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MUSIC PLAYER 2.1

FEATURES:

The Music Player project consists of two applications: Music Player and Music Player Catalog.

Music Player Overview

The Music Player is a WPF client to the Music Player Catalog application, thus it requires a running Music Player Catalog in order to be useful. The interface of this WPF client is very similar to the Silverlight web interface of the Music Player Catalog. Both, the Music Player application and the Silverlight web interface, allow you to access more than one catalog at the same time. In the Options window, you specify all catalogs you want to access and their types, which can be "This Computer" (local machine), "Local Network" (on the local network), or "Remote" (general, mostly for over the internet). When you search for music files or tag values, all catalogs in use are queried at once, and when all the catalogs have responded, the results are combined together. You may see one value more than once because it may be returned by more than one catalog. For example, if you have one and the same album on your local machine and on a server on the local network, and they both have the Music Player Catalog running and you use both catalogs in the Music Player, the album will appear twice in the Albums tab of the main window. When you select one of those albums, again, both albums will be displayed in the Songs tab, but they may have different folder paths, depending on where the album folders are located on the local machine or on the server on the local network. You can add music files from different catalogs to the playlist, which will automate the playback through the different catalogs, thus creating the feeling of one common music collection.

In addition to the normal interface controls, like a mouse and a keyboard, you can also control the Music Player main functionality with a Media Center Edition remote control, thus creating a 10 feet user interface, and a Media Center like experience.

Music Player Catalog Overview

The Music Player Catalog is a database, web, and streaming server for organizing and accessing your media files. You can access the information in the catalog, and the content of the media files using one of three different interfaces - a WPF client (Music Player application), a basic web interface (pure html), and a Silverlight web interface (very similar to the WPF client). In the Music Player Catalog, you need to add one or more folders with media files, which can be audio or video files. You can organize the media files in the catalog using the folder structure, their metadata information (tags), or using playlists. These folders, together with their media files, and all related tags and playlists are considered a catalog. The catalog is similar to the library in Windows Media Player (WMP). You have the option to specify whether the folders in the catalog will be monitored for new and deleted media files or not, so you can have more control over the media files in the catalog. The folders can be monitored only when the Music Player Catalog application is running. If you made changes to the media files in the folders when Music Player Catalog is not running, you may need to update the folders in the catalog. Whenever you browse a folder in the catalog using the Music Player application or the web interfaces, its media files will be updated with the media files on the file system, so any new files will be added and any deleted files will be removed automatically from the catalog. This is one of the main features of the catalog, and it allows you to push an update to the catalog remotely. For performance reasons, the media files in the subfolders are not updated, but you can update them using the Music Player Catalog application, which updates the folders recursively.

You also have more control of the metadata information (tags) of the media files, than with WMP. WMP is used to read and write tags from and to the media files, but the tags information is stored in the catalog, and you can edit any of those tags, no matter whether the new information is accurate. The Music Player Catalog will attempt to save the changes in the tags to the media files themselves using WMP, but this may not always be successful depending on the types of the tags, their content, or the types of the media files. Even if the tags cannot be saved to the media files, they will be saved in the catalog. This is another main feature of the catalog, and it allows you to have metadata information about the media files, which normally cannot be stored in the files themselves. For example, you can have metadata information in the catalog about some types of video files, which normally do not store metadata information. In addition to the tags read by WMP, there are also system tags, which are created by the Music Player Catalog. They start with the prefix "MP/", and they are used to describe the files using information from the file system, like file size, date created, etc... You can also create custom tags, which start with the prefix "CT/", and you can use them to store any information about the media files in the catalog.

In addition to organizing your media files with folders and tags, you can also organize them using playlists. A playlist can be a manual playlist, or an auto playlist. In a manual playlist, you add files to the playlist, and specify their order. In an auto playlist, the media files and their order in the playlist is determined by a search filter, which you specify. The search filters, which are also used in the Music Player application and the web interfaces, are a very important and powerful feature for selecting media files in the catalog.

The Music Player Catalog also acts as a web and a streaming server. When you are connected to the catalog remotely over the internet, the Music Player Catalog will stream the media files using the profiles you have selected in the Music Player application or on the web interfaces. You may need to have DirectShow filters installed, like "ffdshow", in order to stream certain types of media files. In general, if you can't play a media file in Windows Media Player, you won't be able to stream it, as well. During streaming, the media files are transcoded automatically according to the selected profile, which can be very processing intensive. If the computer, on which the Music Player Catalog is running, does not have the necessary processing power for a real time transcoding, the playback of the files may skip, in which case, you can pause the playback, so the file can buffer and play smoothly, or you can select a lower profile, which requires less processing power. The web interfaces are similar to the user interface in the Music Player application, but you can use them on a standard web browser, so you don't need to have the Music Player installed on the remote machine. The web interfaces can be accessed by using the URI of the computer, on which Music Player Catalog is running, and the port specified in the Options form. Be default, this port will be 4505, so, for example, to access the basic web interface on the local machine, you can use the following URL - http://127.0.0.1:4505, and to access the Silverlight web interface, you can use http://127.0.0.1:4505/sl. The basic web interface uses html templates, which you can modify freely, so, it's highly customizable. The Silverlight web interface allows you to use almost all of the functionality of the Music Player application, including using several catalogs at once, without the need to install any application on a remote computer - the only thing you need is a web browser with Silverlight.

Another useful feature of the Music Player Catalog is the functionality for searching album covers on Amazon.com, using Amazon Web Services. By default, the main album cover is expected to be in a file called "cover.jpg" in the same folder where the media files of the album are located. You can also have other album art images in the same folder as the media files, which will be used to create a slideshow in the Music Player application, when a media file from this folder is being played. Using this approach suggests that you should have only one album per folder, otherwise you won't be able to assign the album art properly. Using the functionality for searching for covers allows you to create the necessary cover ("cover.jpg") files, if you don't have album art files already, from which you can create them. In the Options form, you can change the default name of the cover files, if you have the cover files already, but with a different name. Separating and specifying the cover files for the albums and placing album art images in the folders with media files, gives you more control over the album art.