iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

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cmx
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Post by cmx »

Glad to see there was corroboration of the COM hang up. Just creates confusing issues...will be glad when its gone.

The new exe definitely seems to help speed things up.

The note on setting max playlist helped. I think I was causing a lot of problems with too many and too big playlists.

I have a 1k list working well right now.

Question:
With your approach in this app do you think it would be feasible to access your complete library? (I believe you said you have 70K). Essentially utilizing the "Accessible Tracks" playlist. This would be the most desirable scenario for me. As you can probably tell I really don't utilize playlists...I would like the power to browse entire library(121k songs here) and create "on the fly" lists. I was using iTunes and Remote for a 33k subset of my library and it was great. If you think it possible, I'm in for any testing guinea pig torture you need and a "Gold" registration fee.

Iffy current behavior:
Currently, when you select a "smartlist" it immediately loads it as "playlist" and starts playing from first song....it would seem more intuitive if it "loaded" the selected "smartlist" in the "playlist" window and then waited for the user to select the song to start....

Wishes:
UI layout and function to more closely follow "standard" iPhone/iPod...to avoid confusion...AND...it is a good ergonomic design. For example: Sorting...Alphabetical by Album, Artist, Song...


An aside....I actually bought the Teleport/Jaadu app when it first came out in order to control MM from the iPhone....while it "works", it's just too clunky trying to "mesh" an iphone touch interface and WIMP...it WAS funny to change songs on the guys at home while I was out of town...lol.
Melloware
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by Melloware »

CMX,

I just cut and pasted your entire message above to a Feature Requests thread on my forum so I can start tracking feature requests.

http://forum.melloware.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6471

I think the Artist Album browsing is a HIGH priority for future releases! 121K songs!! DAMN!
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nohitter151
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by nohitter151 »

Melloware wrote:
hansi54 wrote: I totaly agree, what a cool App.

About this COM thing:
I just realized that after exiting MM, which was initially started via iMonkey, its not possible to start iMonkey again.
Because iMonkey is still running in the background.
Temp solution, Taskmanager, Kill iMonkey, start iMonkey again and enjoy :D
Hmmm it shouldn't though. When I kill MM it kills my iMonkey.exe also. I see the COM error flash for like half a second and then it disappears because I close it. Maybe on different windows that "close COM error" code needs to be different.
When I close MM I get the same results: the COM error pops up then disappears almost instantly. Strange that it's not the same behavior for everyone. Anyway, looking forward to future developments!
MediaMonkey user since 2006
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cmx
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by cmx »

Small update....

Repartitioned with full clean install of Vista...

-COM hang issue NOT happening now....no clue as to why no settings different as far as I know..all software and configuration the samne as far as I am concerned. Vista has been problematic with networking stuff for me...there are still some serious bugs. COM error now flashes and is gone as others have described here.

...I'm almost afraid to mention this NEW one...about as bizarre as I have ever seen...lol
I am not kidding...

When I restart MM with imonkey and then start the iphone app, imonkey has been working ok a little rough, but working...

BUT when I close MM there is a "flash" on the screen and the taskbar...THE FIRST PIECE OF ALBUM ART THAT WAS SENT TO IMONKEY ON THE IPHONE HAS NOW BEEN COPIED TO THE TASKBAR QUICKLAUNCH FOLDER AND A LINK APPEARS ON THE QUICHLAUNCH BAR FOR THE JPEG FILE....

I swear I'm not making it up...has been consistant four times and thru a reboot...lol
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by Melloware »

Great to hear the COM error is gone!!!

As for the JPG. Here is what is happening. Anytime an album cover is inside a Tag I have to atually extract it to a file on disk before I can then encode it and send to the iPhone. I put that JPG in the same folder where the iMonkey.exe is located. Something tells me you don't have a shortcut to iMonkey.exe on your quicklaunch bar you might have the whole EXE there? Just a guess...

I run mine from C:\Tools\iMonkey\
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cmx
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by cmx »

Yeah the COM thing...who knows...after doing clean full Vista install and NOT using Sony's image I was able to cut out almost 20 services running...all the crap they load on new computers is pretty bad.


JPEG...yeah exactly...when I was loading the shortcut to the Quicklaunch bar I copied the full exe. Works fine now.
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by Melloware »

cmx wrote:Yeah the COM thing...who knows...after doing clean full Vista install and NOT using Sony's image I was able to cut out almost 20 services running...all the crap they load on new computers is pretty bad.


JPEG...yeah exactly...when I was loading the shortcut to the Quicklaunch bar I copied the full exe. Works fine now.
Yeah new PC's its ridiculous what crap they load on there. I use BlackViper's site for cleaning and disabling all unnecessary Vista Services and my machine got 40% faster I kid you not. And thus I also didn't have the COM error.

Glad we got the JPG thing figured out!
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Re:

Post by Melloware »

cmx wrote: Iffy current behavior:
Currently, when you select a "smartlist" it immediately loads it as "playlist" and starts playing from first song....it would seem more intuitive if it "loaded" the selected "smartlist" in the "playlist" window and then waited for the user to select the song to start....
I just release Server EXE for iMonkey 1.1.0.86 to correct this.

If you don't want playlists to immediately start playing when you switch to one edit the value REG:\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Melloware\iMonkey\PlaylistStartPlayingEnabled to 0 from 1
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cmx
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by cmx »

Mello thanks for updates....

The functionality still seems a bit rough and counterintuitive...possibly...

...and this is all with PlaylistStartPlayingEnabled to 0.

First- the current song should not stop playing UNTIL a new song is actively selected from the displayed playlist.
as it is when a playlist is chosen from the "smartlist" screen the current song stops...what if I am just "looking around"?

This brings up another design issue that has seemed clunky to me..."smartlist/playlist"...why smartlist?

Why not simply do away with the "smartlist". Just have "playlist" button.
-When "playlist" is selected display the list of playlists.
-When a list is selected move to a display listing the contents of the slected playlist...
-if a song in list is selected then the selected playlist now becomes "now playing" list and the selected song begins playing and the screen displays art/player.
*You will of course need to rework the "Now playing" button response...
-possibly it could be a "toggle" between the art/player and the "now playing" song list....

This will:
-free up some screen space
-move the player to a more intuitive response
-possibly give flexibility when adding sorting capability....lose "smartlist" and "info" and add "Album" and "Artist" possibly...

just some ideas...(really don't want the song to stop when looking at other playlists tho)
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by Melloware »

AH. When you select a smartlist it automatically loads that smartlist and starts playing it. So even if it didn't Stop the song it would have just started playing the first song in the playlist. It wasn't meant as a browser...it was meant as selecting a new playlist to start playing.
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cmx
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by cmx »

Thanks for response, hopefully you will consider the stuff.

What is a "smartlist"?

It's funny...old school/new school etc...imonkey is obviously designed from a "playlist" user perspective. I've never really used playlists other than "on the fly" or just adding to the "now playing" queue. My first instinct is to "browse" everything and play an "album"....
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by Melloware »

cmx wrote:Thanks for response, hopefully you will consider the stuff.

What is a "smartlist"?

It's funny...old school/new school etc...imonkey is obviously designed from a "playlist" user perspective. I've never really used playlists other than "on the fly" or just adding to the "now playing" queue. My first instinct is to "browse" everything and play an "album"....
I borrowed the term "smartlist" from J River Media Center. Its essentially a playlist but since MM and JRMC playlists can be living or dynamic auto-playlists...JRMC uses the term Smartlist rather than a boring old playlist. So in MM if you have an Auto-Playlist that only has songs newer than 5 days that is a Smartlist in my opinion. It's smart enough to go check for new results everyday!
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cmx
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by cmx »

OK...I think.

So ANY playlist in MM is a Smartlist in imonkey?

ps. Was also wondering how imonkey knew not to try and load Accessable Tracks playlist.
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by Melloware »

cmx wrote:OK...I think.

So ANY playlist in MM is a Smartlist in imonkey?

ps. Was also wondering how imonkey knew not to try and load Accessable Tracks playlist.
Correct, every playlist or auto-playlist is a Smartlist in iMonkey with TWO exceptions. Playlists with 0 tracks get omitted (since they have no tracks) and the Accessible Tracks since mine contains 70,000 songs there is no point in trying to load that to the phone or click it. So I omit that list on purpose.
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cmx
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Re: iMonkey - iPhone/iPod Touch Client for MediaMonkey

Post by cmx »

Cool, so what you have labeled as:

"Playlist" on imonkey app is actually "Now playing" list in MM terminology...actually it does not necessarily show a playlist at all if you are viewing something that was loaded by MM itself....

And, what you have labeled as:

"Smartlist" on imonkey app is actually "Playlists" list in MM terminology

And what you have labeled as:

"Now Playing" on imonkey app is actually just a return button to the player and art itself.

Personally would stick with MM terminology first and iPod second...no Jriver or whatever. Kinda confusing. Possibly consider...

Remove current "Now Playing" button completely.
Replace the button label "Smartlist" with "Playlists"
Replace the button label "Playlist" with "Now Playing" and have it toggle between Art and Nowplaying list, inversely changing icon as iphone does.

Could player controls remain displayed no matter if art or list were displayed? (Again same functionality as iphone/ipod)

Just some ideas that might help the function, feel and ease/understanding of imonkey....

Thanks for the great product. Looking forward to new features and funcionality.
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