QMP Needs to take playlist cues from FOOBAR

[tannhauser]

The reason I switched from QCD to foobar is because of foobar's lightning-fast playlist recognition. In a few seconds an entire folder of hundreds of albums is laid out in a single playlist with all of the tags visible. I can begin searching right away and find the song I want just as quickly. In QCD (and now QMP) I'm still sitting there waiting for the tags to appear on every song, and searching is still rather slow.

I'm not tech-savvy but there is something awesome that foobar is doing that needs to be done in QMP. In fact, every media player needs the incredible quickness of foobar's playlist recognition. Add to this the ability to have multiple tabbed playlists at once and you're getting closer. If QMP had these two features as part of their foundation, I'd be convinced it was the greatest audio player ever. The media library's a nice idea but way too clunky and unintuitive. foobar's simplicity and focus on playlists won me over, but QCD/QMP's plethora of features (such as the encoder and various awesome tag editing features) want me to go back. If only QMP had the speed of foobar.

Just sayin'.

[hedge]

I'm not tech-savvy but there is something awesome that foobar is doing that needs to be done in QMP. In fact, every media player needs the incredible quickness of foobar's playlist recognition. Add to this the ability to have multiple tabbed playlists at once and you're getting closer. If QMP had these two features as part of their foundation, I'd be convinced it was the greatest audio player ever. The media library's a nice idea but way too clunky and unintuitive. foobar's simplicity and focus on playlists won me over, but QCD/QMP's plethora of features (such as the encoder and various awesome tag editing features) want me to go back. If only QMP had the speed of foobar.

Just sayin'.
Foobar does this so quickly by storing everything about the files in its database. QMP is getting closer to managing playlists faster with the library (which is a database), but at this stage it only stores the tags in there, not the song lengths (and probably other tech info required). So the increased loading seen is due to the song lengths having to be read when files are added.

[DreamforDistance]

foobar's playlist tree plugin is also awesome for navigation... it's similar to a feature request that had been asked for with QCD for a long time. fb2k isn't nearly as user friendly or skinner friendly as QCD/QMP but for those willing to put in a little extra time to set things up just how they want it, the flexibility is really tough to match.

The current stable version of fb2k doesn't use the database for all the tags and rewrites them to it's own standards unless you specifically tell it not to. Newer standardized tags aren't supported in the database at all yet but people have written plugin work arounds in the mean time which is nice since I don't like anything messing with my tags unless I specifically tell it to.

The only reason I ventured to fb2k honestly though is because QCD isn't being updated/developed and QMP's media library is all that seems to be getting attention from Paul and I honestly would rather have him working on the base for the next generation of a pure modular audio player (like QCD) than yet another media library. It likely would have been better to write the new player base, features, and plugin architecture with the media library module in mind, get it stable, release it, and then build the media library module as a plugin module to integrate into the player... at least that would have kept things much more lively around here (where the community is a large part of what made QCD great) and I think and there would have been less migration to other players. But I'm sure there's reasoning for doing it the other way around tha I'm not aware of. I'm just offering the perspective of a saddened ex QCD fanatic (I rarely use it anymore unfortunately).

d4d

[hedge]

foobar's playlist tree plugin is also awesome for navigation... it's similar to a feature request that had been asked for with QCD for a long time. fb2k isn't nearly as user friendly or skinner friendly as QCD/QMP but for those willing to put in a little extra time to set things up just how they want it, the flexibility is really tough to match.

The current stable version of fb2k doesn't use the database for all the tags and rewrites them to it's own standards unless you specifically tell it not to. Newer standardized tags aren't supported in the database at all yet but people have written plugin work arounds in the mean time which is nice since I don't like anything messing with my tags unless I specifically tell it to.

The only reason I ventured to fb2k honestly though is because QCD isn't being updated/developed and QMP's media library is all that seems to be getting attention from Paul and I honestly would rather have him working on the base for the next generation of a pure modular audio player (like QCD) than yet another media library. It likely would have been better to write the new player base, features, and plugin architecture with the media library module in mind, get it stable, release it, and then build the media library module as a plugin module to integrate into the player... at least that would have kept things much more lively around here (where the community is a large part of what made QCD great) and I think and there would have been less migration to other players. But I'm sure there's reasoning for doing it the other way around tha I'm not aware of. I'm just offering the perspective of a saddened ex QCD fanatic (I rarely use it anymore unfortunately).

d4d
Errr QMP has a plugin based base... The library is a plugin module that integrates with the player. But anyway, some months back Paul said he was working on a MAD mp3 input plugin, which is a big step towards good mp3 support, which has been a major drawback with qmp (as the current mp3 plugin didn't support additional quality changes/ improvements like dithering, miscalculated song lengths at times and did not support gapless playback).
Hopefully the next gen database will store song lengths as well, allowing for faster loading of a qmp config which includes many files in the playlist.

[Toe]

Seems you have some funky idea that QCD and QMP are two completely different apps. QMP is just QCD with a media library plugin...

[DreamforDistance]

Seems you have some funky idea that QCD and QMP are two completely different apps. QMP is just QCD with a media library plugin...

I must not be understanding things then. If this were true, why not just release the new media library as a plugin for QCD? I was under the impression that the base player was being changed/updated to change a few core things, accomodate the Media Library (plugin), and facilitate new things for the plugin developers and skinners.

I know that the media library is in the end just going to be a module/plugin for QMP (which will just be updated QCD, right?) so I was just suggesting working on and releasing updated versions of the player itself and then worry about getting the media library done as a plugin.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, just offering my opinion on what might have kept this community much more active. I may still be completely misunderstanding things though... so please correct me if I've got things all mixed up.

d4d

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

QMP is called the way it is because QCD still refers to a CD player. The player has long since changed to a media player. Hence Paul Quinn decided that a name change would be apt. We did have a vote on it though. The thread should be somewhere in the forums and as i recall correctly more forum members did wish for QCD to remain QCD. Nostalgia I suppose. But, nevermind that, aye ;)

[Toe]

To put it another way, QMP = QCD 5.0.

It's true that the biggest difference between QCD 4.51 and QMP b104 is the addition of the media library plugin. Not sure if you realize this or not, but you can disable QMP's media library plugin, go back to the old skin, and you're pretty much looking at QCD 4.51.

However, don't think for a moment that the media library is the ONLY thing in development for QMP! The QMP development builds have also introduced a new equalizer system and support for ReplayGain, for example. We do know that he's working on a new MAD-based MP3 decoder and a large update to the plugin API. I wouldn't be surprised if he's got a few other things cooking that we don't know about too. (For example, Paul never mentioned that he was working on replaygain support and a new equalizer until the day he released b100 with those features included)