New features

• Humanity icon theme
• A pixbuf cache. Avoid loading image at the same size twice, and reloading images.
• Async loading/scaling off images from the hard-disk.
• Async mpd query handler. Loads data over a separate connection.
• Copy message to clipboard button.
• Use load command to make mpd load remote playlists (mpd 0.16 only)
• Update now playing look.
• Support for showing and setting ‘raw image data’. This makes a plugin that reads embedded image possible.
• Make HTML text correctly display. (Converting to utf8)
• Do no close the popup, when mouse over.
• Remember previous path in file-selectors.
• Add quick-playlist-add menu to favorite button.
• Add ‘search-as-you-type’ option to search.
• Support easy-command via gmpc-remote
• Allow to jump to metadata browser from now playing.

Updates

• A updated hicolor theme.
• Make metadata browser use the style off the new now-playing browser.
• Fix sorting order off the Database browser.
• Speedup filling of directory view in file browser.
• Fixed several smaller and larger memory leaks.
• Sorting bug in metadata.
• Remove unused function.
• metadata browser: Double click opens song, not plays it.

Removed

• Do not load weblinks from the wiki anymore (possible security risk)

Build updates

• Do not include vala generated C code, generate this build time. (in git)

Download

Source release: here Windows 32 release: here Windows 32 portable app: here

Enter this as command (adjusted for you use case offcourse):

?????????gst-launch souphttpsrc location=http://localhost:8000/ ! queue ! mad ! audioconvert ! libvisual_jess ! video/x-raw-rgb,width=640,height=360,framerate=25/1 ! ffmpegcolorspace ! queue ! xvimagesink

(this is for an http output running on localhost, streaming mp3 data).

Until now there have been 3 pre-releases:

?Beta 1, 2, 3

But I need help!  Help on this release (testing mostly!) and in general.

For this release I need people testing GMPC:

• I have hit several times a rare crash, that I was unable to track back or reproduce.
• Marking bugs “to be tested” as fixed.  Bugtracker.
• Website needs updating. (screenshot, guides etc)
• Plugins need to be verified if they still work.

Most of the work is coordinated via #gmpc @ irc.freenode.net, I also try to announce things on the #gmpc on identi.ca.

You can get the latest (testing) gmpc here:

• ubuntu: GMPC-Trunk PPA
• Archlinux: AUR Package
• Gentoo: The MPD-Overlay.  (right link?)
• Source: Here
• Windows: installer, portable apps
• Mac OsX: unavailable atm. sorry.

Changes in the upcoming release (not complete):

New features

• Humanity icon theme
• A pixbuf cache. Avoid loading image at the same size twice, and reloading images.
• Async loading/scaling off images from the hard-disk.
• Async mpd query handler. Loads data over a separate connection.
• Copy message to clipboard button.
• Use load command to make mpd load remote playlists (mpd 0.16 only)
• Update now playing look.
• Support for showing and setting ‘raw image data’. This makes a plugin that reads embedded image possible.
• Make HTML text correctly display. (Converting to utf8)
• Do no close the popup, when mouse over.
• Remember previous path in file-selectors.
• Add quick-playlist-add menu to favorite button.
• Add ‘search-as-you-type’ option to search.
• Support easy-command via gmpc-remote
• Allow to jump to metadata browser from now playing.

Updates

• A updated hicolor theme.
• Make metadata browser use the style off the new now-playing browser.
• Fix sorting order off the Database browser.
• Speedup filling of directory view in file browser.
• Fixed several smaller and larger memory leaks.
• Sorting bug in metadata.
• Remove unused function.
• metadata browser: Double click opens song, not plays it.

Removed

• Do not load weblinks from the wiki anymore (possible security risk)

Build updates

• Do not include vala generated C code, generate this build time. (in git)

From Gnome Music Player Client

GMPC 0.19.0 showing off a few new features

GMPC 0.19.0 is the latest (at 19-09-09) version. It has several large changes visible to the user and factors more under the hood. Several long standing “wishes” where completed, like metadata plugins running in the main thread, a metadata selector, sqlite based metadata cache, GObject based plugins and much more. These updates will not only improve the user experience, but also make it possible to add lua or python plugins in the future.

New features

• Now Playing window: This shows a page full with metadata information about the playing song.
• Fully rewritten and more flexible metadata system.
  • Metadata selector: You can now look through all the results returned by the metadata plugin and pick the cover, lyric, etc you like best.
    

    

    Select one of the 32 artist images.

• Guitar Tabs.
  

  

  Showing guitar tabs.

• Similar genre support. (For now only used by dynamic playlist plugin).
• Support for mpd’s 0.15.0 single and consume mode.
• Show the title of the next song. (requires mpd 0.15.x)
• Translatable plugins.
  

  

  (Partial) translated plugin preferences pane.

• Integrated favorites support.
  

  

  Favorites are stored in special playlist.

• A firefox like status bar, indicating repeat state, random state and when used the state of the dynamic playlist plugin.

Improvements

• Horizontal layout: A lot of modern screens are widescreen, the horizontal layout makes it more suitable for that. (like the common netbook resolutions of 1024×600)
  

  

  Horizontal layout.

• The pane position is now synced between browsers.
• Rewritten metadata browser: So it is more consistent in build up with the tag, file, etc browser.
• Sqlite based metadata cache.
• All plugins now run in the main thread, this saves a lot of locking and extra checking.
• Object based plugin system. This should make non-c plugins and vala based plugins easier in the future.
• Option to select what types of metadata you want to view in the metadata browser.
• Mouse over tooltip with the tray icon. (requires gtk+-2.16)
• Session Manager support: Use the EggSMClient code, so session managers are supported on X, osX and win32.
• –fullscreen commandline option.
• Allow only urls to be added that connected mpd support (like http:// file:// lastfm:// etc).
• Filter out tags that are not supported by mpd in search and tag browser.
• Quick filter is moved to the bottom for a more consistent view.
• Combo box from tag browser is removed, it is now a right mouse menu on the header.
• Use automake’s maintainer-mode.

Bug fixes

For a complete list of bug fixes see mantis

This include the annoying password bug in 0.18.0:

• Fix the bug where the user was unable to enter a password via the password dialog.
• Fix the bug where outputs did not show up when using a password protected connection.

In RC2:

• Fix bug where add-url dialog does not close.

Regressions

• The metadata browser rewrite is not fully finalized.
  • No detailed album list.
  • No bitrate/sample frequency/bit-depth for currently playing song.

New Plugins

Album View

Album view.

An often requested feature. Albumview shows all albums in a large table. Each album is depicted by it’s cover. You can browse through it by either scrolling through all albums or filtering the list by keywords.

Beware the album view plugin can be very memory hungry.

Dynamic Playlist

The dynamic playlist plugins appends songs to the current playlist that are similar to the playing song. It currently fetches this data from last.fm.

Current features:

• Similar songs – select if dynamic playlist should use Artist, Genre or similar song from MetaData-System (last.fm)
• Random songs – also it is possible to add completly random songs
• Delayed support – dynamic playlist can add a new song to the end of the playlist after x seconds (if no other song was added by user)
• Blacklist support – blacklist albums, genres, artist or only songs that should never be added to playlist by this plugin (it’s possible to disable it for a while)
• Blocking support – block played song oder artist for at least x songs
• con support – adding an icon to new “icon-menu” of gmpc (left click to enable/disable; middle click to add a similar song)
• Menu support – adding a menu to gmpc’s “Extras” to have fast control over the plugin
• GMPC-Easy support – it’s possible to control the plugin with GMPC’s easy-command interface
• Pruning support – it’s possible to remove previous songs from playlist after x songs (like consume-mode; but delayed)

Lyrics plugin

Uses lyricsplugin (website: http://www.lyricsplugin.com/ ) to fetch lyrics.

Updated Plugins

lyricswiki

• Work around removing lyrics from api response. (page is now scraped).
• Move to lyrics.wikia.com

Last.FM

• Move to new api.
• Support returning a list of results.
• Support similar genre. (for use with dynamic playlist)
• Support translations.

Alarm

• Support translation
• Add status bar icon.
• Easy enable/edit via status bar icon.

Discogs

• Move to new api.
• Support translations
• Support for returning a list of results.

lyricswiki

Removed plugins

Cover Amazon

Because of change in api, a signed request is required. Private key is not allowed to be shipped openly.

Download

You can find the source files and the win32 binary here

From Gnome Music Player Client

GMPC 0.18.96 showing off a few new features

GMPC 0.18.06 is the beta for the next 0.19 release. It has several large changes visible to the user and factors more under the hood. Several long standing “wishes” where completed, like metadata plugins running in the main thread, a metadata selector, sqlite based metadata cache, GObject based plugins and much more.

New features

• Now Playing window: This shows a page full with metadata information about the playing song.
• Fully rewritten and more flexible metadata system.
  • Metadata selector: You can now look through all the results returned by the metadata plugin and pick the cover, lyric, etc you like best.
    

    

    Select one of the 32 artist images.

• Guitar Tabs.
  

  

  Showing guitar tabs.

• Similar genre support. (For now only used by dynamic playlist plugin).
• Support for mpd’s 0.15.0 single and consume mode.
• Show the title of the next song. (requires mpd 0.15.x)
• Translatable plugins.
  

  

  (Partial) translated plugin preferences pane.

• Integrated favorites support.
  

  

  Favorites are stored in special playlist.

• A firefox like status bar, indicating repeat state, random state and when used the state of the dynamic playlist plugin.

Improvements

• Horizontal layout: A lot of modern screens are widescreen, the horizontal layout makes it more suitable for that. (like the common netbook resolutions of 1024×600)
  

  

  Horizontal layout.

• The pane position is now synced between browsers.
• Rewritten metadata browser: So it is more consistent in build up with the tag, file, etc browser.
• Sqlite based metadata cache.
• All plugins now run in the main thread, this saves a lot of locking and extra checking.
• Object based plugin system. This should make non-c plugins and vala based plugins easier in the future.
• Option to select what types of metadata you want to view in the metadata browser.
• Mouse over tooltip with the tray icon. (requires gtk+-2.16)
• Session Manager support: Use the EggSMClient code, so session managers are supported on X, osX and win32.
• –fullscreen commandline option.
• Allow only urls to be added that connected mpd support (like http:// file:// lastfm:// etc).
• Filter out tags that are not supported by mpd in search and tag browser.
• Quick filter is moved to the bottom for a more consistent view.
• Combo box from tag browser is removed, it is now a right mouse menu on the header.
• Use automake’s maintainer-mode.

Bug fixes

For a complete list of bug fixes see mantis

This include the annoying password bug in 0.18.0:

• Fix the bug where the user was unable to enter a password via the password dialog.
• Fix the bug where outputs did not show up when using a password protected connection.

Regressions

• The metadata browser rewrite is not fully finalized.

New Plugins

Album View

An often requested feature. But beware it can be memory hungry.

Album view.

Dynamic Playlist

Lyrics plugin

Uses lyricsplugin (website: http://www.lyricsplugin.com/ ) to fetch lyrics.

Updated Plugins

Last.FM

• Move to new api.
• Support returning a list of results.
• Support similar genre. (for use with dynamic playlist)
• Support translations.

Alarm

• Support translation
• Add status bar icon.
• Easy enable/edit via status bar icon.

Discogs

• Move to new api.
• Support translations
• Support for returning a list of results.

Download

You can find the source files and the win32 binary here

Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions from some of the major music publishers we can no longer return lyrics through the LyricWiki API (where this application gets some or all of its lyrics).

The lyrics for this song can be found at the following URL:

http://lyricwiki.org/The_Police:De_Do_Do_Do%2C_De_Da_Da_Da

(Please note: this is not the fault of the developer who created this application, but is a restriction imposed by the music publishers themselves.)

A screenshot sais more then a 1000 words:

And an epic fail from an online store:

Mostly I gave up quickly after noticing that Gtk does not handle this (complained about it here too).

A while back I, again, wrote a albumview, that uses a exo-wrap-table to display a lot of GmpcMetaImage. The metaimage have a nice hack that they only start quering the art when visible (on the first expose event). This made the plugin somewhat doable.  But still if you have 2000 albums, it was pretty much a no go.

So today, I decided to do it right™.  It only displays and packs the visible widgets at the same time, if you scroll it just display the next X widgets.

This saves a HUGE amount of time. The next optimalisation is to avoid having to create the widget, look in the database for the cover art, load the image and display it every time  you scroll over the same image,  the widgets are cached.

Once the cache is “warm” (or how the hell you call it) it is lightning fast,  and even with a “cold” cache it is very very doable.  Filtering the list is instant as you type, again withouth much delay. The only downside is the memory usage, but it is either that or speed. (that is also why it is a plugin and not integrated.)

If you want to give it a try, you can find the source for the plugin here. If I have some time to spare, I will see if I can create a generic widget for this.

Owh, and offcourse a movie showing it: http://random.sarine.nl/gmpc-albumview-su3.ogv. You might want to download it before watching, it is kinda large.

Q

edit: I can still think of many optimalisations to make, to speed it up further.

process_itterates calles it self via g_idle_add() after a item is fully processed.  if it is called and process_queue is empty , it stops.

when a new item is injected when process_queue is empty, process_queue is also called via g_idle_add.

Now the crasher occured when:

process_queue emptied it queue and called g_idle_add (call 1)

Directly after that a new query was placed, this sees an empty queue, and also calls g_idle_add (call 2)

Then

call1 is handled

directly after that call2 is handled.

causing the same item in the queue being processed, leading to a crash.

The window of failure is _very very_ tiny.  process_itterate must just have emptied it queue and called it self, and between it calling g_idle_add and the handling of that call a new item has to be inserted.

This took me over a week and many very late hours to figure out. (as debugging stuff like this with gdb is near impossible, as idle calls screw up your backtrace).

The fix, a single line.

Make process_itterate not call itself (for the last time) when the queue is empty.