Music and iTunes plugin

Introduction So for that past couple of months i have been working on the bringing music to MediaBrowser (MB). With this blog i just want to give you guys an idea of how it works and what it supports. I know there are several people (wink wink) that like to tinker with MB and hopefully this will give you an idea of the limits. I will also hint at future developments that i am currently thinking about. Also maybe give you some insight into why i did what i did. I don’t want to make this to long because i know people don’t like to read but rather see results :).

So currently (not released yet) music can come from two sources (this can be simultaneously setup) one is from a normal folder setup another from iTunes' XML library. As for the former you specify the base folder and it displays as is. As for the latter you specify the XML file and it builds a MB compatible library (or cache).

Normal Library I decided to go with a view by folder paradigm because that makes the most sense to me. If i play music i can find it the faster by the folder structure that i setup. Apart from that if i did it another way i would have had to force a specific folder structure and as all of you know reorganizing a lot of music is a cumbersome task.

iTunes Library As for the iTunes setup, the cache is built up just like it is in iTunes with various options to switch off genre and artist, this however is only allowed in a hierarchy fashion. One point on this setup i have to make is i use the xml file because reading it directly from iTunes via their supplied COM interface is really slow. The disadvantage to using the xml file is that the cache has to be rebuilt if any changes occur to the iTunes library. Lastly on this setup, it requires the internet to get the xml definition file. You will get an error if it is not available.

General In general in order for the music plugin not to “break” existing functionality if there is a avi or any video file in the music folder it is seem as a “movie”. Also the plugin will deal with backdrop and folder images as MB does currently. This is both in the normal and iTunes setup. Having said this it wont use the folder image to display as the album cover while playing. For this it uses the image on the ID3 tag. I suggest you use a 3rd party program to save the folder.jpg into the ID3 tag. When it comes to ID3 tags, i did not make use of them because it is also very slow. Maybe in the future i will revisit this.

Ok, so there were various posts asking which media support is required. Currently the plugin will only consider the following as “music”: m4a,mp3,m3u,wma,acc,flac and wpl. Beware of the playlists, they might cause unexpected results especially when it comes to queuing a folder. As part of the options you can enable a playlist folder in the base folder. This is a special folder that media player (MP) saves the playlists that it (you) create. This you will see if you view the queue, there is an option to save the playlist. If you save it and go look in the enabled playlist folder it should be there.

With regards to playlist, i have added the ability to queue folders/songs and as per existing functionality you can play the whole folder. Just push play on the folder/song and a menu will appear. This is however only possible with some remotes. Once again this is something within MB that i cannot change, now.

Things to come You will notice that the feeling (without tweaking) within the plugin is very bare in terms of information and different views. This is because MB’s current plugin architecture does not allow custom MCML (or views). So the plugin cannot “inject” its own new view. This will most likely change in future. Having said this there might be a new theme soon that will have support for music (lets see Craigt). With this I will consider using a “series.xml” type metadata storage or alternatively look at the ID3 tag. Using the former would probably require another 3rd party application which is a disadvantage, and a whole lot of work from your point of view, so it will most likely end up looking at the ID3 tag.

Configurator and plugin options You might remember the eye ball twisting xml file used to configure the plugin. Well it is no more. I have added the ability for plugins to have options that you can setup via the Configurator (CFR). With this it builds up a UI using the settings of the plugin. In terms of the music plugin i think the options are quite clear and you can find them in the CFR by selecting the music plugin and clicking on the Configure button.

Besides making use of the current supported views offered by MB you can specify a song icon to use for your sounds, i however don’t find this particularly appealing.

Thanks Well i hope i covered everything, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to PM me or post something. If you don’t get a response to your post, please PM me a link. I hope you enjoy the added music ability to our favourite (SA spelling) media center plugin.

I would also just like to say thanks to everyone for the input and the testing. Some chaps that stand out in this regard is jcalton88, craigt, Sam, a couple of buddies back home and well the whole community.

ENJOY …

Post Phoenix Update Thanks to my brother Craigt, i have a site and managed to setup another place to host the plugin. On that site i am hosting Version 0.5.0.8.

To get it you must go to the configurator –> plugins –> Add –> File –> Sources –> Add and enter this url –> http://www.craigthomas.co.za/plugins/plugin_info.xml

Please delete the old music plugin and config file (/plugins/musicplugin.xml) before you update.

Posted by nephelyn on October 05, 2009

16 comments