Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

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

* Added Artists and All Songs views
* ScrollWidget now support really really really long lists
* Improved Album Art view (default to 300*X now)
* Plenty of bugfixes

Everyone currently running a previous version should upgrade as this release is an all around better performer.

A special thanks this week to disq for rolling our release out to the extras repository yet again! I tried doing it myself this week, but I found I was missing some access privileges. disq, I promise I'll get that fixed so you don't have to keep doing this for us every release!

Thanks!

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

hi trevarthan,

THANK YOU and the TEAM for another valuable update! The album/artist/allsongs view is great, scrolling works perfect, and I think I get used to the "Playlist" idea slowly (after whining about the changes from the 1.0.4 behaviour...---))))

One question: is it necessary that the "Erase Playlist" Icon is only showing up when one is actually looking at the playlist? I find myself often scanning the library, finding something better then the current playlist, wanting to override the playlist, and so I have to make some klicks to go into the playlist, the icon is there now, erase it, and go back to the library to look for the new content...
I do not see a reason why the clear playlist icon could not be present all the time?

all the best, karl.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Let me think about this for a while. I feel your pain, and I sort of like this idea. But we've got precious little screen space as-is and we've got other buttons planned. Let me think about it.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Thanks for the update. Other than the browser this is my most used app on the n800. Keep up the great work.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

My problem with the language teaching files has sort of gone away. I can run them now without crashing Kagu!

It doesn't show the picture that accompanies the word, and it seems awfully slow, and Canola doesn't have these problems. So I'll use Canola for the language stuff, but I can use Kagu for other things...

I wish there was a way I could tell Kagu to ignore the language files altogether, though they are mp3's, because it takes an awful long time for Kagu to read them in.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

First let me add my "Thanks!" to the authors of Kagu. I really appreciate the efforts you've put into creating such a great programme.

I have a similar problem with Kagu showing many .mp3 files I'd rather Kagu not handle.

Am I missing something or is there a way to tell Kagu which sub-directories on the SD card to scan? I put all my music .mp3 files that I want handled by Kagu in a structure under "music" and all other .mp3 files under a separate sub-directory structure "audio". I would like Kagu to only look under "music" and ignore everything under "audio".

Is this possible? If not, could it be considered?

Thanks again for a great programme!
.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Yeah, I thought we had a ticket for that already, but I guess not, so here it is: https://www.guardiani.us/projects/ka...et/109#preview

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

What do you mean by "awfully slow"? The widget takes a long time to scroll to the bottom of the list? (i.e. no scrollbar for fast scrolling) Or, the widget scrolls slower than usual because there are so many items in the list? Or what?

Does canola show the picture?

I'm trying to grasp the root of the problem here.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Another satisfied customer, great work! My issue with the scroller has been corrected thanks.

I seem to remember that there were postings about being able to save the playlist. If that request isn't on the TODO list, I would like to submit it as a formal request.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

QUOTE "Am I missing something or is there a way to tell Kagu which sub-directories on the SD card to scan? I put all my music .mp3 files that I want handled by Kagu in a structure under "music" and all other .mp3 files under a separate sub-directory structure "audio". I would like Kagu to only look under "music" and ignore everything under "audio". UNQUOTE

My problem, as I've noted under another related thread, is not that the Kagu scan is identifying too many mp3 items, but that it's not identifying enough. It seemingly only finds my albums, not mp3 music that has not been entered and stored on my mmc cards in integral album form. I still don't understand why a scan doesn't show all of these.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Yes, Canola shows the picture. Kagu doesn't show the picture.

Slow means (1) it takes Kagu a long time to scan all those mp3 files. The screen goes dark and one has to go away for a long time and trust that dawn will eventually come. (2) After the scanning, it seems to take a long time to actually play the selections. This is subjective; I'm not timing this.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Yeah, I think we're all feeling the need for this now. We've already got a ticket for it: https://www.guardiani.us/projects/kagu/ticket/94

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Is this music located on your mmc card at all? Where is it stored? We've been showing music that doesn't have ID3 tags since 1.0.6, I think, according to this closed ticket: https://www.guardiani.us/projects/kagu/ticket/20

So I'm not sure what's happening there.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Do you want to actually play the selections? Or would you prefer that they just didn't show up?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Is there plans for Kagu to be able to play x-wav and x-m4a files like Media player.
By the way THANKS for being so responsive to our requests and questions! If Nokia did the same as far as the N800 goes they would not be looking at Apple about to eat their lunch. As a matter of fact your approach would be a winner in any business, good luck to you.:)

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Well, the patch for adding OGG support is right here: https://www.guardiani.us/projects/kagu/changeset/412

We basically just added .ogg to kagu-scanner's extension list. What happens if you add .wav and .m4a to the extension list and re-run the scanner? Anyone willing to test that?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

I like Kagu, so if it can play the selections with the pictures I would prefer that. But if it can't play the selections with the pictures, I'd just as soon they weren't even listed as a possibility.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Trevarthan: How embarrassing! After all this complaining on my part (in several threads!), I've just discovered that the missing music is in WMA not mp3 form. I burned it so very long ago that I didn't remember, and the N800 Media Player of course handles it fine. My heartfelt apologies. I commended you previously on your excellent and much appreciated work in the other thread, and will do so again here. Many thanks.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

By "pictures", I assume you mean the album art, right?
And by "can't play the selections with the pictures", you mean what exactly?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Yes I am willing just need to know how. :o Do I add the extensions to line #303 in your patch, and how do I apply the patch?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

I'd just like to add to the chorus of praise - thank you Trevarthan & Team for bringing THE best music player to the Tablets.

One of my (many) favorite features is the use of album art - I'm of that age where album sleeves are still very cherished possessions and handling or just seeing them allows a real connection to the music - and Kagu is the only player that displays artwork without any weird anomalies (UKMP take note!) I especially love the full screen album art view.

So here is my humble request - once an individual artist is selected via the "Artists" menu, instead of bringing up the list view of the all the tracks straight away, would it be possible to go to another menu that displays the album art for the particular artist, but enlarge the album sleeve slightly (if possible) and then maybe have a fixed button or album icon for "All Tracks" if wanted?

Kagu goes from strength to strength. Keep up the great work. I can't wait for a skin able/themed version - a black & neon theme would look fantastic:D

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Here's a little preview of one of the features that you'll see in the upcoming 1.0.8 release:

http://www.guardiani.us/artists.png

Thanks to disq's hard work last night and Last.FM's incredible coolness we've now got artist art as well as album art!

Let's not forget the zoom:

http://www.guardiani.us/artistcoverview.png

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

:) Great minds think alike? I was thinking the same thing this morning while driving in to work.

ArtistView -> ArtistAlbumView -> SongsView

And yeah, we'll keep the CD+ icon on the ArtistAlbumView so you can add all songs from all albums within an artist with a single button press.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

yeah, great minds think alike. it was already mentioned in this ticket: https://www.guardiani.us/projects/kagu/ticket/45 :p

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

I appreciate the praise. However, I feel that it's important to note that without UKMP and Canola, there would be no Kagu. I'm not trying to say that Kagu is better than either player. I'm merely trying to point out that UKMP's scrolling album art inspired Kagu's album art. In fact many things in Kagu were taken either directly or indirectly from UKMP. We owe a lot to konttori for his ideas and code.

In addition, it's important to point out that we probably wouldn't have kinetic scrolling in Kagu if I hadn't used Canola first and thought "hmmmm.... touchable media.... why not draggable media?!?" No, Kagu wasn't inspired by the iPhone. In fact, I have never used an iPhone, and we had a usable kinetic scroll widget before I saw my first iPhone commercial on TV. Kagu's kinetic scrolling was inspired almost entirely by Canola's menu system, then later by UKMP's scrolling album art (this was before UKMP had kinetic scrolling).

It's important to give credit where credit is due, and both Canola and UKMP have played a huge role in the creation of Kagu.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

:p

I must have missed that.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

[QUOTE=ascherjim;73485]Trevarthan: How embarrassing! After all this complaining on my part (in several threads!), I've just discovered that the missing music is in WMA not mp3 form. I burned it so very long ago that I didn't remember, and the N800 Media Player of course handles it fine. My heartfelt apologies. I commended you previously on your excellent and much appreciated work in the other thread, and will do so again here. Many thanks.[/QUOTE

As follow-up to the above (embarrassing) matter, I have downloaded a free WMA/mp3 converter and converted all of my 90+ WMA songs to mp3 format, and they play fine on Kagu (but unfortunately without the song titles, as those didn't get converted). Canola still doesn't recognize any of my mp3 music, but as I've stated elsewhere in this forum, it's great for my playing of internet radio stations. By the way, is there any way of editing title texts in Kagu? Anyway, thanks again for your work -- and also being there so easily to communicate with.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Not in kagu, but you could always edit the ID3 tags of your MP3s. itunes does this, I think. I personally use Amarok on linux to do ID3 tag editing.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Trevarthan: Thanks. Amarok is working fine, though the process is tedious, of course (changing the tags on 95 songs!).

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Sorry Disq, I hadn't seen your ticket either - I just reached the same conclusion as you (& latterly Trevarthan). I wasn't treading on any toes.

Trevarthen, I wasn't dismissing UKMP (or Canola) and I appreciate the lineage and inspiration drawn from those programs - but I think your team has taken the baton and is now sprinting in front:D

The clumsy point I was trying to make was Kagu has been very consistent and it's ID3 info recognition is the best of the three programs. I've spent hours cleaning up all my ID3 tags and embedding album art and it's great to use an application that utilizes the information to it's full potential.

I know "Genre" ID3 information has been discussed before, but have you considered utilizing other ID3 information like "Year" or "Comments"?

Keep up great work.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

How would you use those? A Album/Artist-like screen that shows years? Drill down into that and see albums for that year?

Or would you just like to see it displayed somewhere per song?
(I'm guessing comments would just be a display thing)

BTW, does anyone particularly feel the need for a Genre view right now?

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Glad you think so. I still think we've got a ways to go though. Canola still has a number of features that we lack (though we're catching up quickly). We have a few features that Canola lacks (Kinetic scrolling, Art downloading, Maemoscrobbler, and A2DP come to mind), but they've got the head start and they'll probably be making a new release soonish that will (I'm guessing) put Kagu to shame, at least visually.

The best thing that I like about Kagu vs Canola is that it's *Open Source*. Any programmer from the community is free to modify Kagu and submit patches or even fork the project if needed.

When I started Kagu, I thought that once we provided an actively developed alternative to Canola that we would gain a good developer following.

Unfortunately, that hasn't seemed to happen. disq, of course, is crucial to the project. Recently, Tony Maro of Thummim Reader fame has been doing some really cool work porting our kinetic scroll widget to GTK. Milhouse has done some awesome work automating the beastly A2DP install. And we received some help from artists early on. But other than disq and me, we haven't seen any solid, committed programmer support.

I suspect that might be because everyone perceives that disq and I are doing a pretty decent job so far keeping up with user requests. But I still wish we had more developers. We've got a fairly long list of open tickets that need to be worked and so far we're just prioritizing them and working the most important ones first. But the list keeps growing. I'd love to see that list get shorter for once so we could focus more on innovative new ideas rather than simply fleshing out the basic (and sometimes advanced) functionality that everyone expects from a media player. If we can't get to that point soon, I'm afraid the new upcoming Canola release might strangle Kagu under it's 800 pound gorilla girth.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

just installed kagu. damn nice app. but am i missing something? is there no easy way to make a playlist of all my tracks? or keep my playlist when the app closes? or some way to show the playlist itself so i can jump to a particular track?

just asking because it all seems so obvious that i must be missing something.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Yeah, that's easy. Hit the menu hardware key, then go to "All Songs" and then tap the CD+ icon on the left.

Not yet, but I think we're all interested in getting that working.


Sure, just tap the nowplaying button in the lower right. It takes you to the playlist. Tapping it again will show a zoomed version of the album cover. Tapping a third time give you song seek. And a fourth time brings you back to the nowplaying view.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

ahh cool. yeah, i'm an idiot.
thanks.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

This most recent exchange, which reflects some of my own confusion (and ineptitude?) gives me the opportunity to ask whether there is yet a primer available that explains all of the Kagu buttons and operations? For me they are not intuitive (and I always have trouble with accurate icon recognition anyway).

Regarding the following instruction: "Sure, just tap the nowplaying button in the lower right. It takes you to the playlist. Tapping it again will show a zoomed version of the album cover. Tapping a third time give you song seek. And a fourth time brings you back to the nowplaying view." My "tapping a third time" didn't give me a song seek, but instead apparently gave me the screen to choose sound levels.

Also, the album cover for my album of songs by the late German bass Hans Hotter gave me a jazzy one called "Hotter than Hell." Rather amusing.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

No, I don't think it's ineptitude. It's just that Kagu is becoming more mature and therefore more complex. Many applications these days have functionality that most users don't ever use or know about. Kagu probably won't be the exception to that rule as we attempt to satisfy everyone.

We're swamped, so I don't think you'll be seeing anything in the way of a more intuitive UI or context help in the next release. It's on the roadmap, but it's a low priority.

I've already mentioned that it would be nice to have a video walkthrough of Kagu. Anyone from the community is welcome to step up and help us out there. Someone from the community could also start a Wiki page somewhere for help documentation. There are lots of possibilities. The guardiani.us server is reserved for development purposes right now, so I don't plan to open up that wiki to the general public. Any suggestions for a wiki location?


I don't believe you. :) It always pulls up seek for me. Has a bunch of items like "0:20", "0:30", etc.


Yeah, that sucks. Any suggestions for us there? I'm not sure what to do about that other than tell you to use a cover.jpg or something to override the downloaded art.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Yay! Tony made a video for us! I still think we need a wiki documentation page to compliment it, but at least we've got a video now:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?p=74074

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

Ah, ha! "items like "0:20", "0:30" are exactly what WERE brought up -- and I mistakenly thought they represented sound levels! I just don't yet know how to interpret (or make sense of) them as "seeking" devices? Just one more reason why I need to apply myself and try to ferret out and comprehend all the wonderful nuances of Kagu. I will understand if, with all else you're currently dealing with, you ignore such (innane) queries of mine for awhile.

Re: Kagu Media Player Released 1.0.7
 

They represent minutes:seconds. We'll probably replace that interface with a proper timeline eventually, but we did it that way to save time in development for now.