Multimedia hotkeys don't work / Selection / ogg

[rhyhann]

Hello,

I have just bought Everplay and I have found some problems in it :

- The multimedia hotkeys don't work (next/previous), unless play (which launchs iTunes and causes the two programs to conflict)

- When I select a song from an album, the playlist is restricted to this album. When I choose a song, the playlist should still be the previous one

- Ogg vorbis' covers are not shown. Instead of them, there is a VLC icon.

- Genius is not integrated.

Apart from that and other few things I will report, Everplay is great.

[snarb]

- The multimedia hotkeys don't work (next/previous), unless play (which launchs iTunes and causes the two programs to conflict)

This feature broke with the latest OS update, in Everplay as well as every other app I know that uses the media keys. AFAIK, no one has a working fix yet.

- When I select a song from an album, the playlist is restricted to this album. When I choose a song, the playlist should still be the previous one

This is how the "Music" playlist works in Everplay. It only plays one album at a time. All other playlists work as in iTunes.

- Ogg vorbis' covers are not shown. Instead of them, there is a VLC icon.

Do you see the proper artwork images in Finder's cover flow mode?

- Genius is not integrated.

Correct.

[rhyhann]

- The multimedia hotkeys don't work (next/previous), unless play (which launchs iTunes and causes the two programs to conflict)

This feature broke with the latest OS update, in Everplay as well as every other app I know that uses the media keys. AFAIK, no one has a working fix yet.

I'll wait for the next Apple update, then. For now, I'll stick with shortcuts. But why is iTunes still handling multimedia keys, and why does play still work?

- When I select a song from an album, the playlist is restricted to this album. When I choose a song, the playlist should still be the previous one

This is how the "Music" playlist works in Everplay. It only plays one album at a time. All other playlists work as in iTunes.

How can I change this behaviour? I mean, if there were two play buttons there, one for the current behaviour and another one for the behaviour I said, it would be great. For now, it's really annoying. With an advanced search system (by artist, year, album, rating, genre, etc), one could create playlists on-the-fly.

Example: My current mood is to hear nothing but Muse. If I type artist:Muse in the Search field, a new playlist would be created on-the-fly with Muse. Now, if I type Muse in the search field, not only does it also takes the musics with 'Muse' inside, but it also restricts the selection to the album I have chosen to listen to first (and the same thing happens when I don't search for something). With this feature, you can get rid of artist-based (or genre-based) browsing, like Ecoute, for example (which is not really practical, but beautiful nonetheless).

- Ogg vorbis' covers are not shown. Instead of them, there is a VLC icon.

Do you see the proper artwork images in Finder's cover flow mode?

No, but I do see them in iTunes.

- Genius is not integrated.

Correct.

Your answer means that you don't see its integration in the foreseable future, doesn't it ? Well, that's not a big problem for me (I can create playlists with Tangerine or Genius and then save them). And oddly, the random feature of Everplay only selects my favorite songs. Why?

[snarb]

I'll wait for the next Apple update, then. For now, I'll stick with shortcuts. But why is iTunes still handling multimedia keys, and why does play still work?

I don't think they will ever "fix" this, as it was probably meant to prevent third party developers from tampering with the media keys. There was never any official API to do this, AFAIK they are reserved exclusively for iTunes. Everplay (and many other apps) uses a hack to override this, and now in 10.6.2 the hack no longer works. Someone will probably find a new workaround soon enough, but unfortunately it won't be me as I don't have these keys on my keyboard.

How can I change this behaviour? I mean, if there were two play buttons there, one for the current behaviour and another one for the behaviour I said, it would be great. For now, it's really annoying.

Personally I think this behavior is great, but I can see that it might not appeal to everyone. Perhaps a setting could be added to the preferences. A simple workaround is to create a smart playlist with all your iTunes music in it and take it from there.

With an advanced search system (by artist, year, album, rating, genre, etc) ...

You already got this. You can select what to search for using the drop-down menu in the search field (click on the looking-glass icon). As for the "artist:Muse" pattern, it could easily be added. It's a good idea.

...one could create playlists on-the-fly.

Yeah, this is a really great idea! Thanks for the suggestion.

/.../ it also restricts the selection to the album I have chosen to listen to first /.../

This would be the expected behavior for the Music playlists, with the current implementation. But it is not supposed to work like this in other playlists. I just never noticed it did. I'll try to remember fixing it in the next update. (You may want to file a ticket in the new bugtracker to ensure it will be taken care of. See "Tracker" icon in the board header above).

Do you see the proper artwork images in Finder's cover flow mode?

No, but I do see them in iTunes.

Then I'm afraid you are out of luck. Everplay gets the artwork with QuickLoook (same technology as Finder).

- Genius is not integrated.
Your answer means that you don't see its integration in the foreseable future, doesn't it ?

Genius is a feature in iTunes. It can't be "integrated" in other apps, lest we code it ourselves.

And oddly, the random feature of Everplay only selects my favorite songs. Why?

Undocumented bonus feature! No, just kidding. Pure chance I suppose...

[rhyhann]

Thanks for your answer!

Using custom regexes in the search field would also be great. Exemple: using -, one could use year:1985-1999.

As for now, here is what I have thought about the search pattern: Using {} for each search, it would be possible to do things like that: {year:1985-1999 genre:Rock inPlaylist:"Best 1"}|{!genre:Pop} would select all the rock tracks that are included in the "Best 1" playlist between year 1985 and 1999, and would add all the musics that are not pop from all the library (and will also remove doubles). | is OR here, and & would be AND. By the way, using ! before a tag or a {} would mean the contrary of it. Is it possible to do that? Here is, for example, a search pattern that would select almost everything I'm listening to right now (isInDouble means that it's at least in double in the library, for example if it's in an album and in a single):
{artist:"Muse"}|{artist:"Coldplay" isInDouble:true}|{artist:Queen album:Greatest}|{genre:Classical}. Depending on the mood, it would be very easy to listen exactly to what I want.

Have you corrected the behaviour yet? If not, I will file a new ticket

Is it possible, for Ogg artworks, to refer to iTunes? I mean, reading the iTunes Media file should not be that hard, and you will quickly get the artwork. If you can't, I will convert my library to MP3, but it's not really what I want.

Thank you for your answers!

[snarb]

Using custom regexes in the search field would also be great. Exemple: using -, one could use year:1985-1999.

I think a full-fledged regex search system is overkill for 99.99% users. But your request has been noted. Thanks for the suggestion.

Have you corrected the behaviour yet? If not, I will file a new ticket

Please do.

Is it possible, for Ogg artworks, to refer to iTunes?

We do this in Cover Stream, but it's not really suitable for Everplay, being a standalone player not requiring iTunes to be running. Also, if I remember correctly, it's not technically possible on Snow Leopard (due to changes in the cover flow API), and implementing this for Leopard only is probably not worth the hassle. So for now I'll say it's a no go. But I'll look into it.

[snarb]

Using custom regexes in the search field would also be great.

Wish granted! The internal builds now support spot queries like:

artists:abba,the beatles,mad* +genre:pop /year:>1975 -names:waterlo?,*berry fields*

All keys accepts plural forms, so you don't have to repeat yourself so much. Single (?) and multicharacter (*) wildcards are supported. All queries are case insensitive, and no quotation marks are needed for multiword values. Most variants of the logical operators (!, &, ==, |, AND, etc) are auto-corrected. Heck, you can even run a query from any search menu simply by prefixing it with an @ sign.

Someday I'll learn to just say NO...