Winamp For Android 2.0 Beta discussion

[DJ Egg]

Winamp For Android 2.0 Beta

http://www.winamp.com/labs/android

A clean install is recommended
(ie. don't install it straight on top of latest 1.4.x version)

Please read Winamp Labs info first.

__________________________


Discuss all things 2.0 Beta in this thread only. Thanks.

[MrSinatra]

hi all,

Egg asked me to post this here, and i'm flattered. i hope it is helpful to the devs and the users. please feel free to ask me for any further clarifications:

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so, my understanding is nullsoft is going to go to WFA 2.0 fairly soon, yes?

if so, it would REALLY be a good idea to FIX some of the serious under the hood issues with WFA, syncing, and so on, so they are forever fixed going forward.

here is what you need to do, imo:

1. you need to change the terminology throughout the winamp desktop app to be CONSISTENT. CD Ripping (which doesn't) and "the droid path" (which does) should BOTH use <albumartist> for "album artist" and <artist> for "track artist" ...any other confusing inconsistentcies should likewise be stamped out.

2. the user can already make adjustments to prefs, etc, for USB transfers. the user can NOT do the same for wifi xfers. why? again, this should be changed, wifi xfer settings should be equally exposed, which leads to:

3. both the USB and the wifi xfer settings should be controlled by the same pref[s]. so what i mean is that it shouldn't matter if the user uses a USB cable or wifi to do things, there should be ONLY one set of prefs to control BOTH types of xfers. otherwise, the USB ones risk being divergent from what the app forces via wifi ones.

so to put it another way, the method of xfer should not matter, the prefs applying to xfers will be universal/global to any type of xfer, and all methods of xfer should be controlled by the one set of prefs for that (i.e. winamp to droid).

4. the defaults are currently terrible for the prefs. they should look something like this, (where G is the Droid):

G:\Music\<Albumartist>\<Album>\## - <Artist> - <Title>

when the music is put on the device in this way, it properly organizes albums, including VA ones, on a droid/WFA.

the current default, for wifi, is close to that. but for USB, it uses track artist! thats just silly. and thats the kind of divergence u get out of the box, as well as a crappy default.

5. in WFA, albums need to show that they are "by" a TPE2 value (album artist) not a TPE1 (track artist) value, which is never correct for VA albums.

6. use TPE2 when TPE2 is present. if TPE2 is blank, then look for TCMP=1 tags, and if present, assume albumartist=VA (common in itunes files); and if not present, use TPE1 to = TPE2. FYI: gracenote commonly assigns an AA value.

7. copy all art files in a given album folder (even for only one xfer'd track) to the phones same album folder.

7a. give me a way to "refresh artwork" on WFA the way i can on the desktop app.

8. i know this is "8" but its a really important one! WFA should respect AA tags, and allow users to switch, on the fly, browsing between a list of artists (track artists) or AAs (album artists). and browsing albums should ALWAYS be done via album artists > albums, OR album artists > year > albums.

thats all i can think of for the moment.

imo, with 5.7 in beta and WFA 2.0 right around the corner, there is no better time than now to fix the issues listed above and have this all straight going forward for the rest of time! these aren't minor issues, a lot of of users have posted about this which means a lot more users are out there just "giving up" on an incredibly messy current implementation.

[MrSinatra]

i would elaborate for point 6 that it would really be helpful for the winamp for desktop app to add in the ability to edit TCMP frames in the ML for id3, COMPILATION fields for Vorbis, etc. there are only 4 states:

no frame or field present at all
no value present for a frame or field
=1
=0

only " =1 " is affirmative to stating 'is a comp' status. "no value present" really isn't a valid state; it is better to simply remove the field altogether.

i am NOT saying the desktop app should do anything to its own behavior, beyond sensibly allowing editing these values & sorting its column & being a smartview criteria, etc; however, to properly support portable devices, esp by apple, winamp should not only allow editing of these values, but also be aware of them when setting "comp flags" for xfer to devices that may not recognize such tags.

it is a fallacy for winamp to think (behave as if) only those things with <albumartist> tags = to VA are comps.

[robdog2004]

only thing i see might be a issue for some
if bought pro through the app it will not recognize the pro if clean install

[DJ Egg]

@robdog2004

Hey Rob. Yeah, that's because the apk needs to be up on Google Play for those features to work.
There was a beta pass feature in the beta builds which enabled those features, but the Google API has changed, so it's now broken...
Stay tuned. We're working on it ;-)

[robdog2004]

good to hear egg
now the other thing for me is to get the cloud fixed
(you should see that in your email)

[MrSinatra]

on a completely different note...

something i always see frustrating users, is that they can't control what gets scanned and what doesn't.

the WFA app needs a pref to allow the user to specify as many multiple locations for it to scan as they want, and include external or secondary memory cards, (as opposed to internal memory only) and the specifc folders on them they want in any of those memory locations.

on the other hand, the app also needs a pref, prob on by default, so it can be told to NOT use any media except that which is explicitly specified as described above. this would keep ringtones, VMs, etc, out of the apps ML.

[robdog2004]

i agree with those features
as not all phones store memory on internal or external cards by default
the option to index from multiple folders would be nice
example mine stores files on external memory card and it sees that only
yet i know there are files stored elsewhere on the phone, though i dont want them played or in my library, i would like for it to at least recognize they are there just in case i would ever like for them to be in my library sometime in the future

[MrSinatra]

on a related note, people don't want their album art showing up in the phones "Gallery" with their normal pictures.

so maybe the art files can be marked "hidden" or something?

[osmosis]

on a related note, people don't want their album art showing up in the phones "Gallery" with their normal pictures.

so maybe the art files can be marked "hidden" or something?

Pretty easily done, just needs a .nomedia file in the directory containing the pictures.

[MrSinatra]

but wouldn't that apply to the mp3s also in that folder? or is there txt in the .nomedia file that specifies pictures?

[robdog2004]

finding out i have a limited memory issue with my phone (only 100mb or less free of ram at times)
right now if i try to use cloud with the android the phone stops responding
if i try to fast forward to a different song it goes back to the begining of the current song
song list mixes both what is on the phone and online in the cloud
some may not want this, rather cloud songs be in their own view
other thing didnt notice was a option to use cloud only on wifi
unless that is already default
phone is samsung stratosphere (first edition) with android 2.3.6
when my upgrade comes (which is soon) will be able to go to android 4.1 and a faster phone

[ALWX65]

Pretty easily done, just needs a .nomedia file in the directory containing the pictures.

Could you elaberate on how to do this in a new thread. I posted a thread on this picture in galley topic and have had no replies yet. Thanks !!!

ALW

[DJ Egg]

There's a new update on Winamp Labs

Winamp-2.0.1070-Beta-prod-cloud.apk

Still very beta, but slightly less so than the last build :-)
Bear in mind, that it's mainly a proof-of-concept build for showing-off Winamp Cloud integration.
More features (from 1.4.x and newer) will be coming eventually....

The new build also includes various bug fixes. Thanks for all the reports! Keep them coming!

[robdog2004]

love the view feature in songs
though a major issue for me
click on songs if cloud db is disabled and get "whoops winamp has crashed, sending report"
sometimes get the error message in playlist mode
other thing when using enqueue all in songs it'll say
"0 songs added to playlist"
this is clean install