Quick Tracks ML Plugin (rightclick playlist menu on scrolling title)

[Hawk]

When you rightclick on the scrolling title I would like to have a playlist menu to apear.

[YtseJam]

If you're using the [bundled] Jump to File plug-in, upon right-clicking the scrolling title you get a "jump to file" option there which is basicly the same as opening the PL inorder to pick a different song and, IMO, faster to use.

Or, did you mean you want the load/save/new options from the PL to pop-up there?

[Hawk]

No, what I mean is that a track list becomes visible, so I can change songs very fast.

Dream Theater fan are you? I was present at the fanclub gig in Rotterdam. Great concert!

[YtseJam]

But what if your PL is really long? Not a viable solution for quick access to tracks, IMO.
I think the current method with JTF is good, but to each his own...

And yes, I'm indeed a sworn DT fan.
I have never been at a concert of theirs, unfortunatly. Coming to Israel doesn't seem to be at the top of their To-Do list, heh.

[Hawk]

Originally posted by YtseJam
But what if your PL is really long? Not a viable solution for quick access to tracks, IMO.
I think the current method with JTF is good, but to each his own...

Indeed I disagree; you could have submenu's for each option. I know it works because I have used it when I had QCD:



This is the only feature I miss with WA

[DrO]

Originally posted by Hawk
No, what I mean is that a track list becomes visible, so I can change songs very fast.

the only problem i can see with something like this is what happens when you have a large playlist? (as YtseJam pointed out).

for small playlists i can see how ti could be useful but it's large tracks that concern me (can't say how qcd does it since i've never used it)

-daz

[Hawk]

Well you can see it in the picture. You can group tracks on albums, year or alphabet. Its a killer feature. It may be a bit hard to imagine, but once you are used to it you can almost not do without it, believe me.

[DrO]

Originally posted by Hawk
Well you can see it in the picture. You can group tracks on albums, year or alphabet. Its a killer feature. It may be a bit hard to imagine, but once you are used to it you can almost not do without it, believe me.

a bigger piccy would help, i can't figure out much from that

-daz

[Hawk]

OK

Here it is

[crack1ty]

i made one (still in alpha/beta stage) but do to lack of interest i havent worked on it for a couple months. Here is a link to the current plugin and a screenshot

http://crackity.com/quicktracks.html

[DJ Egg]

Hey. Cool looking plugin crack1ty

Lack of interest? Surely not!

[crack1ty]

Originally posted by DJ Egg
Hey. Cool looking plugin crack1ty

Lack of interest? Surely not!

Thanks DJ Egg.

I made a post in developers forum a while back (was hoping to get some developers opinions/help on it) but not a single response. Got side tracked and it has started to gather dust. Anyhow pulled up the code today and made a couple improvements that will make the menus respond faster hopefully.

Still have a small memory leak/stomp that is a bitch to find (I think I am doing something I am not supposed to with memory passed over from the ML) which causes winamp to crash on occasion(hence alpha). Am sure I can figure that out perdy quick if I actually work on it.

i really think this plugin could be as handy as the jump to file plugin thingie once/if completed.

everything would be sooo much simpler though if winamp had:
- an internal queue that played before the playlist (like in 3 from what i hear) - I have my own version of it somewhat working, but would be nice to have a queue that was shared between plugins and winamp
- a quick interface with ML to get just the list of songs in the PL.
- a message that gets called when the media library changes
(i am pretty sure all of these have been requested already and possibly during my leave, these could have been addressed...)

[electricmime]

well... it sometimes locks up for me(it seems to do it randomly)

and when i choose albums(the main thing i want it for) it plays the album backwards

but other than that, it looks nice

also.. could you add an option to add your 'main library'(or add " quicktracks->list of library things->the way you have the list set up")

[DrO]

Originally posted by crack1ty
everything would be sooo much simpler though if winamp had:
- an internal queue that played before the playlist (like in 3 from what i hear) - I have my own version of it somewhat working, but would be nice to have a queue that was shared between plugins and winamp

there are two apis in 5.04 that will help to control things a bit more easily (ie you can specify what track is played from the current playlist). i am planning on an interface with jtfe to handle all of these things so it appears like native support (a bit like how gen_hotkeys works).

that will be needed for a 1.0 of jtfe once timed queuing is in so i can work on the whole interface system in one go. may be helpful, not sure

-daz

[Hawk]

Hey Thanks crack1ty

There's the "traitor" as Chicups at the QCD forum is calling me now

http://www.quinnware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2002

He's a good guy though

Thanks for the plugin! I'll be checking it out. And I'll be getting back to you about it.

Thanks for developing this!

[Hawk]

MMmm I like what you are doing so far. How do I display the songs in my playlist via QT?

Also your plugin does not seem to work with modern skins. Or am I missing something?

[crack1ty]

My plugin needs a skin that shows the file playing menu that shows:

• View file info...
• Jump to file...
• Jump to time...

Basically I watch for that menu to be called then I add my stuff to it. I think I will add an option in my config as to which menu to add the info to (ie for skins that dont have the file playing menu, can add it to the equalizer menu).

FYI - the default modern skin works great.

Setting it up.

I am a programmer that likes functionality more then being user friendly, which leads to a tad bit less then friendly setup. Anyhow.

Display the config window which is under the ML plugin list then hit configure.

You have a name for each QT submenu group, which will be displayed in the menu if this group isnt the main one.

associated to each group, you specify the type: Playlist or ML. This means where to get the list of songs.

Next specify how you want the submenus to look by specifying what to show at each level. for Genre->Artist->Song, add Genre first, then Artist, and lastly Song to the list.

Lastly choose a QT group as the main one (if you want)

I stick to a 2 group setup. One that queries the Library and one that queries the Playlist and I make the Playlist one main so that the main menu shows all the artists in the Playlist. screenshot

I am in process of fixing the memory issue (found the problem and am hoping for a speed increase too but we will see) and I also need to fix the playing of songs from the media library without changing the playlist.

[electricmime]

why is it that when you have it on a-z->artist->album->title and you click on the album, it doesnt play it? you can right click, but it doesnt play the album

also, if you dont include album, would it be possible to have the tracks not done by track number...(and instead be done in alphabetical order)

and can you add an option: enqueue and play... this is one of my bigest problems with the ml... i dont want to override my playlist, but i dont want to enqueue.. i just want to be able to enqueue it to the normal playlist and THEN play the song/album (that and the fact that you cant enqueue albums through the right click menu... like you can "play all files from surfer rosa" but if you fix that backwards album thing, then i will no longer need the ml/album list to play albums)

[crack1ty]

OK added a new version to my website. (www.crackity.com/quicktracks.html)

Fixes:
Memory issues resolved afaik (may be a mem leak or something minor somewhere)
Several speedups.
Added the Enq. and Play option.
Will now enqueue/play in the order of the submenus.
Left clicking on albums or whatever will now do the play action.

Um and prob other stuff that I just cant think of right now......

Anyways, hopefully some people try out this version.

[Ikarus7]

hell this is the best plugin ive seen for the last half year.

its absolutely great, but there are two points which i still miss, but they seem to be done easily ....

1. Access.
A hotkey for your plugin menu is needed. Or more possibilites to click on. maybe the bolt. But a hotkey would be good.

2. Speed is there any way to improve the speed ? somethimes it takes some time to open the menu ... (6000 files over here)

but all in all - just great.
lack of interest ? *laughs
;-)

[Ikarus7]

another idea(s) :
Artist AND Titel as a single Menu Item.
and :
Possibility to split like this :
ALBUMS -> A-Z (of albums !!!!, but not that important) -> ArtistANDTitle.

[Hawk]

Great stuff crack1ty

Works great here. I only use the playlist feature but enjoy it very much. Thanks for making a fantastic plugin!

[crack1ty]

Originally posted by Ikarus7
another idea(s) :
Artist AND Titel as a single Menu Item.
and :
Possibility to split like this :
ALBUMS -> A-Z (of albums !!!!, but not that important) -> ArtistANDTitle.

Ya I am definitely game for adding more display options. (I coded it up so that this should be relatively easy)

I thought about the Artist/Title thing already and I couldnt decide what a good separater would be. Are there certain characters that arent allowed to be used in id3 tags? Would doing these be fine:
Album / Title
Artist / Album
Artist / Title

or what are some other characters besides / that may be appropriate?

I will also make A-Z work for albums and titles.

Access: I planned on making a choice of how to access it in the config. (need to see what all is feasable). Sounds simple but I didnt really code it to be added to multiple menus.... we will have to see.

Speed: This is going to be the limiting factor and I think to an extent nothing can be done about it. My goal is to make it barable with my music collection (23000+ songs).

Speed of ML Queries is great. Well more then acceptable I think.

Speed of Playlist Queries on the other hand is relatively slow. I have messed around with a bunch of different methods and they all seem to be relatively the same.

I think I may just post the function that I have that returns the list of songs that match the given requirements to the Development forum and see if anyone there has some great ideas.

My fantasy is to have some sort of PL bit that each entry has and then could just add something to the query string like "artist = 'Beck' and playlist=1"

[inthegray]

everytime i turn winamp off and back on, the plug-in doesn't work until i open my preferences window. strange behavior...

otherwise, i think it's a pretty good plug-in.

[crack1ty]

I have a new version that anyone who wants to try out can.

Just get it from my website: http://www.crackity.com/quicktracks.html or grab it from the attachment below (note: if you previously had a version installed, you may need to remove the ml_qt.ini in the plugins dir.... I am not going to worry about previous version compatability until I actually release it)


There are lots of improvements from my last post, including most of the requests given in this thread.

I have a feeling there is will be a lot more stuff to do before I submit this plugin but any info I get from you all will help tremendously.

Thanks.

[crack1ty]

hmmm that is annoying.... previewing your response kills the attachment.... anyhow here it is:

[DJ Egg]

Excellent update crack1ty
I'm impressed

One little suggestion...
maybe make it a bit more n00b friendly by having a default configuration,
so it works straight out of the box
(eg. songticker pop-up menu > A-Z main menu; artist > album > title submenus, query from library, default left click action = qt enqueue).
Naturally, this would also mean including ml_qt.ini in a zipped package.

Hmm... just had a crash in ntdll.dll
(not sure if it's related or not though).

btw, would you like me to move this from wishlist to discussion forum?
Chances are more people will see it there...
I could also maybe rename the topic title to:
"Quick Tracks ml plugin (rightclick playlist menu on scrolling title)"
or similar...?

[crack1ty]

DJ Egg:

I could see an occasional crash happen still. All the ones I have noticed I have fixed, but that doesnt mean way too much. I threw in the memory leak callbacks for MSVC++, there were a couple lines returned but they didnt make too much sense (at work I am used to stack traces and a whole lot more detail). So am looking at 3rd party software that does this (looking at heap agent and rational purify right now).

As for defaults, that should work (at least for me it is working). Just delete ml_qt.ini from the plugins dir and you should see the defualt ones the next time you load winamp. If you had the old ini file in your plugin dir still, that could have caused the problems you are seeing. I forgot/ignored worrying about file io updates between releases so far (I do have version numbers for the file io though if I care to use it)

I agree it doesnt belong in Wishlist any more though (besides me wishing that the software side was done lol). I will trust your judgement on that though.

Thanks again for looking at it though

[Ikarus7]

is there a hotkey for the quicktrack menu ?

[crack1ty]

The previous link is now outdated so dont download it.

For now on just use http://www.crackity.com/quicktracks.html until I submit it.

Updated the build yet again. I love Rational Purify! Helped me find a couple more memory errors that I thought justified making a new build. Besides the memory fixes, there are no other changes. I have decided to start implementing the versioning as well.

Ikarus7:
no hotkey as of yet, and probably not any time soon. Seems like the standard hotkey plugin could be added to to support standard popup menus maybe? :P anyhow not my worry as of now. I have done hotkey proggies before so that is not the problem...

[crack1ty]

ok, looks like it has been dled 130 times from my website.... so to be safe I should be able to say at least 75 people have tested it out.

Does anyone have any insight, or should I just go ahead and submit the plugin to winamp?

Known issues:
- moving items up and down in the qt playlist doesnt work
- there is no hotkey
- speed/resource concerns (would like to hear more opinions about this one)

I plan on fixing at least the qt playlist issue and if anyone finds any other issues, those too....

[Carno]

Hi. I'm one of those who dl'd it. Twice actually, once to get the updated version. It worked just fine on my machine & it's great that there are so many config options. There are something like 1800 different performers in my library, so that view stacked column on column without any speed or functionality troubles, & I didn't notice it being too demanding on resources.

Best,

[siebe83]

Great plugin, crakity!

I like it!

Some suggestions:
- Make the prefs box more user-friendly
For instance, I made a new menu type, and set it as I wanted. After that, I found out the menu title didn't really cover the settings. It would be nice to be able to rename a menu type.
Also, for the menu level list, maybe implement drag&drop to move level easier (so when you forgot one, you can add that level and easily move it to the first position, instead of having to delete all levels to change the first one...)
Third, you made all drop-down boxes editable (ie I can type something in the 'left mouse action' box, while this doesn't make since, since it's only two options possible: beginning & end)
- Would it be possible to have an extra option for the query? Now you can choose of ML or PL. It would be nice to have it being able of handling views (for instance I have all my music in one view; I don't like to have other crap from my ML in the quicktrack plugin). Only if it's not too complicated

Keep up the good work!

[Logy]

Good works, A-Z Artist features make you easy to search artist name...

[crack1ty]

Originally posted by siebe83
Some suggestions:
- Make the prefs box more user-friendly
For instance, I made a new menu type, and set it as I wanted. After that, I found out the menu title didn't really cover the settings. It would be nice to be able to rename a menu type.

I now let you type into the combo box and there is a rename button

Also, for the menu level list, maybe implement drag&drop to move level easier (so when you forgot one, you can add that level and easily move it to the first position, instead of having to delete all levels to change the first one...)

I added an up down arrow that moves the selected type that direction

Third, you made all drop-down boxes editable (ie I can type something in the 'left mouse action' box, while this doesn't make since, since it's only two options possible: beginning & end)

Good call, simple fix

Would it be possible to have an extra option for the query? Now you can choose of ML or PL. It would be nice to have it being able of handling views (for instance I have all my music in one view; I don't like to have other crap from my ML in the quicktrack plugin). Only if it's not too complicated


Will need to look into this more. I could easily add a query string for each QT type, which would mean you just have to copy the query string over from the view. Will need to research if it is possible right now to get the query string of a view. Hmmm now that i think about it, I will go ahead and add the query string then if I figure out the other part, I can add a dropdown, which by selecting, will just fill in the query string for you.

All these changes arent downloadable yet..... I am really tired right now which means I probably have a stupid bug somewhere and forgot to test that feature out of forgetfulness.

PS thanks for your suggestions. The move up down idea was the only one I had thought about.

[siebe83]

Thanks! Great!
I now see where I typed 'since' (the first) while I meant 'sense', but you got the idea, I think.
I'll wait patiently for the update

[crack1ty]

I put up another version on my website.
http://www.crackity.com/quicktracks.html

Changes:
- Can rename entries now
- Can move sub-menu types up and down in the list box
- Added a query feature for ML only*.
- Added option to choose a ML View from a pulldown box and it will fill in the query box with its query**
- Restricted input in all fields to allow only proper things. IE only numbers or only allowed to choose not type in.... Still need to limit edittable boxes to a set character length so I would advise you not to do things greater then 512 characters right now :P

To Do:
- Still need to add Up down functionality to QT Playlist
- Add More sub-menu choices.... ie rating, number of times played, etc

* the reason that the query functionality is only for ML menus is partially out of ease of coding and I dont think it would be used very often for PLs would it? Might look into making it available for PLs but not top priority.

** I am actually just parsing the gen_ml.ini file to get all the views. Will need to remove the Imported playlists because that isnt a query.

[crack1ty]

ok I just submitted the plugin to winamp(can get it from my site until it gets reviewed). All feedback that I was given has either been implemented or dealt with in one way or another.

Thanks for the help so far, and I would still love to hear some more feedbck

[D&B]

Thank you for making this, its very useful.

[Hawk]

crack1ty I would love to comment on your quick track plugin, but I can't seem to find it. Could you give me a link?