iPeng support thread

[pippin]

Ah, OK. iOS 4.1 is fine.

[New Daddy]

That really should not be. Especially being _ahead_ is confusing. I also never heard of this issue before.

Is it also ahead of what's really playing? With Napster I often see my SBs being a track _behind_ but I believe in these cases iPeng is wrong, too.

Is this a playlist with remote tracks (Rhapsody)?

1. Yes, it's ahead of what's really playing. I think just once or twice iPeng caught up (to be exact it let Rhapsody catch up). But more often than not, iPeng will stay ahead by one track through the end.

2. By "remote" tracks you mean tracks not residing in the SqueezeCenter (= my desktop server)? Yes, they are Rhapsody playlists. I almost exclusively listen to Rhapsody playlists with my SB Boom.

[pippin]

Hm. Will have to investigate.

This is _really_ strange. I don't have the slightest idea of what iPeng even _could_ do wrong to get this result.
I mean: it asks the server for the currently playing track. So if the result is wrong it should be the server reporting something wrong. For the NowPlaying screen saver iPeng doesn't look up stuff in internal playlists or something, it shows the information straight from the server notification.

Now if the server reports something wrong, I'd expect it to do this through _all_ interfaces, not just iPeng.
Really weird.
I have to see whether I can get Rhapsody to play something again here (there have been bugs with MySqueezebox.com preventing this for quite a while) to reproduce this.

May I ask you to file a ticket on this?
https://trac.penguinlovesmusic.de/trac/ipengnat/

You don't happen to have any SqueezePlay based device (Radio, Touch, Controller) to verify what happens on these devices (they use the same interface as iPeng)?

[New Daddy]

Hm. Will have to investigate.

This is _really_ strange. I don't have the slightest idea of what iPeng even _could_ do wrong to get this result.
I mean: it asks the server for the currently playing track. So if the result is wrong it should be the server reporting something wrong. For the NowPlaying screen saver iPeng doesn't look up stuff in internal playlists or something, it shows the information straight from the server notification.

Now if the server reports something wrong, I'd expect it to do this through _all_ interfaces, not just iPeng.
Really weird.
I have to see whether I can get Rhapsody to play something again here (there have been bugs with MySqueezebox.com preventing this for quite a while) to reproduce this.

May I ask you to file a ticket on this?
https://trac.penguinlovesmusic.de/trac/ipengnat/

You don't happen to have any SqueezePlay based device (Radio, Touch, Controller) to verify what happens on these devices (they use the same interface as iPeng)?

I've been trying different things, and I just noticed that the LCD display on my SB Boom is also often one track ahead when I listen to Rhapsody playlists. I think this error is on the part of Rhapsody, not iPeng. Sorry I overlooked this possibility. The LCD display on my SB Boom is so small I rarely pay any attention to it. That's the very reason that I was looking for an iPad-based remote.

[New Daddy]

Yes, Rhapsody playlists are a mess, they do everything different than it's done in any other place in SqueezePlay.
I thought that tapping "play playlist" would indeed not do what it says but instead open the playlist but it doesn't seem to work. I'll investigate.

I'm digressing, but just out of curiosity, do you have Rhapsody in Germany? I thought it operates only in the US due to copyright issues. I have friends in Asia that complain they don't have access to Rhapsody.

[pippin]

No, there's no Rhapsody over here.
I have a test account with which I can browse it but not play, which is why I have to play a few tricks if I want to test playback, which is always a bit complicated which is why I avoid it where I can

For plain music listening there are better alternatives out there anyway, these days, IMHO.

[TerryHawkins]

I am about to get an iPod touch (4th Gen) and will be getting iPeng to control my Squeezeboxes, just had a quick question...

After reading through this thread I see that the caching of cover art has recently changed. All of my artwork is around 750x750 at approx 100-200kb. I am running SB Server on a QNAP TS-109.

How fast will the artwork display in iPeng when browsing the list of albums, will it be instant?

Also, if the cover art is bigger, will it look better on the screen or is 750x750 plenty big enough?

[pippin]

After reading through this thread I see that the caching of cover art has recently changed. All of my artwork is around 750x750 at approx 100-200kb. I am running SB Server on a QNAP TS-109.

How fast will the artwork display in iPeng when browsing the list of albums, will it be instant?

Caching itself hasn't changed, what has changed is that iPEng no longer reads a lot of artwork ahead.
When you browse your albums the first time the artwork display will not be instant, the server first has to re-scale the artwork and transmit it to iPeng.
Later on it will usually be very quick, if you don't scroll fast it should be there instantaneously. If you scroll fast it can show up delayed but this is usually pretty quick.
Definitely faster than the Apple Remote or the web interface.

Also, if the cover art is bigger, will it look better on the screen or is 750x750 plenty big enough?

iPeng uses up to 960x960 on the iPod 4/iPhone 4 but generally 750x750 should be fine, the "typical" resolution (if you don't select to use oversized artwork in landscape) will be 640x640.

750x750 is fine, if you consider getting an iPad and want to be perfect you'd use 768x768

That said: if you can _get_ bigger artwork it may be worth while, who knows what the future will bring...

[TerryHawkins]

Caching itself hasn't changed, what has changed is that iPEng no longer reads a lot of artwork ahead.
When you browse your albums the first time the artwork display will not be instant, the server first has to re-scale the artwork and transmit it to iPeng.
Later on it will usually be very quick, if you don't scroll fast it should be there instantaneously. If you scroll fast it can show up delayed but this is usually pretty quick.
Definitely faster than the Apple Remote or the web interface.

What happens after a rescan? Does it load all of the artwork again?

I don't rescan that often so it shouldn't affect me either way, just curious to know.

[pippin]

What happens after a rescan? Does it load all of the artwork again?

Yes.
If it's a "normal" rescan that doesn't really matter. Artwork loading itself isn't slow.
A "Clear and rescan" is something else because then the server has to re-scale all the artwork (the server's artwork cache is cleared then).