A to Z Playlist Manager BETA Version 1

[eddie74]

Well, instead of putting out a full beta, and trying to figure out the errors after, I am going to release it now to see how it works. All of the features are working except:
-The edit menu (cut copy paste.)
-The album to playlist converter works from the tree context menu only right now.
-The autoplaylist by track time menu is not set up yet. I have a little bug in it still.
-The playlist export feature is working but turned off for now.
-you can not drag and drop the f9olders yet because I am still working on enumeration problems.
-The playlist wizard is set up but turned off until I see how well my other code works first.
- The "More..." menus are running of the playlist wizard code. Since it is disabled right now, so are they.

ON THE GOOD SIDE:

-You can right click on an album and convert it to a playlist.
-You can right click on the music folder and send all your music to a playlist.
-You can edit existing playlists.
-You can save multiple playlists at the same time
-All the other "Auto playlist" generation features are working.
-Each playlist can be sorted independantly be clicking on the corresponding header cell for the column you wish to sort by.
-Enumeration is 50% faster than before.
-Object data loads in ALOT faster.
-You can delete audio files, playlists, and albums.


This IS JUST a BETA so please realize that. If you can not get it to work please let me know right away in THIS THREAD ONLY!

If you think of anything this is missing, please let me know.

The next release (this weekend will have FULL FEATURES working and ready to go as well as importing music from your local / remote disks. How? Well, you can add files to a playlist from the device, or search local / remotes hard drives. After you save the playlists, it transfers the music for you automatically with the playlist.

Please let me know what you think, it is noit as polished as the alpha, but I am more concerned this time on how it works than how it looks. I hope you like it.

Oh yeah, by the way, when you use the auto playlist menus; there are drop down boxes and text boxes IN THE MENUS. To initiate the menus after you select or enter text, hit the ENTER key to generate the playlists.

HEY GUYS! I don't have the capability to know if the star ratings are working because my Creative Zen Vision Plus does not directly seem to support star ratings, so if you have a device like a Zen Vision M: 30 / 60 Gig or a Zune or something, please let me know if you get theese ratings in your playlist correctly. Thanks again. And if you can not get it to work in windows me / 2000 / NT, let me know. I have a patch for you guys to download to get it to work.

[Jebus]

It detected the player fine = )
Took a little while to 'add' all the audio tracks (paused on a particularly large mic recording). All together about 5 mins to scan through about 2000+ songs
Just a small request - could you make double clicking on a playlist mean opening/editing it. Also could you make double clicking on a song while creating a playlist make you add that song you doubled clicked on to the playlist.
Autoplaylist worked like a charm. Only thing is when you click on Autoplaylist, then select a category , you have to press enter for it to select the category.
Well done a spectacular piece of software. Keep up the great work and Thanks from everybody

[AlphaJAE]

Eddie,

This is great. Thank you much for your diligent work on this.

My favorite feature - playlists by Genre. I have been unable to create Genre playlists since I moved from my Zen Touch to the ZVM60, since Redchair Software's app wasn't updated for ZVM60.

To answer your question, I can not get star ratings working.

One interesting and helpful behavior of this app is that it lists "Podcast" and "PodCast" as 2 separate genres, while my ZVM menu combines both into "Podcast". That showed me that I have some tagging issues that I have since corrected.

[pokizo]

Hello Eddie,

First of all, thank you for sharing with us your great beta.

I tried to install, but I got OS error right after the dialog "Verifying application requirements. This may take a few moments" was done. Error signature from Windows was as follows.

EventType : clr20r3 P1 : a to z playlist manager beta.exe P2 : 1.0.0.0
P3 : 465b2a67 P4 : a to z playlist manager beta P5 : 1.0.0.0
P6 : 465b2a67 P7 : e P8 : e9 P9 : system.invalidoperationexception

I tried 2 PCs. Both run Windows XP SP2 (Japanese OS). One PC required .NET framework installation and it was successfully done. Another seemed not to require .NET framework installation. Both PC showed identical failing signature while main program installation.

This may be local OS issue. I look forward to the next beta or some fix to be done in Microsoft in the future.

Thank you again,
Pokizo

[eddie74]

Thank you for your responses.

-The Japanese Version of XP - I will look into this today. This is very interesting.
-Yes, I will add double click support for the tracks, folders, and editing of playlists. This was available in the Alpha release but i forgot to add the code in this one. I will add it today.
-I dont understand why the star ratings are giving me such a problem. I am going to contact my source at Microsoft today and see whats up with that. To see if it is my code causing the problem or a Microsoft issue.
-I have to edit the Interop Assemblies so we can get the player to enumerate its content faster. I know it can be done because I have seen other custom apps blaze through the track listings. I just have to do the dirty work of opening the interop and editing it so it will return an array of the files instead of one at a time.

Thanks for trying the app. I will release the full BETA on Friday (I hope.)

[Brandonson112]

Originally Posted by eddie74

I will release the full BETA on Friday (I hope.)

Do you mean of the Playlist Manager or of all of the A to Z software?

[eddie74]

The playlist BETA. Although I have not forgotten the full app. As I fix the softwares (like the playlist manager) i also fix the Full Version of the software. (This is part of the reason why it takes so long to update the releases for the playlist software.)

[pokizo]

Hello Eddie,

Your beta does work on Japanese Windows XP SP2 for now.
I had an issue about schedule synchronization with Outlook calendar. Only schedule synchronization couldn't be done due to an error (dialog box was popped up and reported just a failure). The resolution was just updating Windows Media to version 11. And then I tried your beta just in case and it worked!

Thank you,
Pokizo

[XJ3F3Y]

It all worked.
Would it be possible to have autoplaylists like the ones in the DJ section where they update on the player so if i for example make a playlist for 5 stars and then once its on the player i rate another 5 stars it updates and that goes int the list automatically.

[Machiventa]

works great with my ZVM. star rating playlist didn't work for me though.

thanks eddie!!


what's the correct name of the full app now?

[Sombra]

I downloaded and after I installed and it was attempting to start up, I got an error message and the whole application closed. Same thing happens if I try to start it again. I have WMP10 and XP with the latest net framework.

[eddie74]

This is because you need a redistributable runtime package I forgot to include in the setup package. I will include it with the next release so it installs automatically. For now you will have to wait because I can not post it here. it is to big (11.6 MB). I will try to post it somewhere else so you can download it tommorrow. (By the way, the same package should let the app run on Windows NT, 200, and ME.)

[Simon]

I like the updates

I managed to create an error by pressing either the close or the save button when no playlist is open.

System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: value
   at System.Windows.Forms.TabControl.TabPageCollection.Remove(TabPage value)
   at A_to_Z_Playlist_Manager_BETA.frmMain.ClosePlaylist()
   at A_to_Z_Playlist_Manager_BETA.frmMain.ToolStripButton2_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.RaiseEvent(Object key, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripButton.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleMouseUp(MouseEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEventInteractive(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEvent(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mea)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

[eddie74]

Thanks for the info. That error was fixed about 5 minutes after I uploaded it to the post. I found the error myself after. HA HA HA. I also did this today:

-Double click on playlist opens the playlist for editing
-Double click on track adds track to vplaylist
-Double click on album converts album to playlist
-(you can still right click to add the music folder, the album or the playlist TO the current playlist you are editing / creating)
-Fixed some little problems I found in the auto playlists features.
-Added drag and drop support for the playlists from the folders view.
-Added a drop down box under the playlist window to allow user to select desired playlist type (.m3u,.wpl,.pls,.asx,.zpl,etc.)
-Turned on the "Save All..." feature.
-Turned on the "Close All" feature.
-Turn on the "Export To..." feature.
-Added a playlist archive/backup feature.
-Turned on the Album / Playlist converter.

-To Do:
-Allow user to view / and / or / edit when they click on "Properties"
for audio tracks "Properties will show tag data. You will be able to edit it.
for albums - will show you album data, you will be able to edit some of it.
for device - will show device info.

Thanks guys keep the information comming, and I will contin8ue to get it ready for Friday.

[Machiventa]

any chance of adding Artists to the drop down menu? i rarely ever make playlists from albums (or individual tracks for that matter).

do you plan on allowing tracks/playlists to be played through the app in the final release? at this point the only way that i know of to play my playlists on the pc is through the media source player. no big deal though, it'd just be nice to have one ultimate app to do everything.

great job on this beta.

i noticed if you disconnect the player while the app is open (after it has scanned the media)... all the data is still there and you can then connect the player and still be able to edit playlists. you'd almost think when you disconnect the device, all the data would 'disappear' as it does with media source. kinda cool!

[flautash]

Hi Eddie!
Thx for all the efforts!
I tried to install the app and here is the window I get:
----------------
A to Z Playlist Manager BETA has encountered a problem and needs to
close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost.
------------------

Yep, that was that. FYI..

hope it helps..

[eddie74]

If you notice, there already is a drop down entry in the "Auto Playlist" Menu for Artist. You can enter a text to search for 'Artist Name Contains..." and there is also a drop down box "Select Artist..." both of there feature require you press the enter key after you have selected an item, or entered text. After that, the playlist generates almost instantly.

As for the player diconnection / still able to edit playlists:

This is due to the fact that when I load the device in my appication, I store all the data for the tracks and playlists in "custom objects" sort of like entering all the data for the item in a database. Even if the player is disconnected, the information is still there so you can still work with it. After reconnecting the device, you should be able to still save the playlist because the playlist its not actually on the device until you savwe it, or is on the device already and does not change until you update it.

This sort of way I store object information is both good and bad. Good in the sense I can create auto playlists and retrieve playlist / album data super fast, Almost instantly. The auto playlist as you notice take very little time to generate. (Trust me I tried dynamic loading, and static loading, and I went with the faster method.) The bad thing is that when you load the player the first time, it takes a bit of time extra to load the data for each track / album / or playlist item at the start. (Not much, about a tenth more time.)

I am also fixing things up to make the application work more like it should. For example, before, if the device was not connected when you started the application, no matter what it would never detect a device unless you opened it after the device was plugged in. This has been fixed, so even if you disconnect the device and reconnect it, it will still find the device again.

I want to add the ability to have the application auto detect devices that have been connected and removed, as the api I am useing does allow for information about the device to be broadcast to my app. The problem is that alot of portable devices do not yet support the feature of event notifications. So there for i am trying to query the usb bus in a seperate process to find out when devices are added or removed. After I get the device notification or device added or device removed, I check to see if it was the device you were useing being removed, if it is a new device, I just add it to the list of devices and load it in the back ground while you are working. I could already have the application load the player BEFORE it opens, problem is, you would click the icon to launch the app and the application would not start for about 15 to 60 seconds. Meanwhile you would be wondering "What the HECK!" where is that program I know I clicked the icon!!!!! Start already! Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Rest assured, the application is becomming more sophisticated every day. AND YES! You will be able to play the playlist / albums / tracks in my aplication WHILE you are working on the device. This without slowing down the actual device or application itself. BECAUSE I load the data into temp memory INSTEAD of streaming it directly. Some devices do not support alot of simutaneous connections, so if I were to stream the file to play, it might make the device busy so you could not do anything else until the song finished. NOT GOOD! The way it will be now, you can even DISCONNECT the device and the music / p[laylist / album will STILL CONTINUE TO PLAY!

I added alot of features as you guys requested, and I will be adding alot more as well.

ONE PROBLEM I am facing right now, is that I need a DRM certificate from Microsoft to transfer DRM Protected Content. AND I think alos to read some of the file properties (such as Star Rating)

Here why I think this is the case: Microsoft has two versions or the MTP transfer Protocol theese devices rely on.
#1 - MTP, #2- MTP Enhanced.
MTP is generic and based on the PTP instruction set and is available automatically. You can get the proerties for a file like file name and file size, file length, etc, because theese properties are necessary to store the file in the first place. MTP ENHANCED is like extra "special" information like "DRM Status, star rating, author, lyrics etc." I think you need the certificate because it is a Microsoft implemented thing so they want to know who is useing it and for what purposes. To make a generic app, no problem, you can do it, but the app is limited. For a full app that implements DRM, no way man, you gotta have a certificate! This is why I think I can not read the star rating. i notice, when I try to get some of the extended information, instead of returning the information I am asking it return a property variant type "10" which should return the info I want, but I know variabnt type 10 mean "ERROR" so there you go. I requested a certificate AGAIN. Lets see what happens next. If I get it, your playlist manager application is going to do some VERY interesting things you have not seen in another app or thought about either. Don't forget. I already can sync my Hotmail, Gmail, Outllok, and thunderbird information with my email app. You have'nt
even seen that application yet

[eddie74]

Originally Posted by flautash

Hi Eddie!
Thx for all the efforts!
I tried to install the app and here is the window I get:
----------------
A to Z Playlist Manager BETA has encountered a problem and needs to
close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost.
------------------

Yep, that was that. FYI..

hope it helps..

I will look into that, but I think thats a driver issue dude.

[AlphaJAE]

Thanks for the great information, Eddie. Your creations are sounding better all the time.

[eddie74]

Well everyone, I think I have all the bugs worked out now and it should be ready for release tommorrow evening. I think every feature is working properly. I am stil having a bit of trouble playing the audio from the meory stream smoothly. It stutters a bit when the processor usage goes up. i am gonna try and create bigger virtual buffers to fix the problem. I hope everyone who is useing the last relase is finding it useful. I apreciate your support.

Thanks.

Eddie.