Poweramp builds 899-905

[andrewilley]

2 minutes ago, thexfile said:

Playback error with exhale - xHE-AAC (m4a) files.

Example and details?

(I think today is turning out to be 'find a wacky new file format' day. I'm reminded  of Andrew Tanenbaum's quote: "The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from; furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model")

Andre

[thexfile]

The m4a can be seen in the library but it errors when it's played "Failed to play file!"

Android 9.

 

If you want I can send you the m4a file.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, thexfile said:

If you want I can send you the m4a file.

Thanks. Please use the Send feature within PA (long-press on the song name) and send it via Dropbox/Google Drive/etc so Max can take a look at it.

Andre 

[andrewilley]

12 hours ago, thexfile said:

If you want I can send you the m4a file.

Thanks for the file, I've added @maxmp to the DM conversation list so he can take a look at it. Nothing on my PC will play it though - foobar2000, VLC, Zoom Player, WMP, Tagscanner, Audacity - but there are a couple of Android apps that do cope, so there is at least something useable in there.

Andre

[6b6561]

3 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Thanks for the file, I've added @maxmp to the DM conversation list so he can take a look at it. Nothing on my PC will play it though - foobar2000, VLC, Zoom Player, WMP, Tagscanner, Audacity - but there are a couple of Android apps that do cope, so there is at least something useable in there.

Have a look at https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_pd_aac for a decoder that should be able to handle the format. Android 9 and newer should natively support the coded.

[andrewilley]

2 hours ago, 6b6561 said:

Have a look at https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_pd_aac for a decoder that should be able to handle the format.

I did try the latest ffmpeg plugin for Audacity but that didn't play the file either, and it really didn't seem worth battling with it to play a really obscure format that I'll probably never encounter again. A couple of Android apps handled it though.

Andre

[andrewilley]

On 3/17/2021 at 2:39 PM, andrewilley said:

One trivial suggestion, but could you allow the symbols list to overflow onto subsequent lines if needed?

Thanks Max, looks great now.

Andre

[maxmp]

I guess xHE-AAC can be supported for subset of Android devices via Android builtin decoder. This is in TODO, but somewhat low priority. Thanks for the request!

[thexfile]

That file was ripped in foobar.

exhale - Open Source xHE-AAC encoder (hydrogenaud.io)

 

I can play it in gonemad with no problems. I prefer Poweramp.

[maxmp]

@ghosty Android Auto moved to tabs UI for media players (4 tabs are visible instead of plain "library" list). There are no other changes for Auto except the UI change.

[ghosty]

@maxmp Thank you, now I see what has changed. Is it still possible to add 'Skip' buttons in the Android Auto UI then?

[andrewilley]

5 hours ago, ghosty said:

 Is it still possible to add 'Skip' buttons in the Android Auto UI then?

I find the inability to skip within a track on Android Auto a bit annoying, but given the limitations on the number of buttons available in the touch interface (and I don't think long-pressing is supported is it?) I'm not sure where a +/- skip function would go.

Andre

[ghosty]

@andrewilley Yes, for those who mostly listen to long tracks (podcasts, audiobooks, etc.) that is really annoying. Especially if long-pressing is not supported (it is not in my Subaru Crosstrek).

38 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

I'm not sure where a +/- skip function would go.

There might be 2 options:

1) Since the 'shuffle' and 'repeat' buttons are less necessary for long tracks, they might be replaced with two 'skip' buttons when the user chooses any long track. So you will have <skip back>, <previous>, <play>, <next>, <skip forward>. See the attached screenshot for the example.

2) The 'skip' buttons might be made optional for any track. So you will have to press a stand-alone button to display additional (two) buttons in the row above the main one.

 

[6b6561]

18 hours ago, andrewilley said:

really obscure format that I'll probably never encounter again

I'm not sure about that, it seems like a pretty good codec that's gaining popularity and please bear in mind that it's a fairly new codec. I don't think it's a good codec for pure music as it seems to be developed for mixed content and low bit-rate in mind for streaming applications. Netflix is one provider using it and it's natively available on both Android and iOS as well as licensed by Microsoft.

One area where I can imagine that this would start to appear is podcasts as an example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Speech_and_Audio_Coding

[andrewilley]

42 minutes ago, 6b6561 said:

... bear in mind that it's a fairly new codec

Which does bring me back to the same old quote "The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from; furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model"

Andre

[maxmp]

@ghosty thanks for the request, something like that (configurable buttons for Auto buttons) is added to TODO. I see that as:
Show fast forward +10/rewind -10 buttons instead of repeat/shuffle:
- never 
- always
- for long tracks

[andrewilley]

12 minutes ago, maxmp said:

thanks for the request, something like that (configurable buttons for Auto buttons) is added to TODO. 

Is there any way to allow more buttons on screen at the same time, or is that a size restriction imposed by Android Auto? The "..." button just to see two more buttons is pretty annoying, especially as the extra panel doesn't auto-hide again when done. I have a 7" horizontal screen in the car, so having 6-7 buttons across the bottom row would be completely fine.

Oh, and for me the button to see the music list only works once, when I first load AA. As soon as I've started to play anything it then consistently fails to do anything (just a big spinning icon, which never completes).

Andre

[maxmp]

Build 902:

• Background Blur set to 0 with Background Details set to 10 result in hi-resolution background now
• bug fixes and stability improvements
• translations updates

[maxmp]

@andrewilley we can't add buttons beyond already existing, but we can replace them to the custom actions.

[andrewilley]

On 3/22/2021 at 10:30 PM, andrewilley said:

If I go into the 'Most Played' category and do <menu> Clear, then the list is completely emptied as expected - and presumably all song play counts should now be set to zero too. However if I then look at Info/Tags for some previously played song, it still shows the original play count.

Thank Max, resolved in build 902, play counts are now zeroed correctly, and they match between the list value and Info/Tags.

One minor thing I noticed while re-testing this though (sorry!) is that the counter gets incremented based solely on the seekbar cursor position, not on the amount of music actually listened to. So even if playback is currently paused at the start, simply sliding the seekbar cursor to the 75% position (still paused) and then skipping triggers an increment of the play counter. I particularly noticed this as one of my test folders has 'Per-Track Progress' enabled, and every time I moved to a track which had already been played two-thirds through, the play count would increment again without even starting playback.

I suggest that incrementing the play count (and setting recently played) should occur only after the threshold amount of music has actually been played - e.g. 90+ seconds of actual playback time if it's a 3-minute track.

Andre

[andrewilley]

On 3/22/2021 at 7:55 PM, andrewilley said:

 I would assume that the best solution would be to still allow the scanner to find them - just like other video files, for those who want to listen to the audio content - but then respect the user's setting of the 'Ignore Video Tracks' option when determining whether to add them to the library database or not.

Seems fine in build 902, thanks Max. 

@John Titor (née @Someguyonline ) could you check? MKVs are now handled like other video files, and only get added to the library database if the 'Ignore Video Tracks' option is switched off.

Andre

[Mr. Make Believe]

Thnx Max for your continuous development. The adjustable buttons on Android auto would be a very welcome feature! 

Enjoy your weekend!

[John Titor]

8 hours ago, andrewilley said:

 

@John Titor (née @Someguyonline ) could you check? MKVs are now handled like other video files, and only get added to the library database if the 'Ignore Video Tracks' option is switched off

Haha Andre you found me (I am really a fan of sci-fi stories). 

 

I found that full rescan time has increased significantly, especially when there's a folder (Movies folder) with a 30 or more videos selected.

And looks like during first rescan, although I am seeing music files, their album art isn't being loaded for some reason. The problem is fixed when I unselected Movies folder, force stopped PA, and relaunched it again. Rescan is very quick after that and the album arts loaded. It looks to me that Poweramp is taking more time than usual scanning video files.

 

Now on to the main problem, I am still seeing mkv files in Poweramp but they are treated as mkv (not mka like it used to), which is kind of improvement I guess, but doesn't really fix my problem..... I am not entirely sure why my test result contradicts with yours but have you tried with this test file?  https://github.com/Matroska-Org/matroska-test-files/raw/master/test_files/test5.mkv

 

Update: after the rescan is completed, mkv files disappear from PA recently added list as I enabled Ignore video tracks... But I am still seeing two above bugs.

 

[John Titor]

Also, I have seen this AAudio bug in the last builds too. When AAudio output is active and I make a phone call, then disconnect the call, Poweramp acts weirdly. It shows the music file is being played, but no sound can be heard. Just for information, I have enabled resume after call and pause in call settings.

Everything is fine in other outputs though, OpenSL ES, AudioTrack, Hi-res though. 

Here's a video of what happens.

 

I can't hear sound at all!

 

[andrewilley]

6 hours ago, John Titor said:

Now on to the main problem, I am still seeing mkv files in Poweramp but they are treated as mkv (not mka like it used to), which is kind of improvement I guess, but doesn't really fix my problem.....

I thought that was your original problem? i.e. MKV files were always being imported to the database, even if you had the 'Ignore Video Files' option set, and they were being incorrectly displayed as MKA. For me, PA now seems to properly respect the 'Ignore Video Files' option, and if you do opt to include video files then they show correctly in lists as MKV format. Re-enabling the 'Ignore' option does recommend a Full Rescan - although it only seems to do a quick scan if you click OK there. For some other prompts where a Full Rescan is required, the response buttons are "Rescan" or "Later", which seems to make more sense to me.

I don't have enough video files on my device to be able to comment on the Full Rescan speed, but subjectively it otherwise seems similar to the speed of previous builds for normal files. It's not exactly a regularly required feature anyway, so if it needs to do a bit of extra file validation to eliminate video content (which shouldn't really be there anyway) and that takes a bit longer, then I can't see that's exactly an earth-shattering issue.

The video files I have don't seem to have thumbnails, they just pick up the in-folder image, but I see no issues with normal (audio songs) cover artwork. Oh, and the scanned MKV files still show a track number of '2', I have no idea why!

Andre