06 Nov 08 Forum

Post edited 5:39 am – March 2, 2010 by master2000
Post edited 5:40 am – March 2, 2010 by master2000

I like the idea to is much better and we cand use this

http://code.google.com/p/trans…..emote-gui/

Transmission Remote GUI is feature rich cross platform front-end to remotely control Transmission daemon via its RPC protocol. It is faster and has more functionality than build-in Transmission web interface.

and work on all flavors, osx,win and linux jeje like utorrent but remote huuu this is the step to go on vortexbox

thansk for you great work and keep working

HalfBit said:Time would be better spent on correcting the VortexBox Player bugs.

Agree here, I think a proper round up of all the bugs out there need to be captured and worked on for the next few releases as opposed to adding more new features, particularly the bugs around VB player and flac2mp3 mirror

Andrew said:We can work on this in parrellel. As far as I know there are only two bugs in VortexBox Player. Sync and the gliches in FLAC playback. Community members are working on both of these problems. I don't know of any problems with flac2mp3 mirror.

http://vortexbox.org/forum/gen…..iced-this/

This is the bug for flac2mp3 which has been noticed by members.

Post edited 9:33 pm – March 2, 2010 by Ron Olsen
Post edited 9:33 pm – March 2, 2010 by Ron Olsen
Post edited 9:36 pm – March 2, 2010 by Ron Olsen
Post edited 9:41 pm – March 2, 2010 by Ron Olsen

Guys — cut Andrew a little slack here; the bugs affecting VortexBox Player/mpd and flac2mp3 are not easy to fix.

I've looked at the source code for VortexBox Player,  mpd, and flac2mp3, and see no obvious ways to fix any of these problems.  It would take a great deal of time and effort to instrument the code with debug prints, run tests, and try to narrow in on the problems.

it's always harder to debug code that you haven't written — and Andrew did not write mpd or flac2mp3.  He only added a patch for embedding artwork to flac2mp3, and has made no changes to mpd.

And judging from the comments in the source, Andrew didn't write VortexBox Player either — Max Kellermann did.  Perhaps Andrew made some changes,  but I saw only one print statement in this code that I could attribute to Andrew.

Here's the current status on these issues from my end:

1. VortexBox Player/mpd flac stutter problem:

a. There is an adequate workaround by setting Bitrate Limiting to 320kbps in SqueezeBox Server.  Also set LAME Quality Level to 0 (Highest Quality).

I urge you to try this and see if you can hear any audible differences (other than a lack of skips). I'm willing to bet that most people can't hear any differences between flac and mp3 @ 320kbps, even with excellent playback equipment.

b. I've posted a problem description on the mpd forum; so far no responses.  I have emailed Max Kellermann directly to see if he can help. Max not only wrote VortexBox Player but he is also the lead developer of mpd.

2. VortexBox sync issues with hardware players (SqueezeBox Receiver, etc.):

I have not looked at this problem, and have no idea how to fix it, or if it can be fixed.

Logitech, which now own SlimDevices and who develops SqueezeBox Server and various hardware players to interface to SBS, has NO interest in supporting software players like VortexBox Player, squeezeslave, softsqueeze, etc.  They see these as competition for their hardware players, and they are in the business of selling hardware.  They have had great difficulty getting sync working just with their hardware players — only in recent versions of SBS and recent firmware updates to their hardware players have they made improvements in this area.

I have no idea if it's even possible to sync a software player with a hardware player. I wouldn't hold my breath on getting this fixed any time soon. If you really need sync now, the only way to do it is with two hardware players from Logitech.

3. flac2mp3 issue with numeric genre tags when embedding artwork in mp3s:

I've investigated this and the problem is due to the perl module used to embed artwork in mp3s — it writes tags in ID3v1 and ID3v2.4 format instead of ID3v2.3 format.  ID3v2.4 uses numeric genre tags, so you see "52″ instead of "Electronic" in the mp3s.

A workaround is to disable the code that embeds cover art in the mp3s.  I hope Andrew will make this an option in the near future.

I looked at another version of flac2mp3 that embeds cover art in mp3s, but it works by taking the cover art embedded in the flac files, and not from a cover.jpg in the album directory.  I could see no easy way to change this code to use a cover.jpg instead.

So for now, my suggestion is this:

a. Disable the code in flac2mp3 that embeds cover art (I can show you how to do this).

b. Run the flac2mp3 mirror — the mp3s will have ID3v2.3 tags with proper strings for genres.

c. Use mp3tag or iTunes to embed artwork in the mp3s if that is important to you.

I'll keep on investigating these issues as I have time — but no promises on any results.

My position is obvious as I suggested the replacement (after spinach did the leg work on the install research).  FYI, the straight-up repository install works out of the box, save a few simple config options that could be added to a custom VB install script.  Seems like a no brainer to me, as there really is no development or bug tracking required to facilitate this particular upgrade.

side note:

Thanks for all your work on this project Andrew.  I'm two months and 11,000 songs into my VBA and I'm really enjoying it.  A whole lot less tinkering with my linux box, which my wife really appreciates.

socistep said:

I am in agreement with halfbit here though, what we are seeing is release after release with new features that aren't fully beta tested – as a result we are seeing issues with 2 of the main selling points of the VB, VB player and flac mirror – this over time will decrease the stability of the system and reduce the confidence of the user group and potential customers

My main comparison is with the bliss project for which I am a beta tester, in this the releases are controlled, they go through beta testing before being released for the wider group – user voice is used to capture bugs and feature requests, in my opinion this works a lot better.

I, for one, would be happy to participate in a beta test program for VortexBox.  Andrew already has a Beta rpm repository and a BETA section of the forum.  But it appears that this hasn't been used to test new packages since last November.

Maybe it's time for Andrew to resurrect the Beta program, so new versions of VortexBox Player, flac2mp3 and other VB packages could undergo user testing before official release to the community.

Having run a QNAP NAS as a music server for the last few years you quickly realise that the updating of the firmware and additional features pushes you into the beta testing area for QNAP.

The other item that came about was as more people brought the units what people wanted from their NAS boxes increased and grew.  All these new features mean that someone has to test.

At the moment I run the Vortex as purely a music server and it works very well.

I am different in that I use MediaMokey on a PC to rip and tag – old habits, but I have mediamokey configured just how I want my music sorted so it remains the same – I even use it to generate the MP3 version with the same file structure and this is also used to put a copy on an ipod classic.

Until some easy configuration is incorporated for the Flac ripping and MP3 backup I will continue to use MM as I fully understand how to drive it.  But I can see the benefit of the all-in-one solution which is what vortex is offering.

Great product which is why most are now using the software.  Biggest improvement for me is the hardware that I run vortex on – makes a major increase in the slim devices – change the volume on the boom and it reacts staright away – on the QNAP 209 it was very sluggish.  This could become an issue as people want the boxes to start running more and more processes.  I am happy to keep the speed and leave the box as just a music server.

Yes, replacing azureus with transmission would be great. I've already done it on my vortexbox but it would be nice to replace the toad icon with a gearshift in the GUI.