I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

iggy · 2008-09-11 23:01:25

coarseSand takes the biscuit: spent some time on tweaking and mpd should fit all your needs!

dav7 · 2008-09-12 13:43:53

Hey there.

Let me start out with a small correction:

* Supports tracks longer than 60 minutes / 1 hour
Is there a modern media player that doesn't do this?

I meant that in the context of the track title display - audacious has a large bug where it goes 99:59... 01:40...?!?! Then, after 10 mins, 01:41, etc.

* mpd - expects all your files to be in one folder; mine are everywhere, evn thrown across sshfs mounts to other systems.
Apparently you have never heard of symbolic links. OH SNAP! Just create a single directory to collect all the links in. Also, mpd does not expect everything to be in one folder; it expects everything to be available from one parent folder, allowing you to organize beneath that parent.

I figured that.

The problem you're having isn't that you're looking for a music player, you're looking for a wm/media player/file manager, and that just doesn't exist on Linux, largely because we are sane (for the sake of argument, ignore Songbird right now, I don't think any of us are crazy enough to use it anyways).

I agree with you... I'm sane. Plus, Songbird is... plain weird, in my opinion.

Like looking for a zebroctonoceros, even though a zebra exists, an octopus exists, and a rhinoceros exists, they do not exist in the same creature.

LOL... but if that could be created, we could have a creature with the ability to grab many things with force and blend into the background while doing so.

For interfacing with X (keybindings and the disappearing music player), you're better off going through a configurable wm like Openbox.

...which I use already, and have actually hacked and recompiled to suit myself better.

For the actual music playing, well, I don't see any problems with mpd besides your music files being messy, and you can't expect music playing software to solve a personal organization problem. If your file system is messy, then use a file manager to fix it, not your mp3 player.

No, my file system is not messy; the correct word is cramped. For a lot of my life I've used people's silicon rejects - I'm using such a system a company gave to me right now, which I'm grateful for - and these machines have mostly had very small hard disks in them. However, I collect data like any other person, so the disks fill up, and pretty quickly. So it's very hard to move data between them.

I put a lot of effort into keeping my music files properly tagged and accessible from a single top level directory called music, which then splits off into mp3/ogg files, flac files, podcasts, etc...

I plan to do such a thing in the future, when I obtain some more diskspace. Tagging... is not my thing though. I'm still figuring out a good way to sort stuff out that I agree with - organization and structure are among the hardest things for me to grasp as concepts.

Another idea for you, if you have multiple machines. Collect all your music onto a single machine, and then set up that system to serve exclusively as an mpd jukebox you can listen to from your other computers over the network. Give it a try.

Diskspace issues... again. (if you're annoyed by now, yea, I get annoyed after I have to turn good ideas down too.)

But I'm slowly warming to mpd. It *will* take a while - in fact, I may not try it for a few months (or years) until I get my new computer, when I can sort my files and stuff out.

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-09-12 13:45:36)

EnvoyRising · 2008-09-13 01:17:38

dav7 as far as disk space is concerned, couldn't you organize your partitions/drives with LVM or EVMS into one massive logical partition then select that as the root directory for whatever media player you use?

Set up may be a pain, but it'd definitely solve your "cramped space" issues and allow you to better organize your files.

userlander · 2008-09-13 03:38:54

coarseSand wrote:

* mpd - expects all your files to be in one folder; mine are everywhere, evn thrown across sshfs mounts to other systems.
Apparently you have never heard of symbolic links. OH SNAP! Just create a single directory to collect all the links in. Also, mpd does not expect everything to be in one folder; it expects everything to be available from one parent folder, allowing you to organize beneath that parent.

+1

that's what I do, it works fine. I think overall mpd would be best for the OP's stated needs. nothing's perfect, but it comes the closest.

IncredibleLaser · 2008-09-13 08:58:05

Or XMMS2. For users, it's very similiar to mpd. For some reason, I prefer XMMS2. I recommend trying both.

ak-89 · 2008-09-13 14:34:08

I meant that in the context of the track title display - audacious has a large bug where it goes 99:59... 01:40...?!?! Then, after 10 mins, 01:41, etc.

100 minutes is 1h 40min, so it seems that audacious can only show time with four digits or something like that.

madhatter · 2008-09-13 16:24:37

btw, has anyone tried m9u? It's like mpd but plan9-ish

apaige · 2008-09-13 19:16:28

m9u is nothing like mpd - no gapless playback, no seeking, nothing.

coarseSand · 2008-09-14 05:54:30

For interfacing with X (keybindings and the disappearing music player), you're better off going through a configurable wm like Openbox.
...which I use already, and have actually hacked and recompiled to suit myself better. cool

Good choice, now it's just time to mess with rc.xml. I recommend you check out Urukrama's blog, he has some good ideas for Openbox keyboard shortcuts.

Space wise, I recommend you just pick up a 250gb - 320gb (Edit: 750gb!!) drive and try to condense things into that. They're about 100$ now wherever you are, and the breathing room is most appreciated by me, since I just came from a 100gb laptop. I'm not sure how small the drives you're working with are, but you might want to just drop the cash for the extra space.

Edit: Wow, good thing I went and checked. 750 GB drives are down to 119$ now? Cripes.

Last edited by coarseSand (2008-09-14 05:57:27)

Skofo · 2008-09-15 05:16:55

Seriously, the best programmers are the ones that dislike pretty much everything anyone has ever designed. Go make one and post it here!

dav7 · 2008-09-15 07:15:49

Skofo wrote:

Seriously, the best programmers are the ones that dislike pretty much everything anyone has ever designed. Go make one and post it here!

Noes!

coarseSand wrote:

Good choice, now it's just time to mess with rc.xml.

rc.xml is awesome

And I have some keyboard shortcuts set up already - it occured to me one day that dragging the very edge(s) of a window is just plain dumb. There are some rules or something in HID (human interface design) that dictate that smaller objects translate to a greater distance or something, and I agree with all that - "focusing" on small resize grippers is stupid! So when I want to resize a window I hold down Win+Shift and drag near the "area" of the window I want to move. So the middle-right-ish area of the window will resize the right hand part of the window horizontally, the right-bottom-ish area will resize the window both horizontally and vertically, etc. It's great.

You're probably really interested right now so here's the required code to make it go:

      <mousebind button="S-W-Left" action="Drag">
        <action name="Resize"/>
      </mousebind>

Put that in your <mouse> -> <context name="Frame"> section, and then give it a whirl. Don't be afraid to see how far into the window you can drag with it still working

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-09-15 07:17:28)

sehwoo · 2008-09-15 16:14:50

I think there's already something built in (like, comes in rc.xml by default) that does that.
Alt+right mouse button == resize
Alt+left mouse button == move
I might have changed something, but it should be something like that

btw, hi dav7

xd-0 · 2008-09-15 18:19:16

Yup those keybindings comes in the default rc.xml

What would be really nice is to combine mousebuttons eg. left-mousebuttom + right-mousebutton = resize or perhaps using the extra mousbuttons for that.
If you use the mouse to resize, then why not use it only, without the ketboard.

coarseSand · 2008-09-15 18:49:39

Yup, alt+right lets you resize your window in Openbox, as well as GNOME and Xfce iirc. It's almost as ubiquitous as Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, at least on Linux.

And for the love of god Skofo, we don't need any more music players.

Arch Linux

#26 2008-09-11 23:01:25

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#27 2008-09-12 13:43:53

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#28 2008-09-13 01:17:38

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#29 2008-09-13 03:38:54

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#30 2008-09-13 08:58:05

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#31 2008-09-13 14:34:08

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#32 2008-09-13 16:24:37

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#33 2008-09-13 19:16:28

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#34 2008-09-14 05:54:30

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#35 2008-09-15 05:16:55

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#36 2008-09-15 07:15:49

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#37 2008-09-15 16:14:50

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#38 2008-09-15 18:19:16

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

#39 2008-09-15 18:49:39

Re: I'm looking for a new small, efficient media player.

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