Messages

Alright, I fixed the mpris problem. Here's how:

• Install gmusicbrowser_1.1.99.1+1516;
• Go to /usr/share/gmusicbrowser/plugins, and copy mpris2.pm into a temp directory;
• Downgrade to gmusicbrowser_1.1.99.1+1514;
• copy mpris2.pm from your temp directory into /usr/share/gmusicbrowser/plugins, overwriting the version that's there.

Now, I have all my covers showing, and they show in the indicator (so on my phone, the lock screen and pull down menu).

I realized this same problem was happening on my other desktop computer, and I finally figured it out: the deb linked from the gmusicbrowser website, gmusicbrowser_1.1.99.1_all.deb, installs this version: gmusicbrowser_1.1.99.1+1514; when I add the nightly PPA, it installs gmusicbrowser_1.1.99.1+1516. This newer version causes a lot of my cover art not to load. I have no idea why.

After downgrading gmusicbrowser on my device, I now see all the album covers, which is great. However, now, half the covers won't load on the lock screen, or the pulldown menu. So there's something going wrong with MPRIS.

I also noticed that on deskop, the 'now playing' cover is wrong no matter what version of gmusicbrowser I'm usung. I can even look in the gmusicbrowser config directory and see that the 'now playing' mpris jpeg is correct, but the indicator stays stuck on the first song that was playing when the program started. On my phone, it does change, but it's just  missing image thumbnail half the time.

HI Quentin, are you saying I need to go to Github and compile from source, in order to speed up the display of cover art?

This one is pretty flukey, so hopefully you'll be able to help. I gun Gmusicbrowser on my main, Ubuntu machine, and everything works fine. I also run it on my Pinephone, which runs Mobian, a Debian distro. It works fine here, too, except often times my album art doesn't load. It will load fine on my desktop and laptop, but I won't see anything on the phone.

When I go to edit the tags for a song with missing artwork, it'll say 'unknown' under embedded pictures. If I go to advanced, and down to picture, it'll just say 'error' where the thumbnail should be.

I have tried to isolate image size as the problem, the presence or absence of ID3v1 tags, or anything else I could possibly think of. I can't find any reason why these covers won't load. They're all jpg, and I'm running 1.99 on all devices.

Any thoughts how I might be able to get the album art loading on Mobian? I can give you more details if needed. Thanks.

MountainX, are you sure it's caching? I have never found a caching function for GMB, and like hutber, it always has to read right from the  disk.

This used to be fine, because I have an SSD. However, I have found that the new GMB, which uses GTK3, takes noticeably longer to load album art. Also, if I'm reading files from an external drive or SD card, it is very slow.

Now, GMB will cache artwork in the session. So if I go to a filter with a bunch of albums, they might take a while to load in, but then when I go back to that filter, those images are still in RAM so they load instantly. But it would be cool if everything would load instantly, between sessions.

I came here to post a question about cover art, but I have found a solution.

So sometimes, if I have two different albums with the same name, gmb will show the same cover art for both. No matter what I do — renaming the album, removing and re-adding songs, even changing the filenames — nothing will get the album art to show properly.

You can right click an album cover and replace the picture with a file for that album, but this requires that cover art image to stay in place. If you keep your art embedded in the MP3s, this isn't a great solution.

However, you can right click to set the album art, and then choose one of the mp3s themselves as the source. As long as your album art is embedded correctly, this will set the art to what it's supposed to be.

I don't know if this would be useful to anyone else, but sometimes I like to just leave my player running, for a couple reasons: Sometimes it helps me sleep to have certain music playing; sometimes I like to leave it going when I leave the house, to make it seem like someone's home; and sometimes I like to have it going in a room that I'm only in part of the time.

For these reasons, I'd like to temporarily suspend 'last played' and play count. Maybe there's already a way to do it with a hotkey and perl command, I don't know. But when I use weighted random, it usually pushes recently and often played songs to the bottom, including songs that played when I wasn't around.

To be clear, I'm looking to activate only the selected track, or tracks, in my list of search or filter results, and not the entire list. I would also like to know how to create buttons to add the entire result set to the bottom of the playlist, or to the next position in the playlist.

Hi Quentin, I am usiong the gtk3 version. I see what you're saying about being able to select tracks. So I have buttons I use to set the current result list as the playlist, or to queue the results. I use these buttons to play or queue search results and filter results.

These are the buttons I haven't been able to figure out: 'Play selected track(s) now (but don't alter the playlist)', 'Queue selected track(s)', 'Add selected track(s) to the bottom of the playlist', 'Add selected tracks to the next position in the playlist'.

I know there are commands for these based on your activation mouse key, but if I could create buttons, or menu items, that activated selected tracks, then double-click would be a non-issue.

So, for instance, let's say I have these playlists:

Code Select Expand

  "May 2013": !SongArray::Named 9037 9033 9030 9036 9035 9029 9034 9032 8993 8996 8999 8992 9001 8991 8994 9000 8997 8998 8995 9002 9003
  "December 2013": !SongArray::Named 8946 8945 8944 8947 8791 8790 8793 8963 8964
To answer your question, the playlist has the month and year of the added date. The day doesn't matter to me and can just be '1'.

Quentin, thanks so much for the reply. I was able to fudge the date for a single track:

Code Select Expand

1083 2013 05-6 2013 Stereolab > Krautrock\x00Prog Stereolab-esque 1367448011 Ege Bamyasi Can Can 320 0 2 0 0 Can - One More Night.mp3 mp3 mpeg-1 l3 Glam, Prog & Fusion 1616115742 1595452599 336 0 0 1484131490 /storage/0000-0000/Music/C 1 100 44100 13494092 5 One More Night 3 1972
and it worked exactly as expected. I see how playlists are stored:

Code Select Expand

list002: !SongArray::Named 8946 8945 8944 8947 8791 8790 8793 8963 8964
So it looks like I could group my songs into playlists, based on the month I want them to show as added, then set all these timestamps to xx/01/20xx (but in timestamp format). It sounds like this is where I would need the script. I would need it to loop through those IDs, find those tracks in the library based on ID, and change the timestamps on them to what I want. How do you recommend I go about this?

I am working on a theme for GMB to work on PinePhone Mobian. So far it's working pretty well, but double-clicking doesn't work well on a touchscreen device. Mobian will probably create a universal fix, at some point, but for now, is there a way to set it so the track activates on single-click, not double?

Quentin, thanks for the quick reply. Sorry, I did not get a notification that you replied. Do you want me to save a playlist, then go into gmbrc file and find it, then paste it the way it's represented in that file?

I migrated to gmusicbrowser in 2017. Before that, I used Songbird, since about 2013. From 2013 to 2017, I have playlists indicating what month a song was added. However, gmusicbrowser shows them all as being added in January 2017.

My question is whether I can trick gmusicbrowser into thinking these songs were added before they actually were. This would make it easier for me to use smart playlists and weighted random.

Hi Quentin, thanks so much for the reply, and sorry for my slow response. I didn't get a notification email, but I'll check my settings.

This is great. I don't know perl, and I've always wished I could contribute something to gmb. Maybe I could write some clever bash command to extend its functionality.

The echo experiment worked fine. cp $f ~/Temp has mixed results, partly because multiple tracks can be selected in different windows. I had a few tracks selected in an open playlist, and then I went to the artist panel and selected some more, but it only copied the tracks in the playlist. Any subsequent tests caused gmb to crash.

Anyway, I will keep playing with this. I have my music collection synced to my phone, and I used a symlink to make the paths match, so I can mount my phone, select a bunch of songs, and now I can easily select a bunch of songs and create a playlist with one key command. That's exciting.

I'm following gmb on github, and I'm so glad to see it's still in active development. I spend years and years looking for the ultimate music manager, and I still think gmb blows everything else out of the water. If I have any ideas for features or improvements, would you rather I mention that here, or on github?

Thanks again for everything you're doing.