Announce: New versions of erlands plugins

[erland]

Yes, they have (and always had).

I'm guessing you run 7.5.* ?

I suspect your server.prefs file contains this row because you have previously used a nightly release that supporting SQLite as database backend:
autorescan: 1

You will need to either remove this line or change it to:
autorescan: 0

Custom Scan currently doesn't do automatic rescan if automatic rescan is activated in SBS, the reason is that automatic rescan can happen very often and the Custom Scan scan operation can take some time. Hopefully there will be some way to fix this in 7.6, but I'm not sure yet. However, if you are running a MySQL based 7.5.* release, simply changing the above line in server.prefs should make it work correctly again.

[dip]

Thanks for your quick response.

Now I understand what happened. In the past, I used to use the testing branch of SC. However, some time ago I switched to the unstable branch since I needed some new features and at this time the testing 7.5.1 version was pretty stable.

With the 7.5 release unstable was switched to 7.6 and at this time I unintentionally installed the 7.6 unstable version (since an upgrade was indicated to be available and I did not realize that this update will switch my installed "unstable" 7.5.1 to 7.6).

However, there were problems with the 7.6 version and I switched back installation to the testing branch which is now the 7.5.1 version.

It seems that from the intermediate installation of 7.6 the autorescan entry was kept in the server.prefs. I have now removed this entry and now automatic rescan of CustomScan works again. Thanks for your help!

Another question: I use CustomScan and CustomBrowse for browsing classical music, different libraries (which I have defined for my children) and e.g. for browsing titles by a single letter "A-Z" structure.

While CustomBrowse works very well on my Squeezebox Classic and Boom, browsing is drastically slower on my Controller. E.g. entering an album or interpret branch defined with CustomBrowse for a separate library defined with MultiLibrary takes about 10 seconds compared to less than 1 second for the standard album or interpret branch. This is only on the Controller, on the Classic I do not feel any difference.

My son now wishes for a Squeezebox Touch for birthday and I am wondering whether browsing through CustomBrowse on a Touch is also as slow as on the Controller or as fast as on the Classic. Is the slow browsing depending on the jive platform (which means that CustomBrowse is also slow on the Touch) or is the reason e.g. the wireless connection of the Controller (so there would be no problem on the touch since I would use a wired connection)?

[erland]

Another question: I use CustomScan and CustomBrowse for browsing classical music, different libraries (which I have defined for my children) and e.g. for browsing titles by a single letter "A-Z" structure.

While CustomBrowse works very well on my Squeezebox Classic and Boom, browsing is drastically slower on my Controller. E.g. entering an album or interpret branch defined with CustomBrowse for a separate library defined with MultiLibrary takes about 10 seconds compared to less than 1 second for the standard album or interpret branch. This is only on the Controller, on the Classic I do not feel any difference.

My son now wishes for a Squeezebox Touch for birthday and I am wondering whether browsing through CustomBrowse on a Touch is also as slow as on the Controller or as fast as on the Classic. Is the slow browsing depending on the jive platform (which means that CustomBrowse is also slow on the Touch) or is the reason e.g. the wireless connection of the Controller (so there would be no problem on the touch since I would use a wired connection)?

Is the standard browse menus provided by Logitech also slow on the Controller ?
Does it show more information about each item in the menu in Controller compared to the Classic/Boom interfaces ?
How many songs/artists/albums do you have in your library ?
How many items are shown in the menus that are slow ?
Is it only menus that contains a lot of items that are slow ?

[dip]

Is the standard browse menus provided by Logitech also slow on the Controller ?

No, the standard browse menus are much faster (sometimes about 10 times)

Does it show more information about each item in the menu in Controller compared to the Classic/Boom interfaces ?

No the information is the same.

How many songs/artists/albums do you have in your library ?

I have 12672 songs, 593 artists and 925 albums in my complete library. 11685 are non-classical songs, 903 are classical songs and there are additional 84 songs which are opera songs for which I have defined a separate library.

How many items are shown in the menus that are slow ?

In order to have classical music separated from non-classical I have defined with MultiLibrary two different libraries, one comprising all classical music and the other comprising all non-classical music, and a third library comprising operas.
With CustomBrowse I have then defined an artist and an album browse structure which are identical to the standard artist and album browse structure except that they are restricted to the non-classical library (to avoid that classical music is listed when browsing the artist and the album menus). For the classical music I have a separate, different browse structure.

When I enter the first level of the browse menus by pressing right on the Artist or on the Album menu item it takes about 8 to 10 seconds on the controller until the artist list or the album list is displayed when using the CustomBrowse menus. When I use the standard artist or album menus it takes usually less than a secondt until the artist or the album list is displayed.

In addition I have defined a browse tracks menu shown an A-Z list on the first level (this is one of your standard menus) which is also restricted to the non-classical library. Entering the first level (showing the A to Z) is fast, but entering the second level showing the track titles takes also up to 10 seconds. I guess it takes the longer the more tracks are to be displayed.

In addition there is a problem that scrolling through a large list does only work up to a specific entry, then it stops (I can scroll backwards but no forward and the further entries are even not shown). I then have to wait some time (can take up to 30 seconds or so) and only then I can further scroll through the list.

Is it only menus that contains a lot of items that are slow ?

Yes, it seems that the problem increases with the number of items which are in total stored under the browse structure. I just tested to enter the "S" list of my tracks which took about 13 seconds. Entering the "X" list took less than 1 second. In the "S" level there are about 1200 tracks but in the "X" level there are only two.

[erland]

When I enter the first level of the browse menus by pressing right on the Artist or on the Album menu item it takes about 8 to 10 seconds on the controller until the artist list or the album list is displayed when using the CustomBrowse menus. When I use the standard artist or album menus it takes usually less than a secondt until the artist or the album list is displayed.

Could you try to enable debug logging on "plugin.custombrowse" in SBS Settings/Advanced/Logging and then enter one of these menus and post the server.log file afterwards ?

It's a good idea to disable the logging when you are finished because it will create huge log files if you have it active all the time, it will probably also affect the performance a bit.

[Mnyb]

Hi I have recently begun to try use your plugins .

And now I experiment with ratings :-) I have 1840 albums to rate It will take a while before my ratings impacts the playlist creation.

Here is some enhancement req for you .

it would be nice to be able to rate whole albums from the controller and Touch.

It would be nice with an patched set of NP screens that also shows the ratings.

It would look cool with the rating stars showing up on the left pane in sbs web-UI in the NP track list.

here is some Questions :

Is there any point in rating the tracks via the tags ? I see that trackstat keeps so much more data anyway ?

mp3tag makes the "RATING MM" and "RATING WMP" Tag avaliable to me for flac files.
I've set trackstat to rate from 1-10 .
Now which tag do you prefer and how is it scaled vs the trackstats 1- 10 or 1- 5 ratings.

will these be picked up without the use of Custom Scan ?

[erland]

it would be nice to be able to rate whole albums from the controller and Touch.

From where would you like to do it ? From the TrackStat menu or from the standard Albums menu ?

It should be possible to put it in the context menu shown when you hit the Add/More button.

It can currently only be done from the TrackStat web interface.

It would be nice with an patched set of NP screens that also shows the ratings.

I'm waiting for someone else to provide some rating star graphics, Custom Clock should already support this kind of items but none has done a style that contains it yet.

I'm not sure I like the idea of patching Logitech's now playing screen, it can definitely be done but I suspect it might change a bit between different releases making it hard to make a stable patch.

It would look cool with the rating stars showing up on the left pane in sbs web-UI in the NP track list.

That' already possible today, you just have to setup a title format in SBS Settings/Interface that contains one of the TRACKSTAT title format keywords, for example:
DISC-TRACKNUM. TITLE (TRACKSTATRATINGDYNAMIC)

Is there any point in rating the tracks via the tags ? I see that trackstat keeps so much more data anyway ?

In my opinion the only reason to write them to the track is if you want the ratings to be shown in some other software than iTunes and MusicIP. iTunes and MusicIP can already be synchronized with TrackStat using the import/export modules provided through the Custom Scan plugin.

mp3tag makes the "RATING MM" and "RATING WMP" Tag avaliable to me for flac files.
I've set trackstat to rate from 1-10 .
Now which tag do you prefer and how is it scaled vs the trackstats 1- 10 or 1- 5 ratings.

You need to look at the tag names and actual values it writes, mp3tag sometimes shows something user friendly but writes something completely different to the file. You can send me a sample file if you like me to check it.

Generally speaking, the "Rating Tag" import module in Custom Scan will pick up any rating and you can configure the maximum rating value. As long as it has a linear scale it will be converted correctly into TrackStat ratings.

The fact that mp3tag calls its tag "RATING MM" and "RATING WMP" worries me a bit because it might mean that it creates a POPM ID3 tag instead of a vorbis tag which is suitable to FLAC files. So I would test this on some test file to make sure I knew what it does before you start using it.

will these be picked up without the use of Custom Scan ?

Yes, if you have the "Rating Tag" scanning module in Custom Scan activated.

It can only pickup a single vorbis FLAC tag, so you have to decide which one to use and use the same rating scale in all files where it exists.

Please note that "Rating Tag" will overwrite any ratings in TrackStat, so if you have changed a rating in SBS, you will need to somehow make sure it is written to the music files else it will be reset to the old value the next time you peform a scan. There is no plugin available for SBS as I'm aware of that writes rating tags to the music files, TrackStat and Custom Scan definitely doesn't do it.

Anyone that likes rating, should take the time and vote on the following enhancement request:
http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=142

[Mnyb]

Context menu will be perfect..

[dip]

Could you try to enable debug logging on "plugin.custombrowse" in SBS Settings/Advanced/Logging and then enter one of these menus and post the server.log file afterwards ?

I enclose my zipped server.log file. I did the following steps on the controller:

After waking up the server I entered the CustomBrowse Album menu which took about 10 seconds. Then I returned to the main screen and entered the CustomBrowse Artist menu which took also about 10 seconds. Then I returned to the main screen and entered the "Title by characters A-Z" menu. To enter the level showing only the single characters A...Z took less than one second. Then I scrolled to the character "S" and entered this submenu which took about 13 seconds.

I then returned to the main menu and entered the standard Album menu (which comprises even more albums than the CB Album menu since in the standard menu non-classical and classical albums are shown). This took less than one second. Then I returned to the main menu and entered the standard Artist menu which took also less than one second.

Is the log helpful or should I try anything else?

[erland]

Is the log helpful or should I try anything else?

Yes, very helpful. Now I just need to get some time to investigate how this can be optimized.

Do you have the same performance problems in the web interface ?