Thanks. I noticed the fan site in your profile. Learned 2 new good things today! MM user since around year 2

GMGJ wrote:I have had a smartphone for 2 weeks now. So maybe I am missing something. Nexus 6, latest updates. MM pro. How do You EXIT, quit, close, ?

I have a nexus 6 also. You don't really need to close MM. It will shut down on it's own if you are not playing music. If you really want to force it closed press the square button at the bottom of your phone screen (app switcher button) then press the X next to MediaMonkey (or swipe right) to close.

I have had a smartphone for 2 weeks now. So maybe I am missing something. Nexus 6, latest updates. MM pro. How do You EXIT, quit, close, ?

I have been using MMA 1.1.2.0415 extensively whilst travelling and would like to offer the following comments to help the development team:

⦁ Why do some Classical Albums present 8 to 12 times (with tracks split between these) . . perhaps it is presenting us with "Album Artist" instead of "Album (name)" ?

⦁ Please spread the stars across the full width of the display as we had trouble selecting the right place when on moderately bumpy roads
Also, whilst selecting the star rating area it is too easy to take it out of the mode where the stars are shown.

⦁ Please display the star rating whenever a list of tracks is present (just above the time?), as planned soon, it will be immensely useful.

⦁ On my Samsung NOTE-2 phone, the track "number/of" font is (probably) one size too small to see easily. Same with the track times.

⦁ The progress line looks good but is too finicky to use readily to select a place further forward or back during PLAY. The NEXT button can be too finicky too.

* The symbols for "Random" and "Repeat" are not intuitive
. . . when they are OFF it would be best if they were a pale gray colour instead of bright white.

⦁ The swipe action to get to Lyrics looks very promising for further development, but I'd like to offer some input as to what additional pages should look like.
Is there a summary somewhere as to what such enhancements are planned?? EG (for the currently playing song):
** A page to tick boxes for Occasion and Mood, drawing the options (including their order) from the existing choices set in MMW.
** Then include Tempo. Star Rating too, if there is still room on the same page.
** A page crammed full of TAG info?

** Could Custom5 be set to be a "Star rating for our partner" who, more than likely, would be helping to do the rating when travelling in a car?

* It is not clear which is the current ALBUM when you get back to that page. It needs something distinctive to be changed so that you immediately know what has just played.

* It became hard to know which tracks still needed rating towards the end of the trip. A star filter would have been good to just show albums with unrated tracks, and then to hide the rated tracks. Of course this is just for when we are vetting new music to see what tracks we like.

⦁ I like the way MMA remembers what is playing when you "exit", but sometimes you do want to be sure to close the program. There is no evident way to do this.

Thanks again . . am enjoying the facilities that you have provided and look forward to seeing what is coming up,

Perhpas this last post of mine has not been seen by the dev team, so I will
post a tidier version to the "Beta Testing, Bugs & Feature requests (mma)" forum as a new post.

I'd like to add that:
* The symbols for "Random" and "Repeat" are not intuitive
. . . when they are OFF it would be best if they were a pale gray colour instead of bright white.

Thanks,

Hi Rusty,

Back from the trip now and am pleased to say that the Sync went perfectly from MMA phone to MMW computer.

I have since tried your tip and am pleased with the way we can have multiple AutoPlaylists happily working together. Great!

I have made some notes as we travelled that might help your enhancement lists:

⦁ Why do some Classical Albums present 8 to 12 times (with tracks split between these . . is this Album Artist?)?

⦁ Please spread the stars across the full width of the display as we had trouble selecting the right place with moderately bumpy roads

⦁ Please display the star rating whenever a list of tracks is present (just above the time?), as planned soon.

⦁ On my Samsung NOTE-2 phone, the track "number/of" font is one size too small. So are the track times.

⦁ The progress line looks good but is too finicky to use readily to fast forward or backward during PLAY. The NEXT button too.

⦁ The swipe action to get to Lyrics looks promising, but I'd like to offer some input as to what additional pages should look like.
Is there a summary somewhere as to what enhancements are planned?
** A page full of TAG info?
** A page to tick boxes for Occasion and Mood, drawing their options (including their order) from the existing choices set in MMW.
** Then include Tempo, which could be a slider to save space. Stars too if there is still room.
** Could Custom5 be set to be a star rating for our partner who, more than likely, would be helping to do the rating when in a car?

⦁ I like the way MMA remembers what is playing when you "exit", but sometimes you do want to be sure to close the program. There is no evident way to do this.

⦁ When I synced (after adding ratings via the phone linked to car stereo by BT), I was daunted by an MMA question to confirm deletion of hundreds of tracks! This would have been better if presented with a tree of Albums, then tracks. Anything to help make it clear that MMA was correct with it's vague suggestion. I expect that the ticks should already be ON at this stage, and that I should simply confirm delete in the usual way.
** This process ended with this message:
*** Updated 56 tracks
*** Deleted 226 tracks
*** Updated 1 playlist(s) from server
** I am left with no idea why the 56 tracks were updated? I am almost certain the database on the server has been dormant all of that time whilst away, IE, between syncs.

* It is not clear which is the current ALBUM when you get back to that page. It needs something distinctive to be changed so that you immediately know what has just played.

* And finally, it became hard to know which tracks still needed rating towards the end of the trip. A star filter would have been good to just show albums with unrated tracks, and then to hide the rated tracks.

Thanks again . . am enjoying the facilities that you have provided and look forward to seeing what is coming up,

Hi Rusty, thanks for that, I have tried to keep things simple by not trying more than one actively synced AutoPlayList. Good to know that that option is supported.

My one AutoPlaylist is working as expected as you describe thanks.

Jim Kelly

Thanks. We're looking into the best options. In the meantime, please confirm whether Auto-sync (following the config that I described, solves the problems you're experiencing).

As far as star ratings: we're going to be adding them to the next version of MMA (and additional fields in the future).

As far as prepping for your drive: I'd suggest creating an Auto-sync list of unrated tracks, and another one of rated tracks, and sync them. Then when you're on the road you can rate the tracks in the 'unrated tracks' playlist, and when you get back and auto-sync, they'll automatically be removed from that Auto-playlist (and into the other one).

That doesn't replace Sorting, but it's a good workaround until it's added.

-Rusty

That's it.
"Send to" is enough . . . perhaps a bubble help or similar to say "If you would like to Synchronise . . . "

If you take the time to check all similar traps for beginners, it will be well worth it Rusty, remember that your newbs pay for the development. The combination of MMW and MMA and AutoPlayLists is well worth perfecting, and it seems to me that you have done all of the hard bits!

And please, while you are at it, add the star ratings to all places where tracks are listed on MMA. There is a lot of feedback that this would help with in projects like I are attempting (to rate my MMW music). Next we will need to add the fields of Occasion, Mood, Tempo so that these can be tweaked whilst listening from MMA, but for now doing Star rating thoroughly is so close . . . you just need to display the stars when we are choosing tracks to play.

EG, I am just about to embark on a two week drive and will take the chance to add stars, but without syncing, it will get messy as I try to find tracks that are unrated. At the moment I cannot see how to filter by rating in MMA, surely something others would like?

Thanks for your work again Rusty, I'm hanging in here!

Hi Jim,

Based on your other posts, it sounds as if the dups might also be related to the confusing terminology used in MMW i.e. the fact that 'Synchronize' appears in Send-to > DeviceName (Synchronize) even though such an operation is not the same as an Auto-sync operation.

i.e. if you set up MMA/MMW to auto-sync , and configure the auto-sync to delete all tracks that aren't on the sync list, these problems should go away (though you may have to delete the tracks completely, if artwork is missing).

-Rusty

Lowlander wrote:Are you saying you're doing a wifi sync while the device is attached to the PC with USB? Was MMW also running?

I'm not sure you're meant to wifi sync while USB attached to the PC.

Yes, not so much intentionally, when at my desk I always have connected it because that is how I charge the phone battery and get my photos off . . . so you could be onto something there that could probably explain all of the weird things I am experiencing. Hopefully, it can be sensed in the code (and dealt with) because it is reasonable to expect that to happen to others too.

When attempting any sync, I intend to have MMA running (and MMW). However, with auto sync as soon as connected 'ticked', I am sure that there were odd times when any combination was inadvertently tried . . . (I have since unticked that option).

Some how I have ended up with three copies of every track on my 32GB mSD card . . . I got a disk full message from MMA any knew that should not be the case. Pulled the card out and checked with Windows, and there they were. All in that very deep music folder, something had added an extra digit to the 2nd and 3rd files to avoid the common file name problem.

So I have now gone through the MMA uninstal/reinstal sequence including deleting that music folder, moved MMA and MMAPRO to the external card, and resynched with only WiFi.

So far everything is working!! I have found another way to charge the phone so I can avoid the USB link.

I did note that the card is formatted with NTFS which gives me another thing to try (FAT32). However, if users are using 64GB or 128GB mSD IIRC, FAT32 cannot be used . . .

Are you saying you're doing a wifi sync while the device is attached to the PC with USB? Was MMW also running?

I'm not sure you're meant to wifi sync while USB attached to the PC.

Can report that by JUST using WiFi to sync, keeping (embedded) Folder.jpg size under 100KB and 500x500 pixels, I have synched about 50 folders with all Albums displaying the ART perfectly .

Thanks for the tips Lowlander, and it has been encouraging to know that you are using these things successfully.

Because I charge the device with a USB cable to the PC, I think some of the USB bugs were presenting when I initiated a WiFi sync . . .

I hope someone at head office is following along with my newb hassles and tidying up the code accordingly. It is all very well to eventually find a way through the maze of possibilities, but I am sure that many folk would give up in disgust way before I have.

Most of mine are larger (and embedded), I'm just showing the settings I use successfully.

Lowlander wrote:I have it set to remove Artwork from tags larger than 1kb and have all other options disabled and Artwork shows for me.

Ahhh,
Most of mine would be above 50KB, I might have to have a squeeze of the bigger ones!
Thanks,