Jukebox by Glenn Delahoy (C) Copyright 2003-2004 All rights reserved Description ----------- Here's an easy to use jukebox to play your mp3/wav/midi/avi/wmv/wma media files. Just point it to your song folder and hit the Play button. Automatically plays songs and movies in sequence or randomly. Choose your own selection of songs or let your friends pick their favourites to be played in turn, when the selection runs out, Jukebox returns to playing its own selection; like a real jukebox. Reads and writes mp3 tags and m3u playlists. Optionally play songs only from a selected genre. Has built in mixer controls for quick adjustments. The adjustable crossfade function keeps the music coming without a break; perfect for parties. Version 2 has a rewritten back-end and a much nicer user interface to provide an even better jukebox-like experience. Options ------- When you run Jukebox for the first time, you'll be taken straight to the Options page. Here, you can set a number of options, set the path to your song folder and adjust the mixer to taste. The options are saved to an ini file, however if you're sharing Jukebox with others you may prefer to save your personal preferences to the registry. You can do this by starting Jukebox with the /r command line argument which can be achieved via a Windows shortcut. When you're done, click the Main button to return to the main display. Remember Folder --------------- Jukebox will save the selected folder and reload it next time it is run. Random ------ Play the songs in random order. If this is off, the songs are played in the order they are discovered on the disk. This is not necessarily alphabetical order. Jukebox will play each song once until all songs have been played then it will start the whole list again. Search Sub Folders ------------------ All sub folders of the selected path are also searched for songs. Play On Start-up ---------------- Jukebox will begin playing songs from the selected folder as soon as you run it. Start Minimised --------------- Jukebox will immediately minimise itself to the system tray when you run it. Crossfade --------- This controls the number of seconds prior to the end of a song to begin playing the next song. This helps to eliminate that horrible pregnant pause between songs so it starts to feel like a DJ playing the music. The default six seconds seems to be a good setting for most party type music. You can also reduce the pregnant pause by trimming the silence from the end of your song files using any decent audio editor. Audacity is a nice open source editor. Transparency ------------ Controls the level of transparency in percentage. Zero is your normal opaque form, 100 is nearly completely transparent. Song Folder ----------- Choose the folder containing your song/movie files. You can either type the path directly into the edit box (press Enter when done) or click the "..." button to open a selection dialog. If the Search Sub Folders option is selected, all sub-folders are also searched. Jukebox recognises Windows shortcuts so you can make a permanent play list of songs you want to hear using shortcuts without having multiple copies of songs lying around the place. Video Window Size ----------------- Select the size of the video window. All the way to the left sets the video window to the actual size of the video program. Anything else sets it to a percentage of your screen size. Mixer ----- These functions hook directly into the Windows mixer and offer the same basic functionality but presented here for your convenience. Adjust the volume, bass and treble to taste. Note that some sound cards don't always offer bass and treble controls and so may not be available here. Main Display ------------ Having set the options, click the Main button to return to the main display. The transport buttons at the bottom control the play, pause, stop, previous and next functions in the same manner as a cd player. Note that in random mode it is not possible to return to the previous song. During play, you can click the Next button at any time to move on to the next song. The main playlist is initially empty. In this case, when you click the Play or Next buttons, Jukebox will just start playing songs without any intervention. If you want to hear specific songs, click one of the Catalogue buttons near the bottom and double click any number of songs in the list. The selected songs will be added to the "Coming Up" list. You can also multi-select songs and double click or right click to add many songs at once. When Jukebox has finished the current song, the next in this list will be played. When the list runs out, Jukebox returns to playing its own selection. The combination of the random play mode, the Catalogue and the "Coming Up" list provide a great jukebox-like approach to always having something playing and at the same time allowing you to choose your own songs to be played. Catalogue Sorting and Filtering ------------------------------- Click the Catalogue button to pop up a menu containing a number of options for adjusting the catalogue contents. You can sort by artist or title and filter by genre. If the filter is set only songs in that genre will be played. M3U Playlists ------------- Jukebox can read and write m3u playlists. To load or save a playlist, click the Coming Up button. The popup menu has two options to load or save. When the selected m3u playlist file is successfully loaded, the listed songs are added to the Coming Up list. To create a playlist, open the catalogue and add the songs you want to the Coming Up list then click the Coming Up button and select save. The songs in the Coming Up list are written to the m3u playlist file. Mp3 Tags -------- If an mp3 song file has a v1.1 tag present it will be used to get the title and artist for the catalogue. To modify the mp3 tag of a song select the song in the catalogue, right click and select the mp3 tag option. If the mp3 tag is not present, Jukebox will attempt to extract the title and artist from the file name using the "artist - title.mp3" format. You can also multi-select songs from the catalogue to update many songs at once. System Tray ----------- The Hide button will minimise the application to the system tray. To restore the app, double click the icon in the system tray or right click and select Show. There are also options on the system tray context menu to control the play functions. Screen Saver ------------ Look for the Jukebox screen saver coming soon on my home page (below). It offers a marquee with the current and next songs playing, webcam display and jpg slideshow, great for parties. -------------------------------------------------------------- Release Notes Version v1.10 ------------- Change 1: General facelift with new colours and fonts etc. Change 2: Removed first page, playlist is now main page. Change 3: Fixed minor bug in randomiser. Change 4: Application is now sizeable. Change 5: Fixed bug when highlighting currently selected track or selecting a new track. Change 6: Stopped the noise when you press Enter on the folder edit box. Change 7: Added option to switch off recursive folder search. Change 8: Fixed bug when selecting initial track before playing in random mode. Change 9: Added track countdown. Change 10: Added crossfade option. Change 11: Hopefully fixed the horrible scratching noise when it moves to the next track. Change 12: Options now saved in ini file by default rather than the registry. Change 13: Changed new song selection to double click rather than single. Change 14: Added readme and about buttons. Change 15: Added volume control. Version v1.11 ------------- Change 1: The song list is reset as soon as the "Show file name only" checkbox is switched on or off. Change 2: Cleaned up the Windows mixer synchronisation. Change 3: Added bass, treble and mute controls. Change 4: Round corners, kewl! Change 5: Replaced the status line with a little marquee. Version v2.00 ------------- This version is a major rewrite of both the back-end and user interface to be more jukebox-like in its appearance and functionality. There's too many changes to list individually. The following lists some specific new things added and things removed. Tested on Win2k and Win/XP. Change 1: Back-end rewrite to provide better control over song selection for sequential, random or user selected song play. Change 2: Replaced all the boring old controls with sexy new ones courtesy of the TMS Instrumentation Workshop by TMS Software at www.tmssoftware.com. Change 3: Added the catalogue controls to give better access to the song list. Change 4: Better queueing control to feel more like a real jukebox. Change 5: Removed the sizeable option. It may return later. Change 6: Removed the Show File Name Only option. Change 7: Removed the load button. Change 8: Added mp3 tag editor. Change 9: Added transparency control. Change 10: Added play controls to system tray menu. Change 11: Added network communications for Jukebox Screen Saver. Change 12: Added m3u playlist support. Version v2.10 ------------- Change 1: Loads mp3 tags during initial folder load now rather than when you click the catalogue buttons. Change 2: Added catalogue sort options. Change 3: Fixed a couple of bugs in the mp3 tag functions. Change 4: Cleaned up artist/title displays when one or the other is missing. Change 5: Added support for midi, avi, wmv and wma media files. Change 6: Added multi-select to catalogue. Change 7: Added genre filter. Change 8: Added catalogue load progress. Change 9: A few little aesthetic changes about the place. Change 10: Changed tray controls so you can access the tray popup menu even while the application is unminimised. -------------------------------------------------------------- Comments/suggestions to: support@delahoy.com http://www.glenn.delahoy.com