Author Topic: Music player for FLAC files with multiple columns for albums? (Read 12313 times)

HankFriedman · « **on:** August 01, 2013, 11:15 PM »

Hi! I just spent hours trying to find a music player that will both:

1. Play FLAC files

and

2. Has multiple (snaking) columns listing the albums in the music library.

Basically, I want to see all of the artists in a listing, and I have too many to show in one column.

Has anyone seen this feature?

superboyac · « **Reply #1 on:** August 01, 2013, 11:40 PM »

foobar?

HankFriedman · « **Reply #2 on:** August 02, 2013, 12:22 AM »

I installed foobar but can't see how to get multiple artist columns.

Can you?

kfitting · « **Reply #3 on:** August 02, 2013, 06:20 AM »

Look for a plugin called "facets." Not sure if it requires the "Columns UI" plugin... I dont use either, but know its possible.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #4 on:** August 02, 2013, 10:47 AM »

I am finding Foobar very rough going.

I've been staring at the Facets wiki page for a while, and cannot figure out how get it to work.

I placed the facets.dll in the root folder of foobar, and enabled layout editing mode, and can see a "Library Viewer Selection" in the right pane, but in the album list on the left, I can't seem to have any access to facets.

I will keep trying, but if anyone out there can help, I'd appreciate it.

skwire · « **Reply #5 on:** August 02, 2013, 12:11 PM »

I placed the facets.dll in the root folder of foobar
-HankFriedman (August 02, 2013, 10:47 AM)

Close foobar and put the facets.dll in your foobar/components folder. Start foobar, and you should now be able to access the Facets interface from the Library > Facets menu. Furthermore, you can integrate the Facets interface into the main UI as well.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #6 on:** August 02, 2013, 04:10 PM »

Dear Skwire,

Thanks!

I was able to get Facets operational.

Unfortunately, even though it has a multiple columns feature, it doesn't allow wrap-around of artists, only multiple columns per pane.

So I'm still searching for a solution.

But thanks for getting me far enough along to find this out.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #7 on:** August 02, 2013, 05:11 PM »

To make it clear, I want the list of artists to continue from one column to the next, in whatever music player can do this.

so far I haven't found any that can.

skwire · « **Reply #8 on:** August 02, 2013, 07:38 PM »

I don't think you're going to find what you want because I don't think there is a way to do it properly in an interface. Think about it. At what point do your columns stop and start? Are you saying that the visible height of a column determines the number of entries in a given column? That is, no vertical scrollbars in any columns? If so, what if the number of artists exceed the available space in the last column? Where does the overflow go? I'd think your only option would be to increase the number of entries per column by reducing the font size but, of course, you can only reduce it so far.

FWIW, I've NEVER seen what you're describing and I've tried scads of players over the years.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #9 on:** August 02, 2013, 07:41 PM »

Dear skwire

You fully understand the issues, and yes, there would have to be some mechanism for expanding the number of columns as the music collection expanded OR a different method of displaying the artists name, for instance:

What about a music player that had the play-stop-pause buttons on the top of the screen and left the rest of the screen for displaying artists (i.e. in a large space) with scroll bars for overflow.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #10 on:** August 02, 2013, 07:43 PM »

Even Windows explorer panes show multiple columns and scroll bars simultaneously in the available space

skwire · « **Reply #11 on:** August 02, 2013, 10:53 PM »

What about a music player that had the play-stop-pause buttons on the top of the screen and left the rest of the screen for displaying artists (i.e. in a large space) with scroll bars for overflow.
-HankFriedman (August 02, 2013, 07:41 PM)

Even Windows explorer panes show multiple columns and scroll bars simultaneously in the available space
-HankFriedman (August 02, 2013, 07:43 PM)

Yes, I know. It's a matter of putting a listview into "small icons" or "list" mode. However, you don't "play" an artist folder. You play individual music files so, at some point, you're going to have to browse to that level of a given folder structure. Designing an interface to do that is sort of like re-inventing the wheel since most any file manager can do what you're describing. I mean, what's wrong with using, say, Windows Explorer to browse through your file structure and then loading up what you want in whatever player you feel comfortable with?

HankFriedman · « **Reply #12 on:** August 02, 2013, 11:14 PM »

Yes, you're right. If there was a player built into an explorer replacement, that would completely do the trick!

Is there?

skwire · « **Reply #13 on:** August 02, 2013, 11:26 PM »

There are several third-party file managers that will play audio files directly within their interfaces. The problem that you're going to run into is that they do not have any sort of playlist handling. That is, they will play a single file just fine but don't offer any mechanism by which to queue up multiple files for playback. In other words, this type of functionality is mainly meant for quickly previewing a file.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #14 on:** August 02, 2013, 11:33 PM »

If they allow selecting several files at once (with shift or CTRL) that might be enough.

I've been searching for them and couldn't find any yet, so if you could point me to one or two, I'd appreciate it.

skwire · « **Reply #15 on:** August 03, 2013, 12:07 AM »

If they allow selecting several files at once (with shift or CTRL) that might be enough.
-HankFriedman (August 02, 2013, 11:33 PM)

All the ones I've seen only play one at a time with no queuing ability.

I've been searching for them and couldn't find any yet, so if you could point me to one or two, I'd appreciate it.
-HankFriedman (August 02, 2013, 11:33 PM)

XYplorer is one.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #16 on:** August 03, 2013, 12:08 AM »

I have that one, I'll test it.

Thanks!

HankFriedman · « **Reply #17 on:** August 03, 2013, 12:17 AM »

Yes, it works fine.

And unlike media players, it doesn't work nearly as well in handling other functions in playing music.

I'm going to keep searching for what I'm looking for.

Who knows, I might find it!

tomos · « **Reply #18 on:** August 03, 2013, 01:55 AM »

Directory Opus will play one track (in it's Viewer).
If you select multiple tracks, only the last selected one gets played.

Oups - that's mp3. It doesnt play flac out of the box (probably can be organised, but no good for your requirements anyway).

superboyac · « **Reply #19 on:** August 05, 2013, 08:41 PM »

Oups
-tomos (August 03, 2013, 01:55 AM)

Please say that was on purpose!

HankFriedman · « **Reply #20 on:** August 10, 2013, 03:13 PM »

I checked out several more players, including MediaMonkey and Jaangle, but so far no joy.

I guess most people are fine using the scroll bar, and don't need or want to see all of the artists at once.

Anyone have any suggestions?

x16wda · « **Reply #21 on:** August 10, 2013, 07:46 PM »

I don't do flac or mpc, but would something like this work for what you have in mind:

Sometimes when I watch videos with MPC I find that I want to add some more videos to the playlist so that’ll they run after the video I’m watching. This can be done from the program, but you’ll have to muck about with opening the playlist and browsing through the programs little “Browse…” feature. It’d be very convenient to be able to add videos, songs, etc, to the playlist by just right clicking on them in Explorer (Like you’re able to with Winamp). Well, this is possible thanks to the command line switches MPC has.

In Explorer goto Tools -> Folder Options and select the File Types tab. Select the file type you want to enable this for (for example .avi) and press Advanced. Press New. As Action type in:

Enqueue in MPC

and as Application type in:

"C:\WINDOWS\mplayerc.exe" /play /add "%1"

That is, if that’s where your Media Player Classic installation is located. If you installed to another directory, you need to adjust the above line to fit your installation. When done editing, press OK three times to get out of the menus.

That’s it! Now you should be able to right-click on any .avi file and select “Enqueue in MPC” and the video should be added to MPC’s playlist. I suggest you also add this Action to the following file types: .avi .mp4 .mpg .m2v, since those are all fairly common for video files.
-------------

The text implies that Winamp will let you add to the playlist from Explorer too. If your favorite player has a command line interface with appropriate switches then you could probably modify this process.