Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

A new version of Kagu Media Player for maemo is out! You can download it here:
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/kagu/

This new 1.0.9-3 release includes:
* New theme!
* Added 2-hour option to Sleep Timer
* Made heuristic cover search optional in Scanner
* Artist grouping changed, utilizing the "album artist" tag if it exists
* Artist and album names are normalized to Title Case
* Playlist Save As: Hold thumb at NowPlayingButton and hit the dpad center, only available in Now Playing
* Hold thumb at NowPlayingButton and hit the menu key to jump to artist songs/albums functionality, works almost anywhere
* Added default player selection to main menu (available only if mplayer is installed)
* Cover art load times are faster, and no longer a black screen
* Various other startup time optimizations
* Add scrollbars, toggle scrollbars option, scrollbars default to disabled
* Performance and UI enhancements

Everyone currently running a previous version should upgrade as this release is an all around better performer. Not to mention the orange theme!

(Green theme will be optionally available again in a later release)

Thanks!

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Hi!

Cool theme, I like the orange.

Are there problems when adjusting the volume?
Because on my n800 kagu 1.0.9 crashes when I press the hardware keys + and - and when I want to adjust the volume with the menu.

I did not notice this in the 1.0.8 release.

Any ideas?

./kagu.py:27: RuntimeWarning: import cdrom: No module named cdrom

import os, pygame, time, gc

./kagu.py:27: RuntimeWarning: import joystick: No module named joystick

import os, pygame, time, gc

sent

volume update: 80

charging

album query took:0.017364025116

showing volume

volume update: 80

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "./kagu.py", line 137, in <module>

if __name__ == '__main__': main()

File "./kagu.py", line 128, in main

manager.update()

File "/usr/lib/kagu/manager.py", line 265, in update

self.view.update()

File "/usr/lib/kagu/views.py", line 985, in update

TimerView.update(self)

File "/usr/lib/kagu/views.py", line 98, in update

for widget in self.widgets: widget.update()

File "/usr/lib/kagu/widgets.py", line 1537, in update

if not self.visible: return

AttributeError: 'Slider' object has no attribute 'visible'

Halbamy

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

oops, we did a last minute change in 1.0.9 (to add the option to disable scrollbars) that's when it happened. will release a 1.0.9-3 in a few minutes to fix that.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

released 1.0.9-3 to fix that, updating from application manager (or installing this) will work.

(new installers from maemo.org don't need to worry, as the application manager will install the newest version anyway)

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

disq, it would probably be a good idea to have a list of test cases to go through once you are ready to release a new build, but before you actually do so so that you can avoid these kinds of issues whenever possible. Just a basic rundown of functionality. I can't tell you how many times it's saved my ***.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

yes of course. I do the full functionality testing during development, (not testing but more like QA, I use kagu daily) and get other people to test too. but if there's a minor change on release day i sometimes (depends on my mood, and if I made a early release that day or not too) only test relevant parts of the program. volume slider was relevant but i missed it, shouldn't have happened.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

The following quote is one of mine from your thread on the 1.0.8 release, but of concern in the current release. It's about the handling of playlists:

I have installed the new release and several times copied my backup playlist (of the 92 songs) into /.kagu/playlist.m3u. The copying is each time successful -- until I boot up Kagu for use, and then the playlist.m3u file comes up empty. What is probably happening is that each time Kagu is booted up, it wants to start with a vacant playlist.m3u file.

How can I get Kagu (in its new version) to accept my previously backed-up playlist?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

your "want to start with a vacant playlist file" diagnosis is wrong.

playlist logic didn't change since 1.0.8. are you sure you have the mp3 files (pointed by in the playlists) on the filesystem? do you see them in the song browser (albums/artists or all songs screens)?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Yep, all albums and songs are listed in Kagu.

Just to be certain of the viability of what I'm experiencing, I've once again gone into xterm, copied my back-up playlist into /.kagu/playlist.m3u, double-checked to make certain that /.kagu/playlist.m3u held the duplicate of my backed-up playlist (which it did), then booted up Kagu, found nothing, went back in xterm to /.kagu/playlist.m3u -- and it again was empty. Booting up Kagu is obviously erasing the playlist.m3u file. Any further thoughts. Regards, Jim

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

could you mail me one of the troubling m3u files so I can take a look at it? sent you a pm.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

oh btw, just put your m3u files somewhere where kagu looks for (/home/user/MyDocs/.sounds, /media/mmc1 or /media/mmc2 will work) and run kagu-scanner. then go into the Playlists screen and find your playlist, double tap to see the contents. are the songs listed there?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

disq: All my m3u (mp3?) files are in either mmc1 or mmc2 in which globals.py scans. However, maybe I need to add scanning in globals.py of my /home/user/.kagu directory. I will give it a try

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Interesting(!) result of my adding /.kagu to my globals.py scanning. On rebooting Kagu, both the titles of my .kagu playlist file and playlist backup file were listed -- but neither contained any songs. They both came up empty in Kagu. However, in xterm, the playlist backup file was still intact, but once again the playlist.m3u file had apparently been emptied out by the Kagu scanning and/or booting up.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Got to the root of the problem. Looking at the sample playlist file, I saw that your playlists are saved in utf-8 encoding. I'm guessing the m3u-reader part of Kagu doesn't understand that. We'll fix that in the next release. That's the reason for the playlist files not being read correctly.

But how did the playlist files got utf8 encoding in the first place? I'm guessing it's something Python automagically does when needed, as one of the files in the sample playlist had a "ö" in it.

Anyway. I'm attaching a utf8-to-ascii format converter I just hacked up in Python to this message.

1. Save it as utf2ascii.py in the main filesystem (main filesystem = not in one of the mmc's) of the device, preferably in where you keep your playlist files. I had attach it as "utf2ascii.txt" because of ITT's attachment filename regulations.
2. Run "chmod +x utf2ascii.py" to make it executable (you'll need to be in the same directory)
3. Run "./utf2ascii.py < playlist_filename > playlist_new_filename" for each playlist.

Example would be:
./utf2ascii.py < playlist.m3u.pop_songs > playlist.m3u.pop_songs_fixed

The command on the third step will read the file "playlist_filename" file, and write the contents to the file "playlist_new_filename". During this process some playlist entries (the ones with non-latin1 characters like "ö" in it) will be skipped.

If you add those files to the playlist again, the playlist file will be broken once again. Best way to avoid it is to go over your mp3 files and rename all non-latin1 characters in the filenames. Don't forget to run kagu scanner afterwards. We'll fix this issue in the next Kagu release.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

disq, trevarthan:
great release, super new functionalities (except I have to redo the screenshots..--))))

dear KAGU users:
I have updated the KAGU WIKI with the newest information:
https://garage.maemo.org/plugins/wik...?id=304&type=g

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Disq: In following your instructions, here are the results of my efforts. I had to extrapolate a bit (I hope without doing too much harm).

1. Running your converter the first time served to identify for me only one title that had a non-latin1 character (an Andrews Sisters number). I then corrected that everywhere (MMC and playlist.m3u -- both original and fixed) with my text editor. I ran the Kagu scanner, but no m3u playlist was picked up and displayed. (When I left /home/user/.kagu in my global.py scanning line, the titles of the /.kagu/mu3 files were identified, but their contents not listed.)

2. I then copied "playlist.m3u.fixed" to "playlist.m3u" and re-edited global.py to only scan (as formerly) my mmc cards. This time, the scan failed to pick up even the m3u titles. When in Kagu I sought to load playlists, no titles appeared on the screen.

The only thing I can now think of is either (1) your solution doesn't work (which I hope is not really the case), or (2) I need to re-edit global.py to include more in its scan.

I really appreciate all the time you've spent with me on this.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Wonderful update...like the option to turn on/off scroll bar...
Doing hell of a job on kagu.
job well done to the whole team.

looks very Professional.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

ascherjim, correcting that everywhere manually doesn't work, it's still in UTF8 encoding unless you run it through utf2ascii.py or convert it to ascii by other means. if you did that please state so, i have trouble understanding what you did and what you didn't as some of the statements conflict with each other.

editing globals.py was/is unnecessary as you should not be storing custom stuff in the ~/.kagu dir anyways. use the mmc cards or ~/MyDocs/.sounds dir for your playlists and keep the .m3u extension so that the scanner can recognize them and you can access them easily via the Playlists screen.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Disq: I will try to simplify the present status.

My /home/user/.kagu directory presently contains three .m3u files:

-- "pop.m3u" which is my intact backup playlist file;

-- "playlist.m3u.fixed" file which is the one resulting from running your converter (./utf2ascii.py < playlist.m3u > playlist.m3u.fixed) and whose content matches the titles in"pop.m3u;" and

-- "playlist.m3u" which, no matter what content is in it at the start of a scan, always seems to end up emptied after the scan.

I have run scans both immediately after running your conversion, and then after copying "playlist.m3u.fixed" into "playlist.m3u." Nothing after my various scans gives me any saved playlists which turn up in Kagu, and, as I noted, "playlist.m3u" always turns up empty after a scan.

I am confused as to what a scan's action is supposed to be relevant to the "playlist.m3u" file, and what it is doing to that file to empty it out. And also, what effect the so-called "fixed" playlist.m3u file has, or is intended to have, on the whole process.

If I were to boot up Kagu and construct a new playlist (of all 92 titles), would Kagu now save the playlist, and retrieve it again when needed? And would this problem finally be behind us? (Incidentally, I don't fully understand what the instruction to "hold thumb on the Now Playing button" means that I should do in order to save a playlist. I know -- I'm dense!)

Again, many thanks -- for your efforts and probably now-dwindling patience. Jim

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Disq: Further to my last message, to save us all a lot of further trouble in this matter, I have created a new playlist of all (or most of all) my songs in the new version and figured out how to save it (thumb on lower-right thumbnail album picture and pressing center of dpad). However, before doing that I experimented by creating and saving two smaller playlists, which I then was unable to figure out how to delete. (The wiki instructions in this regard didn't seem to work for me.) I got rid of one by over-writing it with my new (hopefully permanent) playlist by giving it the same name as one of the experimental ones. The other experimental one is still there, and that I can't get rid of (except possibly by also over-writing it with a new playlist with the same name). There must be an easier way. Thanks again.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

As I stated earlier, the playlist is saved in the wrong format if one of the filenames included in the playlist contain special/accented characters like ö, ü, à, è, ã and so on. To be on the safe side, you should first rename these files, then run the scanner to get them re-recognized by kagu. (You'll be ok if you don't put those files in the playlist, but since you can't see the actual filenames in kagu but only tags, you'll have trouble pinpointing them)

Playlists are saved in the Sounds directory (~/MyDocs/.sounds) and you can delete them using the builtin File Manager for now. Overwriting also works. Should have a delete playlist option by the next release.

A scan's action is not relevant to an m3u file's contents. Scanner just searches and indexes certain directories (the "Sounds" dir and the mmc cards) against playlist (m3u) files, and supported song formats (mp3, ogg, and so on). It doesn't even read the m3u file contents.

You had to edit globals.py because scanner doesn't look in the .kagu dir for content, as this dir is only used for the "current playlist" (saved when kagu exits and re-loaded on startup) and certain data files/cover art. Custom playlists are supposed to go in Sounds or in mmc cards, and scanner already scans for those. You don't have to run scanner if you saved the playlist in Kagu as it already records that information, but if you put different named (not saved from Kagu) playlist files you have to run a scan first.

Speaking of, full scans are only necessary if you want "new cover art" to be downloaded, or if you edited one of the id3 tags and want the change recognized. Other than that don't run full scans, they're just too slow and unnecessary.

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

I'm sorry to intervene in the whole fiasco, but I have a dumb question and problem with Kagu. For some reason, it doesn't list the artists of the songs when I look under Artists. It just says "Various Artists", even though I named the songs like "Artist Name- Song Name" and I downloaded these off Ruckus, so all the ID3 tags are intact, what gives?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Disq: Wonderful clarification. I think this answers all my concerns (for now!). Again, many, many thanks.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Hey, has anyone tried out the new scroll bars? You can turn them on from the Menu (scroll down to see the option).

I spent a lot of time on them, and I'm curious to know what the users think of them. They're useful if you do a lot of seeking within songs right now, and also when dealing with long lists.

Bring the comments. Thanks.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Love the scroll bars. Much easier and more precise to use than dragging one's finger. Also, now being able to label and save playlists is a great way for segregating chapters of audio books.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

I've decided to make this a separate thread with a poll. Please vote and feel free to leave a comment there:

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=10608

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

ascherjim,

I updated the WIKI with the latest playlist save/recall/delete information.

tubbycricket,
are you sure the mp3 tags are correctly filled in by Ruckus? the file name is not used for the naming within KAGU.

trevarthan,
I love the new scroll bars!

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Yeah, I checked the ID3 tags through TagRename and everything seems to be in place. And I think the file name does make a difference because when I left the files as just [NoDRM]Song Name, it gave the artist's name as [NoDRM] even though the song was tagged. Now when I change the file name it gives the artist and song properly, but when I try to search under Artists, it just says Various Artists. And even weirder, when Kagu tries to search for album covers, it comes up with some strange cartoon tree with koalas hanging on them, even though the bands were Children of Bodom and Megadeth. What should I do?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

tubbycricket,

we need disq or trevarthan to answer this, as I have no code-level insight on how the extraction of artists works. I never experienced wrong or generic arist names when there are proper id3 tags.
I do experience wired album art sometimes, but I am not too worried if I see landscapes, barely covered women, or koalas haning from trees on my screen (maybe something to do with my childhood experiences..---))))))

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Are all the songs in one directory? If so, try arranging them in dirs by artist or album. Kagu's Various Artists functionality requires that as ID3 has no provisions for Various Artists really.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Love the upgrade... but I am having a glitch. When listening to a playlist in order, the player will skip every other track. Track 1 will play, the arrow will pause for a second on track 2, and then track 3 plays. Am I the only one getting this?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

mhhh, at least on my side there is no such effect.

could it be that during the audio cd ripping process (if this was used to create the mp3´s) the ripper created very short tracks from the pauses between tracks? this happend to me some time ago with a live cd...

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

My guess is, somehow the id3 module can't read the tags from your files, that's why it's falling back to the old guess-by-filename scheme. Not sure why, though. Do you know if your tags are id3 v1, v2, or both? You could try falling back to id3v1 and see if it helps.

Tip: After changing tags for existing files, you'll need to run "full scans" since information for that file already exists in the database. While testing, this will take long and be boring. Instead, upload/copy your tag-edited file as something else (rename it), then run a regular scan. This way scanner will detect the new file and read the tag.

As for the koalas, try disabling "heuristic cover art search" from scanner, and running a "full scan". A full scan also instructs the scanner to re-download existing cover art (if there's any available) while a regular scan will only try downloading the non-existing art.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Yesterday I upgraded to 1.0.9 using apt-get upgrade (hate to do manual updates one by one via Manager). And I'm experiencing really strange behavior.
When I try to play an MP3 the player disappears, it is not on the list of running apps, but the music plays?! This with both OSSO and Mplayer players.

Also on the bottom of the screen there is a gradient bar (I think part of the theme) which is shifted a little to the left.

And the scrollbars appear literally in the middle of the nowhere. About at 2/3 of the screen to the right.

EDIT: Just found out that the last is not a bug, but a feature. It looks really nasty while overlapping with playlist items.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

No kidding. :) Place your vote here:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=10608

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Sounds like a crash. The music keeps playing because Kagu spawns an mplayer process or tells the OSSO player to play via dbus. Can you get us a backtrace? we write them to a file somewhere. I think you can find it in:
I don't think that's a bug. The "empty" region on the right will be filled with an album cover when you play something successfully. It's blank when nothing is playing.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

OK, all the problems had been in the device behind the stylus :-D
The crashlog complained about missing Album Cover. Re-run the scanner and now it works flawlessly. Maybe some kind of check should be implemented?

I got it about the bar at the bottom. The cover art appeared in the empty space. But this doesn't make it look more nice.

May be an option to choose between themes?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Probably, but honestly I'm not sure how you got a song without an album cover. Partial scanner run maybe? Can you send us the backtrace anyway?

:) Looks ok to me. Do you have a concept art suggestion perhaps?


That's on the list of things to do. Unfortunately our theme designer is AWOL at the moment, so honestly we'll probably be sticking with the orange theme for a while. If you want to do a new theme, you're welcome. If it's good, we'll be happy to include it.

The more themes we have, the more motivated we'll be to add theme switching capability.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

Hi-

Thanks for the great new release. I do have one question though. I like to use the N800 on airplanes to listen to music and in between every song it tries to access the internet causing a variety of dialog screens to be displayed depending on whether I have put the tablet into offline mode or not.

Is there an explanation for this behavior and/or a way to turn it off?

Thanks,
Fred

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.9
 

It's caused by maemo's dbus implementation. Just set the wireless mode to "disconnect". Works fine for me in the car.