Why I still prefer Winamp :( [Archive] - Quintessential Forum

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Stan
12-26-2003, 11:14 PM
Yeah, yeah, I know I'm not the first one who says that, don't beat me :).
(RTFM+read FAQs :)) Anyway.
First of all I really wish to thank the developers for the player which is the only alternative (as I think) to Winamp. But some things really prevent me from totally quitting using Winamp.
I'll start with a playlist. It's nice and looks pretty, but is way too slow. I click on add>load playlist, QCD waits 10 seconds for something and only then starts to load my playlist. So it takes it 12 seconds to complete this task. Of course my palylist is rather big (about 2000 tracks) and my computer was blazing fast back in 1999 (AMD K6-2 500 MHz), but Winamp somehow manages to do it instantly.
The second issue is, I guess, the most "popular" topic on this forum. It's the resizeable playlist. I know it's a skinners problem, but tell me about any skin with this thing really implemented. I mean the playlist which is truly resizeable like Winamp's one, not with some predefined sizes. And what prevents you from putting this nice feature in the default skin?
These are the main issues. I'd also like to say that QCD works much slower than Winamp, and when it switches to the next song the playlist scrolls really slow. But that's not critical :). And by the way, why does QCD always create "My Music" folder in my documents, even if I change this path wherever it is possible in options?
This is really a very good player with great skinning capabilities and you did the right thing making it understand Winamp's plugins. But the above little bugs (features?) make Winamp look more attractive to me as I can stretch it's playlist all across my screen (and 1152x864 makes it rather big) and it is faster (though not so beautiful).
Fix these things and I will never use Winamp again.

regener8ed
12-26-2003, 11:28 PM
use what suits you. the playlist loading issue may be something paul or someone else can better direct you on, as i seldom use playlists i am not all that familiar.

true stretchable/resizeable playlists (and other things) are currently in development, and are implemented in the default skin for the current development build. if you are hesitant to use a dev build, i'm sure a release version will be out soon enough.

#The fREaK!
12-27-2003, 12:47 AM
Winamp puts all the stuff into the playlist instantly, but dosent use the "real" names. Then it goes throught the tracks and puts the correct names into the playlist. QCD goes to the second stage immedietly, so it has a delay (depends on the size of the playlist) instead of displaying the filenames without extension while waiting.

acozz
12-27-2003, 12:57 AM
The current dev build implements resizing of extensions but a skin has to support it. It also fixes the My Music bug that you described. As for the playlist loading, QCD does load them at the same speed it just doesn't display them right away. At least I think so, I've never done a comparison.

Stan
12-27-2003, 02:13 AM
Ok. I haven't really been using dev build, so I think now I'll put my eye on it. As to playlist loading - we're not talking about "adding directory" when the player checks all the files and reads their tags (right as it should, actually). It's just a loading of a single text file with all filenames/id3 tags written in and checked long before. If QCD checks all the files in *.m3u for existence while loading it, I think it should be toggable. Winamp doesn't do so and if you delete some files they would be added anyway if not removed from playlist manually. Perhaps it's not an ideal but it's fast.

plover
12-27-2003, 03:01 AM
There is an item in Settings->Media Loading labelled "Determine file lengths" with options for "On load" and "On play". Wouldn't this have some effect on playlist load times?

Stan
12-27-2003, 08:18 AM
This could be a great idea, but it's intended fo "add directory" only. I know QCD for a rather long time by now and believe me - if this could be switched off, I'd certainly do it. :) That's just a feature (bug?) of QCD.