TouchRemote 0.1.0.0 beta
Ok, guys. I’ve promised library support until the end of January, so here’s the first beta to test.
As I’ve said, the most important feature is library. You can search and browse artists, albums, tracks, genres and composers, also there’s album artwork support in the albums list (a bit buggy). But you still cannot create playlists from sibrary selection, so all this seems kinda useless 
The main purpose of this release is you to test library parser speed. I haven’t tested it on a very large library (10k+), so need some feedback from large library owners about possible performance issues. Please run foobar, open console and find something like:
TouchRemote: items added to library: 1933 start finished in: 0:00.063
and post your results in this topic.
Plugin is built with a new SDK, so it will run only on foobar2k 1.0 or later.
Here’s a download link for you: foo_touchremote 0.1.0.0.
Patrick on January 25th, 2010 at 10:41
TouchRemote: items added to library: 10402
start
finished in: 0:00.265
394 artists in the tree
826 albums in the tree
9307 tracks in the tree
119 genres in the tree
65 composers in the tree
This is on my laptop. Not my main PC. I will test tomorrow on main kit.
Thanks for this. Seems pretty sweet. Im going to go play.
leandro on January 25th, 2010 at 17:13
thanksssssssss for the component!!!
heres mine
TouchRemote: items added to library: 4505
start
finished in: 0:00.094
Patrick on January 26th, 2010 at 01:20
OK, I have added the new component to my main Foobar 80K+ tracks on three drives.
TouchRemote: items added to library: 38243
start
finished in: 0:01.453
1187 artists in the tree
3011 albums in the tree
36760 tracks in the tree
199 genres in the tree
323 composers in the tree
Watching: E:\Music A-H
TouchRemote: items added to library: 22484
start
finished in: 0:01.016
1757 artists in the tree
5006 albums in the tree
58514 tracks in the tree
302 genres in the tree
478 composers in the tree
Watching: F:\Music I-O
TouchRemote: items added to library: 26331
start
finished in: 0:01.062
3009 artists in the tree
7693 albums in the tree
83851 tracks in the tree
390 genres in the tree
598 composers in the tree
Watching: G:\Music P-Z
Im not sure if the above is more than you need. I figured I would post all of it.
It seems to be working well enough. It does hang up in some places, but no crashes yet.
When selecting an artist sometimes it takes a while to load the albums. Other times it is pretty quick.
great job on this. I cant tell you how excited I am for this to be fully functional (or close)
Thanks again!!! I encourage everyone to drop you a couple of bucks for your hard work.
-Patrick
Patrick on January 26th, 2010 at 04:25
Piece,
One suggestion for you. Is it possible to have the Artist View be “Directory Structure” rather than straight from the Artist tags?
The reason I ask is because as is I end up with
ACDC
AC-DC
AC/DC
AC_DC
etc…..
I know it is from older messy tagging. But on some where my tags are good, like all of my classical, I would rather have everything in my Mozart folder be found in “Mozart” rather than:
Karajan
St. Academy of the Fields
ABC String Quartet
etc…
Just a thought. If you can only do one or the other, I can imagine why directory structure might be bad for those who dont organize their Artist and Album folders, or outright dont use them at all.
thanks!
Patrick
LxOfIth on January 27th, 2010 at 00:48
This seems to be working pretty well, kudos to PoS for his work.
I don’t have issues with speed, though my library has 11k+ items only.
I have the same problem as Patrick: the raw artist tag is not the one I’d like to use to display the library. This is because many albums have multiple artists (e.g. compilations, bands, classical…). I’d much rather use the ‘album artist’ tag. For example (to follow up on Patrick) all my Mozart albums have Mozart as the album artist, even though the artist tag changes a lot (different performers; also the artits tag contains a list of names, not only one name, and this shows badly in Remote). This should probably be an option in the plugin to suit different people’s needs.
Great work, keep it up!
Patrick on January 27th, 2010 at 05:51
no offense Lxofith but that would be even worse for me and most others i imagine. I dont think even use “Album Artist”. Mine would be mostly blank in that field.
Directory structure or Artist tag should be used. Although my personal vote is for Directory Structure of course.
Juan on January 28th, 2010 at 12:09
Nice piece of work, I founf that foobar has better sound than itunes in windows, anyone else have the same feeling?
Anyway i finding the following issues:
- seems like the art work is too heavy and the ipod have trouble whne playing the animations over it, maybe apple version send a reduced version of the artwork?
- sometimes crashes the ipod app most times when browsing songs inside an album.
- this is not a bug probably: when remote controling itunes in “now playing” if you click the small icon on the upper right side the art work flips and shows the content of that album, in foobar shows only the current song.
- also I have noticed large amount of packets coming from the computer short after synch.
Thanks for the great work!
Juan on January 28th, 2010 at 12:33
I also found that it plays different songs to the ones one is selecting from browsing the albums. anyone else having this issue?
oasis on January 28th, 2010 at 19:46
TouchRemote: items added to library: 30156
start
finished in: 0:00.593
3479 artists in the tree
2197 albums in the tree
29795 tracks in the tree
12 genres in the tree
14 composers in the tree
pieceofsummer on January 28th, 2010 at 20:47
Juan, let me explain:
- Artwork in album list mode can’t be too heavy ’cause it is resized to 56×56 pixels (as requested by app) PNG, it is typically 10kB per image. Maybe I should reduce bit depth from 32 to 16 bpp. Also gzip compression will be introduced soon to make less traffic. Artwork in the NP screen is not resized yet and could be heavy.
- Hmm, could it be bugs in the ipod app itself? Have you installed the latest version from AppStore?
- That is really not a bug, it is just not-implemented-yet feature
- What exactly ‘synch’ you’re talking about?
and
- that is also not implemented yet.
Patrick, LxOfIth,
directory structure is impossible, it is just not supported by iphone app. Think it should be something like foobar’s $if2(Album Artist, Artist). Tracks without Artist tag just shouldn’t appear in the ‘Artists’ view.
Patrick on January 28th, 2010 at 22:08
Thanks POS!!! I appreciate the clarification. I can easily live with simple “Artist” tags. I will just clean up the offending tags and enjoy!!!!
It is really working very well despite the known limitations. I am so jazzed for the completed version.
Keep it up!
Thanks again,
Patrick
Guido on January 28th, 2010 at 22:34
First of all many thanks for this component!
I have a problem:
In the console there’s no “Touch Remote: items added to library…”.
In my console: “TouchRemote: init started
TouchRemote: using ID ’82A82802-4BBB-4DD0-A8A8-9E43BB6E7371′
TouchRemote: started DAAP server on port 3690
Startup time : 0:04.943383″
Do you have any idea?
Thanks
Guido
pieceofsummer on January 28th, 2010 at 22:39
Guido,
most likely you have library not enabled in foobar. Check your settings, ensure you have at least one folder watched for music.
If it is not an issue, check you’re really using version 0.1 of the plugin. Older versions don’t have any library support.
oasis on January 29th, 2010 at 14:03
hi, will it be possible to remap the artists list to “album artist” ?
Juan on January 29th, 2010 at 18:47
Hi pieceofsummer thanks for the answers:
You are right, the art work moves very responsive and feels light in the album list view, is only in NP screen where it get heavy and unresponsive.
I have checked and I had the updated versions of the app and ipod soft, I could isolate a couple of artworks that makes the app crash whenever loaded into the NP screen. I tried that same file with itunes and noprob.
The packets start to transfer since the apps connects, (the moment the ipod app shows “loading”) and they continue for minutes, I will try to measure the differences in traffic with itunes and foobar using the same library and post the results.
Again thanks for the work
pieceofsummer on January 29th, 2010 at 19:22
oasis,
that is already done, you’d get it in the next update.
Juan,
crashes on NP screen are possible now since iphone app gets unresized picture and could run out of memory. That would be also fixed.
And packets on startup are completely normal thing. Client loads playlists, albums and artists to show them quickly when needed. Current public version doesn’t compress traffic so it could be heavy. The dev build already uses gzip compression, so it should reduce the amount of data sent over network and speed-up loading.
P.S. There will be a new version in a few days.
Juan on January 30th, 2010 at 04:48
Lovely pos, we all wait for that new build!
Patrick on January 30th, 2010 at 21:40
POS,
Standard “Artist” tags will remain right? I dont know if I am using “Album Artist” on any of the thousands I have.
thank again!
-Patrick
Patrick on January 30th, 2010 at 21:41
POS,
Standard “Artist” tags will remain right? I dont know if I am using “Album Artist” on any of the thousands I have.
I just did some spot checkingand not one of them is tagged with album artist unfortunately.
thank again!
-Patrick
pieceofsummer on January 31st, 2010 at 01:03
Patrick, well, maybe it’s time to use masstagger, eh?
Anyway, grab a new version and see if artists are working as expected.
Patrick on January 31st, 2010 at 05:40
POS,
it seems like it is working correctly. See my question/comment in the other thread regarding which is uses first if the two artist tags are different.
thanks!
Patrick on January 31st, 2010 at 12:40
POS,
I am very intrigued at your mass tagger comment? What is your suggestion? Should I copy all of my “artist” tags to “album artist” so they match?
My artist tags are FULLY dialed throughout. I have spent most of the night verifying this? E.g., I made sure the “Artist” was AC/DC for every album. Then reloaded foobar. My remote app still showed:
ACDC
AC-DC
AC/DC
Two albums were not “AC/DC”, Highway to Hell and Back In Black. All of the others showed in “AC/DC”. It turns out there were “Album Artist” as something else for those two albums. I have alot of these it seems. For all of my classical I have “Artist” as “Mozart” and “Album Artist” as “London Philharmonic” I am guessing this is backwards from the norm.
In all of my years of ripping and occasional retagging, I have never changed or specified “Album Artist”. I have “Album Artist” in about 20% of my music (if that) and most of them are the trouble items.
I click on “Artist” in Remote App and I see things like “1996″, “4″, “FLAC”, where for some reason “Album Artist” was not correctly specified. Yet ALL of my “Artist” tags are perfect.
That being said…. is there a way of making the setting such that “Artist” is used before “Album Artist”??? If not as the default, maybe it could be a setting option we could choose?
I am guessing, pure conjecture, that most files out there are tagged correctly by “Artist” more often than “Album Artist”. Unless it is a various artist, tribute, or other album where someone carefully tagged.
I always thought that if it was, e.g., Yo Yo Ma playing Bach, that the “Album Artist” was YoYoMa, and the “Artist” was Bach. That way all Bach is found under “Bach”. I see how I could have been backwards on that. But nevertheless, I think “Artist” is ALWAYS used whereas “Album Artist” is not and is often wrong….
Just a thought…. too many beers and too much wine…. and some tequila.
loving the component,
p
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