Suggestions from newbie

[zemanel]

Hi,
I’ve just started using mt-daapd with an uNSLUng NSLU2. The most recent version that ipkg could find was 0.2.3.
My knowledge of Linux is null, and surely I’m not alone among the people who just want to have a simple/pleasurable experience streaming their media to some remote client.
Despite being command line based, your software is quite nice and above all: IT DOES “WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN” – which is more than can be said about a lot of commercially available software.
Having said that, I’m sure that there is room for improvement, so here go my suggestions, in order of importance/relevance:

1-It would be (very) nice if the web-interface was complete, if possible eliminating the need for telnetting into the NSLU2 altogether. It could even go as far as mimmicking most of the controls available in Itunes itself.

2-For users wanting high-quality streaming, it would be nice if mt-daapd kept all the metadata of .wav files (even star ratings attributed in iTunes). This info could be retrieved from the iTunes xml files, no?

3-Perhaps it would be possible to indicate mt-daap the path/location of the iTunes xml and playlist files to allow continuous synchronization between the two.

4-If one takes into account the star ratings, how about this: allow a mode/playlist (call it ‘mode X’) which would shuffle play songs with a frequency proportional to their star ratings. The weight factor could even be adjusted.
E.g. let’s say I have 3000 songs, and enter ‘mode X’, then mt-daapd would start at say song 1 and after it jump ‘randomly’ into song n, but the probability of song ‘n’ having 5 stars would be 5 times larger than it having 1 star. This would be the simplest model, where the weight factors would be linear and with multiplicative factor 1, (i.e. 5 stars would be 5 times more likely than 1 star). A linear factor 2 would make 5 star rated songs 10 times more likely than 1 star rated, and so on.

This is my first post here guys, so if some of these things have already been discussed in other threads, my apologies in advance – just trying to contribute with some ideas.

Thanks for a great piece of software.

cheers

[rpedde]

First, thanks. This is developed and released on a strict “Works For Me ™” basis. That said, glad it works for you, too.

1. Working on it. Nightlies allow for creating smart playlists via web interface without having to reload or restart the server. Kinda nifty. Still need to be able to do the same with static playlists, but once the server stuff is done, I’ll start working more on the web side. Interfaces are all there, just need to hook it all up, and I’m not really a web developer, so I could use help there.

2. Yes. Current nightlies can do just that.

3. And that’s how current nightlies do #2.

4. That’s on the borderline of what’s possible. I would like to implement something like that (as well as “top n”, and customer ordering queries, but we’ll see how that goes. That might be a post-0.3.0 thing.

I really need to get a 0.3.0 release and stop adding features. 🙂

Turns out it’s WAY easier to just keep developing and never stop to stabilize a tree. Or maybe I should make more frequent releases, with short feature lists. Dunno.

I’m thinking on #4 though. It’s something I’d really like, too.

[rpedde]

p.s. you can find slug packages for the development line on the nightlies link to the left.

Cheers.

— Ron

[rpedde]

Anders is working on the web interface and has made a *lot* of progress on it. I expect that he’ll probably have the static playlist editing done pretty shortly.. It’s making new playlists, and he’s got searching and browsing done, now he just has to add selected items to the playlist. So he’s close.

Keep watching… we’ll get there. And props to Anders, as he’s the one that’s really pushed the web stuff over the top.

[Author]

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