feedback from new version 2104

[Barry4679]

The new default view|skin looks great.
It all seems much more stable and is very quick.
It is getting harder to find problems
I now prefer MM5 for browsing.


1: A crash when updating an album's properties
I opened a custom index. ->Album ... in Art View
I saw that an album was not displayings its art, there was a little broken image type of icon ... I went into Properties for the album, and selected the Artwork tab.
This showed that the artwork was connected OK (?) ... that was expected as everything is connected OK in MM4, where everything was imported from ... so I selected ApplyToAllSelectedTracks, and pressed OK to accept what I saw on-screen.
MM5 crashed. ...Exception ID: 763847D4 .... MM5 window is all white. ... could not close MM5, so had to end via Windows task manager
After restarting I went to the same view. I saw one other album not connected to its artwork in MM5.
I "changed" this one as per above also. This time no problem. ... A difference was the first one was Classical music album.


2: Grid view of AlbumArtist and Artist has unexpected thumbnails
I have OptionsLibrary|Appearance set to Ignore Prefixes (ie. "the" etc).
The display is sorted as expected, (ie. ignoring "The"
But the thumb displays "Th", which looks confusing ie. for The Rolling Stones it is "Th" rather than "Ro"
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sio0spxm5dli8 ... E.png?dl=0

3: Sorting of Grid view is complex and restricted
Manage Views ... <Add New>
View Type the selection dropdown is sometimes restricted to just List View ... why?
Sorting: the only options are sort by Release Date or Album ... why?
If I am in Album View, maybe I wanted it sorted by AlbumArtist ... by Date Added ... or Custom1 ... etc
What are the secondary sort subtext numbers telling me? I don't understand them.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0wfhwe7bauqir ... s.png?dl=0
If I click on a column to resort, the subtext numbers disappear, never to be seen again .. ?

4: The menu's back button is not bound to the back button on my mouse
ie. I can backtrack via the menu's back icon ... but the back button on my mouse is ignored ... it works ok in a browser

5: Purpose of the "MyLibrary" and "Online" toggle when displaying an album is unclear
Accessed Via Music->Albums
Some albums have track differences in the "Online" view. ... what is the intention of this facility?
After toggle back and forth a couple of times the track list on the MyLibrary panel stays empty.
I can't think what the point is, as the displays don't easily allow me to identify what the differences are
I do see an Add To Library menu item ... I took this option for a track which was only in the Online tab .... It caused Error ID 36A51673 multiple times, and the MM5 UI remained frozen ... after this happening several times, I took your Restart Option. The MM5 UI went all white, and I had to end MM5 via the Windows task manager.

6: Default action for doubleclick
Where can I customise this outside Party Mode?

7: The "home" page is hard wired, ie. not completely affected via Edit Collection for the index.
Go to a custom index, and edit the collection. In Tree nodes: subtract Artists, and add Album Artists.
The Node is affected as expected. The menu ribbon on the "home page" is affected, but the body of the home page is not.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fr2nj5lvblhmy ... e.png?dl=0

8: Google Play Music
download of AllTrack metadata from my GPM library is now so fast ... roughly 40k tracks in about 30 seconds I think!
The track counter in the status bar froze at 5,200 file 392mb ... but the metadata of all tracks were downloaded
If I close the tab, without signing off, and then go back to GPM|AllTracks it takes forever. MM5 has been spinning its wheel for over 30 minutes, still no results ... like it is doing 1 track at a time.
I take the MM5 option sign out of GPM ... now everything seems frozen ... maybe still trying to load the metadata of 40,000 tracks, one track at a time?
I tried closing the window, and it gave me finally gave me Exception 46CBC0C3 ... and an Application Error dbox "Not all close queries events are finished!!"
When I reopen MM5, and log back into my GPM library,and reload AllTracks .. I can see all my GPM tracks, but can't play any of them (I can play from my local library ok)
in previous MM5 versions I could download tracks from GPM, but not with this version of MM5. .... I request a download, but get no response.
I found if I ask to add the track to my MM library, I could then get some feedback from a download request ... "unknown protocol" .... I get this message exactly once ... further requests give no error.
I can see that the download task has been started at the Web\Downloads node
The request created an Artist, and an Album, folder, but no tracks were downloaded
I can pause|restart|cancel the download job ... but still get no downloads, presumably due that error that it is not telling me about any more.
I am confused about the download location. At the GPM log on panel there is a setting for "save downloads to" ... I supplied a path, but it seemed to be ignored ... the Artist|Album folders I mentioned above were created at my path set at Tools|Options|Downloads?
There is no way to cancel an endless download. ... the wheel spins, and MM5 is effectively useless while this happens ... and sometimes it happens endlessly.
There needs to be some visible log for successes and/or problems ... both for log on attempts and download requests
The GPM Album&Tracks view has a hardwired Artwork and "Album" column ... hardwired because i can't delete it via Choose columns. ... The "album" column seems to contain a summary view of Album|AlbumArtist|DateRelease .... in MM4 a click on that would have selected the album ... this doesn't happen in MM5, although I can get the same thing via the null ArtWork placeholder ... this may confuse MM4 people
For every album, for all Artists, the albums are all represented, and separated ... but they all each have the details of the same 1st album in my collection in this summary column.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/psfwhmx9k92f4 ... y.png?dl=0
Are GPM developments proceeding, or have they been suspended due to announcements re merge into Youtube?
Is there any point me continuing to test part of MM5? ... Is it ready to test yet?

[malkierian]

Confirmed for #2. #1 I ended up having a different problem, where just clicking properties for any Album Artist would cause a crash. I'll be making a post about that later. Seems this update broke Album Artists entirely.

Been wanting #4 for a while, just haven't posted because it seemed so... Small compared to other issues.

As for #6, there's a default action option under Options -> Player. Two of them to change, actually. Don't know if that's what you were looking for or if you were wanting more.

[PetrCBR]

Hi Barry.

2: Grid view of AlbumArtist and Artist has unexpected thumbnails

Will be fixed in next build.

3: Sorting of Grid view is complex and restricted
Manage Views ... <Add New>
View Type the selection dropdown is sometimes restricted to just List View ... why?
Sorting: the only options are sort by Release Date or Album ... why?
If I am in Album View, maybe I wanted it sorted by AlbumArtist ... by Date Added ... or Custom1 ... etc
What are the secondary sort subtext numbers telling me? I don't understand them.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0wfhwe7bauqir ... s.png?dl=0
If I click on a column to resort, the subtext numbers disappear, never to be seen again .. ?

First about subtext numbers ... these numbers shows order of sorted columns ... so when you order by Album Artist, Album then you will see number 2 beside Album text so you know Album is a second sorting critera (you can sort by more than one using Ctrl key).
About Manage Views ... you can choose only available view types for current view.
Sorting in grid view is hardcoded now.

7: The "home" page is hard wired, ie. not completely affected via Edit Collection for the index.
Go to a custom index, and edit the collection. In Tree nodes: subtract Artists, and add Album Artists.
The Node is affected as expected. The menu ribbon on the "home page" is affected, but the body of the home page is not.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fr2nj5lvblhmy ... e.png?dl=0

Yes, Home and all collections view are hardcoded (recent artists, albums, pinned items ...). In Edit Collection you can define what nodes are shown in media tree.

[Ludek]

6: Default action for doubleclick
Where can I customise this outside Party Mode?

It was just renamed in course of https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=4800
i.e.
b) Default 'double-click' action --> Default action (since both double-click and ENTER apply to this setting)

I'll rename it in the Party Mode config too.

[Ludek]

8: Google Play Music
......
in previous MM5 versions I could download tracks from GPM, but not with this version of MM5. .... I request a download, but get no response.
.....
Are GPM developments proceeding, or have they been suspended due to announcements re merge into Youtube?
Is there any point me continuing to test part of MM5? ... Is it ready to test yet?

There must have been changed something recently.
I've tested playing/downloading from GPM last week and it worked.
Now. I am getting HTTP 403 on attempt to get stream url for streaming/download.
I'll investigate it as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14839

[jiri]

5: Purpose of the "MyLibrary" and "Online" toggle when displaying an album is unclear
Accessed Via Music->Albums
Some albums have track differences in the "Online" view. ... what is the intention of this facility?

My Library view shows what really you have in your Library, while the Online view shows what MusicBrainz reports about the album (i.e. it has nothing to do with what you actually _have_ in your Library).

Jiri

[Barry4679]

First about subtext numbers ... these numbers shows order of sorted columns ... so when you order by Album Artist, Album then you will see number 2 beside Album text so you know Album is a second sorting critera (you can sort by more than one using Ctrl key).

Thanks ... that looks great. I didn't know about MM's ctrl key trick re column sorting, which makes me feel kind of stupid after all these years.

The Date column doesn't work as expected ... ie. a second click, to toggle ascending|descending, is broken .... the heading indicates the the display is being resorted, but display does not change.

Sorting in grid view is hardcoded now.

The grid slicing and dicing options available by the Column Browser is a workable alternate I suppose, ... because the contents of the column browser columns are sorted.

BTW It is a pity that the contents of the \Column Browser lists are not affected by the Tools|Options|Library|Appearance|IgnorePrefixes options. ... can this be fixed?

5: Purpose of the "MyLibrary" and "Online" toggle when displaying an album is unclear
Accessed Via Music->Albums
Some albums have track differences in the "Online" view. ... what is the intention of this facility?

My Library view shows what really you have in your Library, while the Online view shows what MusicBrainz reports about the album (i.e. it has nothing to do with what you actually _have_ in your Library).

But what is it for? ... What do you think that people would you use it for?

I guess that I could use to to detect differences between my album version and the community consensus version. .... But it is near impossible to do that with the current one_screen_at_a_time implementation.

And even if I do detect a difference, how does that implementation help be do anything about it?

[jiri]

But what is it for? ... What do you think that people would you use it for?

I guess that I could use to to detect differences between my album version and the community consensus version. .... But it is near impossible to do that with the current one_screen_at_a_time implementation.

And even if I do detect a difference, how does that implementation help be do anything about it?

The idea is to shown the _complete_ album version, regardless of your library content. It's probably even more useful for Artist, where it offers the complete discography.

I agree that a diff view might be useful, but we deferred this in order to wait for more feedback and consider the best way to implement it.

Re. what to do about differences -- currently you can browse the online content and play it (from YouTube). There isn't an online shop integration or anything like this, but this might change in the future.

Jiri

[blopplop]

Just now installed version 5-2014. Can't believe I'm just now trying 5 for the first time. LOVE the interface. Haven't had much time to fool around with it, but will report back whatever I find. I'm a long time user who has MM running almost all day. I'm looking forward to this upgrade.