[Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

Darksoul71 · 2012-06-05 15:37:00

Hi there,

this is not really a problem posting but more a usage question.

My little-one (8 years old) likes to listen to audio plays a lot. Since I have stored nearly all of them on my PC as MP3 files and burning them as audio CDs is both a waste of CD-Rs as well as quite time intense I have come to the conclusion that a PC-based "MP3 station" for her might be the best approach for both giving her the option to listen to all her audio plays as well as saving dad from burning tons of MP3 files to CD-R

Similar to my music the audio plays are organized a folder structure like this:
Audioplay series -> episode

The audioplay itself consists either of one ore multiple MP3 files plus a playlist.m3u in each folder.

I am looking for some sort of fullscreen player which provides a similar library view like the video part of XBMC does. Something which simply allows to hop up and down through the folders of the MP3 audioplay library an only lists the M3U and MP3 files.

Since I mostly used SMPlayer, VLC and XMBC for my playbacks I have no experiences with other players.

Is there a media-player which is more geared towards such purposes ? May be Amarok ? I am also not shure how players similar to Songbird (which is Windows / Mac-only) fit into the equation.

Another possible problem: Some of those files might not have valid ID3 tags since I recorded a lot of old audioplays from tape. So relying on ID3 tags for playback is not very solid.

My little-one is well able to maneuver with a file manager but a simplified interface would be nice. Think about DAF rather than WAF
(DAF = daughter acceptance factor).

Thanks for any input !

-D$

P.S.: I am skilled enough to hack together some scripts if required and do not really rely on ready-to-use tools. So if anyone has a different idea how (e.g. having multiple website with links to each of the M3U files) I would be more than happy to hear them.

Last edited by Darksoul71 (2012-06-25 20:44:41)

graysky · 2012-06-05 15:47:00

Look into mpd as the backend server. There are MANY mpd clients, some of which have pretty simplistic GUIs. Hell, my wive's iphone has an mpd app that talks to our media server. I use ncmpcpp myself (curses based frontend), but look at a few like: gmpc, mpc, sonata, and ario for GUI based ones. Also look in the AUR.

Darksoul71 · 2012-06-05 16:06:02

Thanks graysky !
Sounds promising ! I hope that mpd does not put heavy load on the box it runs on ?
I'm just asking because the system in my footer will become "girlies MP3 box"

DSpider · 2012-06-05 16:10:26

Sonata's pretty minimalistic. I've been using it for years.

You can choose the cover art straight from the interface and it will remember it. And it also supports lyrics (the "Info" tab).

PS: Don't worry about resources. I used to have an Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 GHz) and 512 MB RAM and mpd ran flawlessly. You'll need mpd for Sonata. Have fun setting it up.

Last edited by DSpider (2012-06-05 16:17:22)

fiddlinmacx · 2012-06-05 17:02:31

mpd is awesome and doesn't even need a gui to operate. Just hook it up to some speakers. You can manipulate it from just about any device. You can see what is playing, pause, check volume, create playlist etc. from iphone, android, windows, mac, any Linux desktop etc.
My boys like the Music Player Minion Firefox addon and they like gmpc better than Sonata.

drcouzelis · 2012-06-05 17:25:29

My two year old daughter just listens to her music using iTunes on her eight year old iMac G4. Are you overthinking the user interface? I understand if you want to try a fancy setup "because you can", but if the only reason is to make it easier for your daughter, I'm think she'll be fine with whatever.

Also, the ID3 tag issue should be easy to solve. For example, I organize music in folders and wrote a script to update ID3 tags based on the folders and filenames they're in.

Inxsible · 2012-06-05 17:44:09

deadbeef has quite a simple interface.

Darksoul71 · 2012-06-25 20:44:14

Thanks for all your input ! I think you were right.

I was thinking way too complicated. What I used now was a pretty vanilla installation of Trisquel with Gnome 3 fallback desktop tailored a bit for "girlie compatible" look.

I am pretty happy with the results. I sorted the audio plays a bit, generated working playlist for all of them and put a direct link to the audioplay folder to the desktop.

If things still turn out a bit too complicated for here I will play around with the audio players mentioned above.

In case you are interested simply follow the link below:
http://i46.tinypic.com/21o7m89.png

bangkok_manouel · 2012-06-25 23:49:26

This... this wallpaper.

IS FUKCING AWESOME.

Darksoul71 · 2012-06-26 04:55:22

All credits go to the maker of the wallpaper !

Unfortunately I do not know anymore where I grabbed it.
If it is from interest I could upload it somewhere.

graysky · 2012-06-26 21:21:07

...my little pony?

Darksoul71 · 2012-06-26 21:26:06

graysky wrote:

...my little pony?

Yeah, why not ? It's not my desktop and not my PC (anymore)

drcouzelis · 2012-06-27 02:11:48

graysky wrote:

...my little pony?

Who is that supposed to be in the drawing? Twilight Sparkle?

Last edited by drcouzelis (2012-06-27 02:12:08)

Darksoul71 · 2012-06-27 20:35:43

drcouzelis wrote:

Who is that supposed to be in the drawing? Twilight Sparkle?

I guess yes, it seems to be Twilight Sparkle...

Last edited by Darksoul71 (2012-06-27 20:36:00)

anonymous_user · 2012-06-27 20:52:39

She's missing the horn and cutie mark though. Plus different colored eyes.

kanazky · 2012-06-28 00:34:24

Just throwing this out there, but Banshee/Exaile looks kinda like iTunes on windows, and SongBird for gnome looks a lot like iTunes for windows. For KDE amarok was really well laid out with lots of features, kinda reminded me of a supped up windows media player. and XMMs reminded me a lot of winamp. These of course are with the basic layouts.

Websites:
http://www.exaile.org/
http://banshee.fm/
http://amarok.kde.org/
http://legacy.xmms2.org/

They most likely offer good skins on their websites Also really like their lyrics plugin so you can view the lyrics while you listen to the song.

Another cool one to check out would be googles music player:

http://code.google.com/p/gogglesmm/

More available in wikki

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … io_players

Just my thoughts

-Jacob

Trilby · 2012-06-28 02:53:12

Aw .... sh*&^

I was all prepared for the zombies, but now it's the brony apocalypse.

ElderSnake · 2012-06-28 06:44:08

And here I thought the Arch community would be the last bastion away from the brony's

Arch Linux

#1 2012-06-05 15:37:00

[Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#2 2012-06-05 15:47:00

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#3 2012-06-05 16:06:02

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#4 2012-06-05 16:10:26

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#5 2012-06-05 17:02:31

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#6 2012-06-05 17:25:29

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#7 2012-06-05 17:44:09

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#8 2012-06-25 20:44:14

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#9 2012-06-25 23:49:26

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#10 2012-06-26 04:55:22

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#11 2012-06-26 21:21:07

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#12 2012-06-26 21:26:06

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#13 2012-06-27 02:11:48

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#14 2012-06-27 20:35:43

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#15 2012-06-27 20:52:39

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#16 2012-06-28 00:34:24

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#17 2012-06-28 02:53:12

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

#18 2012-06-28 06:44:08

Re: [Solved] Children-friendly interface for MP3 library ?

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