Getting Started

[djachill]

Hi

As far as i can already see by now, gmusicbrowser has at least a gazillion of features.
It currently handles my >400k title library which no other player ever was capable of. Amazing!
I explored already a couple of features but that's extremely hard - eg. only to understand why a right click creates so different results depending on where you click ...
I searched the web already but couldn't find a single brief explanation of gmb's functions / features.
May i ask for some help where i can read more to learn how to use it properly.
Thx.

[Quentin Sculo]

First a word on the layouts, they can change the appearance but also the behavior and the access to certain features, also they make it very hard to explain to a new user how to do something. This is made worse by the fact that some distributions have a different default layout :(

As I said, layouts can affect the behavior on gmb, in particular there is a number of layouts that, by attempting to mimic other players' behaviors, use a list widget in "playlist mode" where any change to the playlist is reflected in the list and vice-versa. This work fine on its own, but is probably not what you want if the list widget is linked to searching/filtering widgets, as any searching will change your playlist.

From what I've seen on IRC, your main problem seems to be controlling the playlist.
In gmb the playlist default to the full library, to change that you can use filters (called smart/dynamic lists in other players) so that the playlist only contain songs with a rating >60, songs that have a given label set, songs that belong to a given list ... or any combination.

If you want to hand-pick songs that will play, you can either use a label, create a static list, or use the queue. The queue will take priority over the playlist. Also if your layout has a "playlist" tab (which contain a list widget in playlist mode), you can add to/remove from/reorder the playlist manually.

I'm not sure those explanations helped. I'm not very good with that. Maybe what would be best is you describe how you'd like things to work when you want to do something (like adding a song to the playlist) and I'll see if that way is currently possible, or if I can give you an alternate way to do it. That would help you use gmb, and maybe help me understand what people are not understanding.

[djachill]

Hi Quentin

Thx. for your reply! I really appreciate. But first i wanna describe what i have installed.

I am on a lenovo R61i running AV Linux 6.0.3 which is a Debian Squeeze 32Bit based audio/video optimized distro. Sound Interface is NI Audio 2. gmb is version 1.1.12 which i downloaded here:
source/executable tarball : gmusicbrowser-1.1.12.tar.gz
No customization was done so far. I am currently using it with the default layout which is "list, library & context".
I do not need Album Artwork, Lyrics, fancy display options. I just wanna handle the music data straight forward and efficient.
A playlist defaulted to my huge library is not useful. Due to the size the library is unfortunately not very well organized. Labels etc. are almost not existent.. All i have is correct file names, folders where the music is grouped and ID-Tags. I use gmb to play live for friends at private/public partys. What i wanna do is this:

- Prepare "static playlists" in advance. This means a selection of songs grouped for the same purpose. Eg. 70's, 80's, 90's, LongPlayer, NDW,
  Classic Rock, Speed, Doom, Death, Power, Hair, Motorcycle, Hym, Driving, etc. etc. and have these easily available during the gig parallel to the
  playlist which is going out live.
- Search for songs during the event and add these to one or more of these "static playlists".
- Search for songs and add these to the end of a "playlist" in a given order eg. songs from an album 1,2,3 and 6 shall be added to the queue/
  playlist in the same order 1,2,3 and 6.
- Currently i want almost "no intelligence" meaning songs shall not be added or re-arranged "automagically".
- Rearrange the play order in each "playlist" whilst the "main playlist" is still live.
- Switch what's sent out live from one playlist to another - in other words changing from eg. speed to doom or hymn's to continue there.
- Gapless and/or Crossfade to avoid silence in front of the audience.
- Prelisten a song from the library on a second soundcard/channel of my dj-interface to check whether it's really the correct song.
- Control all these features mainly with the keyboard and not the mouse - eg. move a song to a "playlist".
- Searches in the library must not change the "live" playlist.
- I am mainly searching for song names - not albums or artists. How to achieve this most efficiently?

Thx. for advise. I have time to learn until July 4th 2014 ;-)