MonkeyFlow 1.4

[flashk]

Click here to download:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/637 ... eyFlow.zip

*********************** IMPORTANT ***********************
MonkeyFlow requires version 3.2.0 or higher of MediaMonkey

MonkeyFlow is a 3D interface for browsing your album art, similar to iTunes CoverFlow. I targeted this addon towards multi-core computers with a modern graphics card. It makes heavy use of multiple threads and uses OpenGL hardware acceleration with 4x AA.

Some things to note about the app:

• Before running this on Windows Vista/7 for the first time, you must first run MediaMonkey as administrator in order for the SongsDB COM server to be registered.
• Currently, the app does not detect when albums are modified or removed. You must restart the app for it to refresh the album list.
• The app caches all the art for each album in the %TEMP%/monkeyflow_cache directory. It also creates a log file called monkeyflow.log in the %TEMP% directory.

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Instructions:

To install the embedded version, extract the contents of the zip file (MonkeyFlow.exe and MonkeyFlow.vbs) into your MediaMonkey/Scripts/Auto folder.

Keyboard/Mouse controls:

• Arrow right/left - next/prev album
• Page up/down - Jump 10 albums back/forward
• Home - Jump to first album
• End - Jump to last album
• Mouse wheel - Jump 3 albums back/forward
• Double-click / Enter - Play selected album
• Left-click - Jump to clicked album
• Right-click - Display context menu for additional options
• Escape - Exit application in external mode or exit fullscreen in embedded mode
• Ctrl + [1-6] - Switch to the specified view preset
• Ctrl + Shift + N - Toggle Now Playing mode
• Ctrl + Shift + F - Toggle fullscreen mode

You can also type any text and it will jump to the nearest matching artist for that string

Context menu options:

• Play Now - Play the selected album
• Play Next - Play the selected album after the current track
• Play Last - Add the selected album to the end of the Now Playing list
• Play Shuffle - Randomly insert the selected album into the Now Playing list
• Browse by
  • Library - Display albums from entire library
  • Tracklist - Display albums from current main track list
  • Now Playing - Display albums from current now playing list
• Sort by
  • Artist - Sort albums by artist name
  • Album - Sort albums by album name
  • List Order - Display albums in original list order (only applicable when browsing by Tracklist or Now Playing)
• Appearance - Display panel for adjusting appearance related settings
• Settings
  • Anti-Alias - Enable 4x fullscreen anti-aliasing (must restart MonkeyFlow for changes to take affect)
  • Power Save - Reduce GPU usage by drawing less often (animations won't be smooth). Recommended for laptops or low-end graphics cards.
  • Show Caption - Show the docking panel caption (only available in embedded mode with MM 3.1 or higher)
  • Fullscreen Monitor - Select which monitor to display fullscreen window on (Auto will automatically select monitor based on location of MediaMonkey window)

On the user interface there is a slider at the bottom that allows you to scroll through your album collection.
Clicking the Now Playing button will enter now playing mode and automatically jump to the currently playing album. Manually browsing to another album will exit now playing mode.
Clicking the Fullscreen button will toggle fullscreen/windowed mode.
In fullscreen mode there are controls in the lower left to play/pause and skip to next/prev track.

You can specify additional options by creating a [MonkeyFlow] section in your MediaMonkey.ini with the following values:

• CacheDirectory = Directory to cache album art
• MaxCoverSize = Maximum width or height of cached art. Art above this size will be resized
• ScrollIncrement = Number of albums to increment when scrolling with mouse wheel
• SelectTracksDelay = Delay (in seconds) between cover being selected in MonkeyFlow and tracks displayed in main tracks window (only applicable in embedded mode). Use -1 to prevent MonkeyFlow from modifying main tracks window.
• NowPlayingDelay = Delay (in seconds) between now playing track changing in MediaMonkey and MonkeyFlow jumping to selected album cover.
• AutoHideDelay = Delay (in seconds) for hiding UI elements marked as Auto.
• Font = Font to use for displaying album information.

INI Example:

Code: Select all

[MonkeyFlow]
CacheDirectory = C:\MonkeyFlowCache
MaxCoverSize = 400
ScrollIncrement = 1
SelectTracksDelay = 1.0
NowPlayingDelay = 0.0
Font = arialbd.ttf

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FAQ:

• MonkeyFlow just shows the initializing screen
  Make sure you are running version 3.2.0 or higher of MediaMonkey. If you are using Windows Vista then you need to run MediaMonkey as administrator, then restart MediaMonkey as a normal user and MonkeyFlow should initialize properly.
• MonkeyFlow initializes but all the images show up as blank white squares
  MonkeyFlow uses certain OpenGL features that are not supported by older or low-end graphics drivers. Make sure your drivers are up to date, and if it still doesn't work then you are out of luck. I am working on a work around for this though.

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Version History:

• Beta 1 - (July 25, 2008) Original release
• Beta 2 - (August 1, 2008) Added support for RTL languages, playback controls in fullscreen mode, option to specify cache folder, option to specify max cover size, more logging.
• Beta 3 - (October 3, 2008) Track name displayed in now playing mode, screensaver disabled in fullscreen mode, double-click plays album, ScrollIncrement INI option, small speedup in caching.
• Beta 4 - (November 28, 2008) Added embedded version of MonkeyFlow, cover spacing dynamically adjusts to window size, added context menu for playing album now/next/last/shuffle, window will go fullscreen only on primary monitor.
• Beta 5 - (December 3, 2008) Fixed bug with embedded version where MonkeyFlow would not properly attach itself to docking panel, or would output "invalid flags" error.
• 1.0 - (December 30, 2008) Fixed bug where embedded window would not resize or shutdown properly. Added options to sort covers by album name, turn off anti-aliasing, enable verbose log. Reduced CPU usage when idle. Mouse wheel properly scrolls other MM windows when MonkeyFlow has focus. Albums not in active filter will not be displayed. MonkeyFlow executable extracts files to same folder.
• 1.1 - (March 3, 2009) Update some icons (thanks to gege). Increased brightness of covers. Newly added albums detected. Embedded startup time slightly faster. Text size adjusts to window size. MonkeyFlow works with non-skinned MM. Album art is cached on demand, instead of all at once. Added option for changing foreground/background colors. Added Power Save option. Added Show Caption option. Sort mode is persistent. Accented characters properly sorted.
• 1.2 - (November 22, 2009) Added "Browse by" menu option. Added ability to change view/color/ui settings. Increased startup time. Fixed window offset issue on Vista.
• 1.2.1 - (November 24, 2009) Fixed issue with MonkeyFlow failing to connect to database on startup in certain cases.
• 1.3 - (April 24, 2011) Working with MM4 and improvements to fullscreen mode.
• 1.4 - (May 25, 2014) Added option to change reflection strength. Support for per-user installation. Fixed error when parsing INI options. Fixed issues with filters. Fixed issue with customizing column headers.

[DazB]

Hi,

This sounds promising.

Regarding caching - does this also apply to linked album art?

Daz

[Nebbin]

This looks great. It's similar to the PrettyPictures script by DaledeSilva, but from what I can tell, it's a little closer (graphically) to the original itunes CoverFlow styling.

Have you talked to Dale at all? I know Dale has had some issues with his, but he's also overcome quite a few in the process too. Even though he's coming from a different coding perspective (he uses flash), he might have some ideas of how to get past some of the speed bumps.

Personally, I don't mind these types of album viewers - IF you have a reasonable number of albums. Very large databases tend to bog them down, and I've found their usefulness tends to be reduced in favour of the more detailed views... but then, maybe that's because I'm still in the act of tagging some stuff, and have yet to use MM to simply listen to it all

Good luck with it.

[trixmoto]

It ran ok and showed all of my albums, however it did not show any artwork, no cache folder was created, and the logfile was created but nothing has been written to it. Any ideas?

[FEB]

brilliant. The talent of some people never ceases to amaze me.

Thank you.

A couple of things - I'm not sure what the left-click does (well, it does nothing on mine!), and rather than only being able to play the whole album using the F function it'd be nice if MM could load the CD so that I could play individual songs. ITunes does this by moving the selected album to the top of the tracks list.

[flashk]

It ran ok and showed all of my albums, however it did not show any artwork, no cache folder was created, and the logfile was created but nothing has been written to it. Any ideas?

That's strange, an exception error should have been printed out if it failed to create the directory. Try manually creating the directory before running the program. I'll try to create a new version that logs more detailed info. Sorry about that

[Full_Circle]

I got a lil worried when your thread quoted lots of different specs. Didnt think my junker of a PC would run the app, but it does! Its a pity it doesn't work within Mediamonkey, but otherwise its frickin awesome! Thanks a bunch
Also, I like the name..........MonkeyFlow.

[CoRsU]

Very nice It even works with over 60000 songs. My only concern is the cache, which is quite big as the cover simply be copied without to be reduced. I Hope in the next version, maybe its possible to embed the window in MM - It would be Great

Thx,
CoRsU

[callmetom]

Very Nice - thanks for your affords !

Its what im waiting for !!

The cover flow from dale didn't work for me - but this here is great and looks even better !!

Integration in MM would be fantastic !

Keep up the good work


Ahh - the name MonkeyFLow is cool !

[Avish]

This is wonderful! However, I have a slight problem.

Some of my music is in Hebrew, and has Hebrew tags. Unfortunately, the Hebrew album and artist text is rendered backwards character-wise, i.e. left-to-right (like Latin text) instead of right-to-left (as Hebrew text should be rendered). I suspect whatever it is you're using to render the text doesn't know much about Unicode bi-directionality (surprisingly, the characters themselves render correctly which is good).

I know it's a minor issue that doesn't affect many users, but for us Israeli users it's a dealbreaker.
Could you please look into that? Or rather, tell me what you're using to render the text and I'll look into it myself? I'm sure this is a solved problem, it's just a matter of finding out how to do it correctly.

Thanks,

Avish

[HiveKiller]

This is just what I've been looking for!! Once its integrated into MM my MM experience will be complete.

[flashk]

Regarding caching - does this also apply to linked album art?

Yes, both embedded and external cover art are copied to the cache folder. It makes it easier for my program if all the art is in one location.

[flashk]

This looks great. It's similar to the PrettyPictures script by DaledeSilva, but from what I can tell, it's a little closer (graphically) to the original itunes CoverFlow styling.

Have you talked to Dale at all? I know Dale has had some issues with his, but he's also overcome quite a few in the process too. Even though he's coming from a different coding perspective (he uses flash), he might have some ideas of how to get past some of the speed bumps.

Thanks, for now I completely ripped off CoverFlow, but eventually I would like to experiment with different kinds of visualizations.

I have not used PrettyPictures (I know about it though), so I'm not sure what the issues are. My biggest issue is that I cannot embed the app inside MM. If anybody knows how to embed Python scripts inside MM please let me know.

[flashk]

A couple of things - I'm not sure what the left-click does (well, it does nothing on mine!), and rather than only being able to play the whole album using the F function it'd be nice if MM could load the CD so that I could play individual songs. ITunes does this by moving the selected album to the top of the tracks list.

Left-clicking an album cover will cause it to become selected within MonkeyFlow. If you click the already selected album it won't do anything. Try clicking on an album that is off to the side.

When an album is selected in MonkeyFlow I wanted that album to be selected in MM as well, but I'm not sure how to go about that. Should it be selected in the Albums node, or the Aritst->Album node? I'm open to suggestions on how display the selection within MM.

[flashk]

Very nice It even works with over 60000 songs. My only concern is the cache, which is quite big as the cover simply be copied without to be reduced. I Hope in the next version, maybe its possible to embed the window in MM - It would be Great

Thanks. For my 4000 album collection the cache is around 130 MB, so I never really considered it a problem. How big is your cache folder?