Music Box 4

Please support NextPVR

Music Box 4 is a plugin that does not use a directory structure for holding music files. It is based on psycik's MusicLibrary 2 and 3 plugin, updated and refreshed for NextPVR.

It supports basic ID3v1 and ID3v2 tag reading.
Multiple Directories/Drives for media
Playlists - M3U importing now supported
Album Art (including embedded)
Album Art Downloading
Music Collections
Jukebox mode
CUE file support
Audioscrobbling/Last.FM updating (TBD)

Album Compilation Menu

Standard Jukebox View

Icon Jukebox View

Downloading and Installing

The latest version of the MusicBox4 plugin is v10.0.1

Uncompress and run the installer. The installer only includes support for the Default skin (thanks to Jaggy). If your preferred skin doesn't support MB4, the Default skin will be used but the look and feel may not match.

Music Box4 - 9.4 Download:MusicBox4.7z (2877 downloads)

Explanation of Components

Here is what the different DLLs do:

Tag-lib-sharp.dll is an external tag reader ultraid3lilb.dll is an external (MP3 only) tag reader. Interop.wmp.dll - this is the Windows Media player DLL.

Requirements

This plugin has been tested with NextPVR v2.1.4 and above - it requires the .NET 2.0 framework to be installed.

It uses the following external id3 tag libraries.

UltraID3Lib - this is a very good, MP3 only tag reader. It supports album art within mp3 files and can be downloaded from http://home.fuse.net/honnert/UltraID3Lib/

Taglib-sharp - this library handles almost anything you can throw at it, and also handles embedded album art. Available from http://download.banshee.fm/taglib-sharp

For your convenience these libraries are preinstalled, Taglib-sharp in the NPVR Program directory and UltraID3Lib in the NPVR Program\plugins\common directory.

Configuration

Configuration is done through standard NextPVR Config by right clicking on the NextPVR screen

General

Database settings - set the type and location of your MusicBox4 database file
Always Query - on by default means every key press re-queries the database. To improve performance, turn this off, this will mean navigating the left hand screen will only update unless you press enter, or move off the left hand screen.
Play Button Queues - Make the play button queue tracks instead of starting a new playlist.
Delete Dead Files will remove missing files from the database that cannot be found during a scan
Insanely Stupid Amount of Logging Special logging, makes huge logs files, so only do so on request.
Internal ML2 Logging - Creates a separate log file for MusicBox - kept in NPVR\Logs directory*

View

Remove (All) option - remove the (ALL) option from the left panel. Designed for people with very large collections
Sort By Track - sets the default sort to track, off, sorts alphabetically - in NPVR change from Home Menu
Remove "The" remove's "The" or "A" from the start of an artist and puts it at the end, e.g Perfect Circle, The

Playlists/Playing

Default Random Period - how many mintues of music to play when the random playlist button or menu option is hit.
Jukebox Mode Wait Time - tkgafs - once MB4 has been started and opened, if it is just left, after this period of time, in seconds, a random playlists will be started - 0 to turn off.
At the End of a Random Playlist - start a new random playlist or just stop.
M3U Playing Indicator - adds "(M3U)" to the end of an imported playlist.
Remote Text Entry - use remote text entry rather that the OnScreen keyboard for saving playlist names.*
Random Always ALL/ALL - when in random ML2 will normally take what is currently shown in the title screen as it's selection of tracks to create a random play list from. This option just forces ML2 to always select all tracks before creating a playlist
While Playing Show set the default viewing. Also sets whether playback position is shown.*
Export/Import Playlists Exports play lists held in the DB to files, can be used before/after an upgrade*

Media Library/Collections

Set the paths and collections - set paths and collections details below.

Library Update

Fast Scan Interval - the number of hours between fast scans - only updated those files that have changed - added/deleted or renamed, since the last scan O to disable.
Skip File Name - customizable file name for skipping a directory from the main database - this used to be hard coded as noindex.txt
Skip file Recursive - whether to skip all files in a directory structure rather that just the individual directory.

Last.FM

Last.FM/Audioscrobbler settings for uploading current listened to tracks to the Last.FM social website This has never been tested looking for volunteers.

Album Art

Album Art is read from a file folder.jpg or default.jpg, cover.jpg in the directory containing the MP3 file. UltraID3 lib is included this will attempt to read embedded album art.

In order album art is read: Embedded in track Song name.jpg Album name.jpg Folder.jpg Default.jpg.

FanArt and Backdrops

MusicBox4 is automatically configured to download and display music artist backdrops from the great collection at htbackdrops.com in the Jukebox view. The art is stored in the NextPVR Data Folder Media\Artists and you will need to create this folder. The config settings for this in MusicBox.xml are

      <DownloadFanart>true</DownloadFanart>
      <ArtistFanart>true</ArtistFanart>

Additionally when no art is found it will look in your Skin folder for generic art for display for the folder Skin\Default\MusicBox4\Backdrops

This is the setting for it.

      <DefaultFanart>true</DefaultFanart>

Some nice generic is available here

http://www.htbackdrops.com/v2/thumbnails.php?album=9

Configuring Paths

In the config app under Media Library/Collections

Specify the directories where media is housed. When starting for the first time a default path of C:\ is included. This can be deleted. It will be attached to a collection called system. See below for an explanation of collections.

Paths are stored in the MusicBox4 database.

These are collections of music, say Xmas, Kids etc.

First set up the all paths that will be used in the system - these will all appear under the system heading
- eg: C:\Music\Xmas, C:\Music\Kids, C:\Music\EverythingElse
The Click on Collections, then click new collection - name the collection in the pop up box, and choose the paths for that collection
- eg Xmas - choose the C:\Music\Xmas path
Click ok. - You should now have "System" at the top with 3 paths in it, and under "collections" there should be "Xmas" with one path.
To set a collection is default (rather than system), right click on the collection name and set as default.

Confused yet?? Try it and see.

Now you can scan everything, if you've made changed to the collections they will need to be saved for the scan to work.

Using the Plugin

Library Screen

Press the right and left buttons to navigate between the Artists, Albums and titles.
Pressing "Play" on the Artists will play all songs by the selected artist
Pressing "Play" on the Album will play all songs from that album
Pressing "Play" on each title will play that song
Pressing the OK/Enter will shuffle the selected songs instead of creating a new playlist. On the tracklisting it will give several options to Play or Queue
A random playlist can be generated by pressing the Red Button (Alt-R). The amount of time the playlist will try to fill is selected in the config app (Default Random Period)
There is a context sensitive menu accessible with the Menu button - home key to change views, options and select Random play without a button on the remote.
The Options sub menu contains options for changing the sort order of tracks, switching between collections and genre updating the library* and a few other options.
The Green key (Alt-G) switches MusicBox4 from an Artist/Album/Title configuration to Compilation/Artist/Title and Genre/Artist/Title
Ctrl-K (record on Hauppauge remotes) removes an entry from a playlist
You can use your remote control key pad to "type" letters, these will make the cursor jump to the first artist, album or genre starting with those letters. With the Hauupauge 45 Key remote "Prev Channel" button (CTRL-W) to erase a character, the '*' to shift between Caps lock on or off - has no effect while searching, space is the '0' key. Press ok to accept that entry and clear or move to the right.
Pressing the Yellow (Alt-Y) button will show the playlists screen.

Playlist Screen

If playing, the playlist screen will show tracks currently playing.
The last played Playlists is saved for replay

Press the Ctrl-K key (record) to delete a playlist. M3U playlists will come back in the next scan. - [B]- NOT YET IMPLEMENTED[/B]

Pressing the record key on a track will delete the track from the playlist, if playing, it will restart the current play after deletion.

If a track has been identified as having an associated cue file by showing "(CUE)" on the title, this track can be "opened" by hitting enter (ok) on it, this will show all of the sub tracks - and as the track plays it will update with the currently playing. NOTE: hitting next or previous track will skip to the next track in the playlist, not the next track in that cue file!! [B]- NOT YET IMPLEMENTED[/B]

CUE Files

psycik used to listen to a Trance radio show every week from Holland. These are 2 hour long sets, and what some people do is add a cue sheet for these large mp3s. Psycik implemented CUE files as a way of showing the contents of a large, radio show mp3 file. It just means it shows what track you're up to.

Originally Cue files were used for ISO files. Or using tools like mp3Direct cut, it will take a cue file and split the mp3 tracks up into individuals for storing on a an audio cd.

Support

This plugin is discussed in the Recording2, MusicLibrary2, SystemStatus Support forum

Source Code

Known Limitations

I sure there are some more.

Donations

If you feel like you would like to donate to Psycik for the original MusicLibrary 2 or 3. http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/MusicLibrary3

Todo

Create an album table
Better support for boxed sets multiple disk CD's
Multiple artists? - add option to take '&' 'and' '/' 'feat' and treat as sep artists, exclude certain ones (Simon and Garfunkel"
Change remote text entry to be a screen (ala winamp), search everything, not just the one field.