

beer28 wrote:

Chris R. works at BeerCoSoftware.com (title: President of Development and Sales). This is Chris's work blog.

Don't let the title scare you. Chris R. is also accounting VP, HR Lead, and procurement head honcho.

He's also a fireman, cowboy, and race car driver.

vroooooooooooom.

beer28 wrote:

Disclaimer: BCS will not let personal views of any employee, including Chris, regarding any software product, company, standards or otherwise get in the way of any company that hires it to provide a solution. Companies pay BCS and BCS provides solutions regardless of the views of any employee. That’s part of being professional, and BCS is a professional software company.

It's nice to know. Unfortunately, it's like claiming "BCS is totally against the concept of fraud. We just don't do it!"

Yay, BCS.