[Q] Music player with own database for very large library? - General Questions and Answers

Hello,
yes, I'm new to this forum. And yes, I right away have a really special problem
I have ripped my 2000+ CD's onto a harddisk. Now I've bought a Samsung Galaxy S2 which has the USB host feature which works without problems.
When I use the stock music player, I can't remove the USB harddisk with the large MP3 library because when I do, the automatic media scanning removes all files from the database, and when I connect the harddisk again, all files are scanned anew which lasts an eternity
So I looked for a music player which maintains its own database independent from the Android one. After a REALLY long search I found TTpod which works well - when I remove the USB harddisk, the TTpod library remains unmodified and doesn't get rescanned when connecting again, just like I wanted it. The music folder on the harddisk got a ".nomedia" file so it's invisible to the Android media scanner.
BUT (!), and that's why I'm asking here for help:
TTpod doesn't have a search function! (The stock player and some others have.)
But I need one! Often I have to search for something like "Err... there was this piano prelude by Brahms...", and in other players it's easy: I type "brahms piano prelude" into the search box, and voilĂ  - there are all matching files listed. But with TTpod it's very awkward to find something in a larger collection!
So, my question in short:
Is there any media player
1) which has an own independent media library with search function
2) which can use a folder on a USB device as root folder
3) whose library remains unaltered when the storage medium is disconnected
4) which can index this folder in spite of a ".nomedia" file in it?
Or is there any other possibility to solve my problem and maintain a huge MP3 library with my SGS2 comfortably?
Thanks in advance,
best wishes,
Hasenbein1966

Try PowerAmp,
You can turn off system media scanning and i believe it keeps its own database.

I'm sorry, but PowerAmp uses the built-in Android library.
AND it can't use a folder on an external USB device.
*sigh*
Best Wishes,
Hasenbein1966

Try power player..

Do you mean "Power Music Player"? There's one app named Power Player but that's for streaming...
Power Music Player doesn't work. Shows empty Library tab; I can't choose any folders.
I don't want to be impolite, but please suggest an app ONLY if you tested it yourself, otherwise this thread will be filled with suggestions like "Try Mixzing...", "Try PlayerPro..." I REALLY have tested MANY apps myself already, otherwise I wouldn't ask here!
Thanks!
Best Wishes,
Hasenbein1966

Related

Transferring Music to TP

Is there ANY other program you can use to sync songs to a TP besides WMP? I've been using WMP, but it keeps on making random duplicates of all my songs, and it's REALLY annoying.
I would greatly appreciate any advice.
Oh and I don't want to just drag+drop, I would like some sort of program.
Thanks.
i agree i moved from a iphone and i got to say its annoying, the way windows mobile phones organize music, and when i use windows media player mobile to update my library it seaches the entire device and grabs even system sounds.
Hmm, I just put my microsd card into my computer and dump all the music I want to listen to (mp3, flak, ogg, what ever) into the music folder to play with the built in player / core player.
Eric03 said:
Is there ANY other program you can use to sync songs to a TP besides WMP? I've been using WMP, but it keeps on making random duplicates of all my songs, and it's REALLY annoying.
I would greatly appreciate any advice.
Oh and I don't want to just drag+drop, I would like some sort of program.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How is drag and drop ANY more difficult than a program?
dr g said:
How is drag and drop ANY more difficult than a program?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well at least with WMP I can see my music in a "library" setup, as opposed to just opening my music folder which has thousands upon thousands of subfolders. It's just much easier for me (at least the way my music folder is setup) to use a program such as WMP.... but WMP sucks. That is why I am asking for an alternative to WMP.
10332007 said:
Hmm, I just put my microsd card into my computer and dump all the music I want to listen to (mp3, flak, ogg, what ever) into the music folder to play with the built in player / core player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats exactly what I do and it works like a charm. It is easier than using a program in my opinion. Are you doing something wrong? is it giving you trouble moving the files to the microSD card?
When I start Winamp and have my phone plugged in, it detects it and asks if I want to use it to manage my music on the phone. Winamp has a great name out there, maybe it oculd be useful.
I also used Yahoo Music Engine at once point and that worked great, like itunes. I think that whole deal is still around too, albeit Yahoo music has changed a bit, the app was called Yahoo Music Engine.
I have not tried sync with WM11. There must be a simple option or something you are missing. Perhaps it has to do with Media Player on WM6 and the library function. If you scan the device and organize the library to ignore your Windows folder then it probably won't be a problem on the WM11 side.
Does that make any sense?
WM11 is simple drag and drop; the problem is that when it loads music onto your Phone/SD card it puts it into the file structure Artist/Album/Track based off id3 tags. So if your music is improperly tagged or if you have more than one copy of a song like an album and a compilation album you'll end up with duplicates.
Personally I just wipe out the Music folder on my SD card every 2 weeks or so and dump a new playlist onto it. You can use the WMP sort function in the playlist to eliminate any duplicates before you copy them over. You can still add to the card later and it won't reinstall the same file so long as it's not a duplicate on your desktop like I mentioned above.
As for getting rid of ringtones showing up in your library on your phone I use Pocket Player for my MP3 player and it has an "Exclude Directory" option on it so it will only update from the SD card music folder.
Did Wm4 or CE or whatever handle music?
So that whole development time while WM5 was on market and ipod appeared, was MS just sitting there saying, "Well these are business devices let's focus on getting four Excel cells to show up on this ****tay 320x240 screen instead"
Great.
And the even funier part is the new Blackberry virtualization occurring over WM6. If they were so good at business apps then why is this occurring, HELP ME UNDERSTAND hahahhaha
This was all tongue in cheek utterance from a bewildered fan of MS and their spastic roll outs!!!!!

Best Audio Player?

Is anyone working on a S2P type audio player for Android? One reason that I regret going to Android is the lack of any good audio players. Using Nemoplayer and it is alright...but I want my S2P!
Until then, can anyone recommend an audio player that DOES NOT scan then entire SD card for audio files? As much as I like my 1 second audio clip for notifications, I don't want it to be included in my playlist.
S2P was ideal because all music needed to be in the /music directory. Thanks ahead of time!
You can put an empty file named .nomedia (the dot is important!) in the directories you don't want scanned.
You have just made my day! Thanks very much.
Well, that fixed my audio player issue, but now that essentially is preventing android from seeing my ringtones. So now I can either have my ringtones or an audio player that will not play my ringtones. Any way of having both?
My ringtones don't show up in the Music application, are you doing something differently?
Try Mortplayer. You can even find info about it in this forum. It doesn't use the Android media database. It scans only the folder and subfolders you designate.
guags99, mortplayer is exactly what I am talking about. Thanks for the information!
For all those who prefer other players, try to put a file named .nomedia in the directories you don't like to have scanned for Android's media library.
MortPlayer doesn't handle that file since I think it's enough to point it to the correct main folder, so you could even use .nomedia to omit audio books from your favorite tag based media player and play them with MortPlayer Audio Books.
(Of course I hope many like MortPlayer, but of course folder based navigation isn't for everybody. And I didn't like to code the 5,000,000th iTunes clone...)
Edit: Oops, skipped an important post... I think ringtones in /media/audio/ringtones (resp. .../notifications or .../alarms for those) should be regarded even with .nomedia.
brummiesteven said:
My ringtones don't show up in the Music application, are you doing something differently?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine don't either. Maybe it's a difference between different versions of Android?
Careful
Hey guys - be careful with .nomedia - you can loose all your media files due to a silly bug in Android...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6782845&postcount=1
I quite like btunes. You can specify which folders for it to look into. Ive just got all my mp3s in my music folder.
Audiobooks ive got in another folder and use an audio book reader for them so btunes works pretty well for me. Also like the interface.
The key to keeping ring, notification,and alarm tones from showing up in the media player is to have them in the correct folders. And there is where the "why didn't I think of that" comes into play.
At the root of your sd card:
alarm tones go in the "alarms" folder
notification tones go in the "notifications" folder
ring tones go in the "ringtones" folder
Now your phone will be able to see the tones and use them properly, but they will not show up as media files in any media player unless you tell it to look for them (some players, such as Meridian for example, allow you to exclude folders in the application setting).
Android Delight has a great comparison between Cubed and DoubleTwist. (can't post links yet)
Those are my two favorite music apps. Cubed was my fav but for reasons in the article (syncing, ease, etc.) DoubleTwist is taking over.
I'm using btunes right now. You select the folder with your music manually. I used to use Meridian where you also selected the folders. I changed because of a bug after an update, but that might have been fixed now. I like them both becaus you can skip, fast forward by swyping (best on meridian)
one of the best audio player is deadbeef. simply to use, GUI is perfect, sound is clear.

Restrict Sense Music Player to play music from one folder?

All,
I've searched the forums and I've seen that people are asking how to exclude certain folders from the search path of the htc music engine. While this approach may work for some, it doesn't work for me, because I would have to know all the folders where music is stored to exclude them, and that can be a pain if you have several programs installed on your device.
What I've been trying to do is I've been trying to find out how to restrict or "force" the htc engine to search for music in one folder that I can configure and only in that folder. I save all my music to
\Stogare Card\Music\
But i have audio books in \Storage Card\My Documents\My Books\Audiobooks\
and when i go to the music tab, it tries to play my books (very annoying) and also, it plays the system sounds from the \Windows folder and any other sounds that it finds from the \Program Files\ folder, etc...
Does anyone have any idea how to tell the player to ONLY scan the \Storage Card\Music\ folder for music?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
ZaidSenall said:
All,
I've searched the forums and I've seen that people are asking how to exclude certain folders from the search path of the htc music engine. While this approach may work for some, it doesn't work for me, because I would have to know all the folders where music is stored to exclude them, and that can be a pain if you have several programs installed on your device.
What I've been trying to do is I've been trying to find out how to restrict or "force" the htc engine to search for music in one folder that I can configure and only in that folder. I save all my music to
\Stogare Card\Music\
But i have audio books in \Storage Card\My Documents\My Books\Audiobooks\
and when i go to the music tab, it tries to play my books (very annoying) and also, it plays the system sounds from the \Windows folder and any other sounds that it finds from the \Program Files\ folder, etc...
Does anyone have any idea how to tell the player to ONLY scan the \Storage Card\Music\ folder for music?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dunno about Sense Music Player (I stay away from HTC bloatware and only use third party or MS apps), but some decent 3rd party media players that allow for excluding dirs when building up their library. See the "Library scanning: ex/including folders?" row in the chart in my dedicated article at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=415063
btw, my article has a lot of other goodies you may find extremely useful
Menneisyys said:
Dunno about Sense Music Player (I stay away from HTC bloatware and only use third party or MS apps), but some decent 3rd party media players that allow for excluding dirs when building up their library. See the "Library scanning: ex/including folders?" row in the chart in my dedicated article at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=415063
btw, my article has a lot of other goodies you may find extremely useful
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried using third party players (TCPMP, Nitrogen, Mortplayer) but i can't control any of those with the forward/back buttons on the HD2 hands free, and when I lock the phone with the end key to put it in my pocket, the only player that keeps playing music is the Sense Music Player, all the others stop playing and i have to unlock the phone and hit play again.
Also, with Sense Music Player, I can be reading something on the internet, or using my GPS and I can still change songs without having to go to the music tab or switching applications by simply using the forward/back buttons on my hands free, so i prefer to skip the files i don't want to listen to (little annoyance) to having to switch applications or to not being able to lock the phone (big annoyance)
So in my opinion, the only thing that the Sense Music player is missing to be perfect is the ability to tell it which folders to scan for music, like Mortplayer does, for instance.
I use mortplayer for audiobooks, the ability to add bookmarks to mp3 audiobooks is great, no other player can do that as far as i know. (there is Overdrive Media Console, but you have to use THEIR audiobooks)
thanks for your reply, though... as i said, all help is appreciated.
ZaidSenall said:
I've tried using third party players (TCPMP, Nitrogen, Mortplayer) but i can't control any of those with the forward/back buttons on the HD2 hands free, and when I lock the phone with the end key to put it in my pocket, the only player that keeps playing music is the Sense Music Player, all the others stop playing and i have to unlock the phone and hit play again.
Also, with Sense Music Player, I can be reading something on the internet, or using my GPS and I can still change songs without having to go to the music tab or switching applications by simply using the forward/back buttons on my hands free, so i prefer to skip the files i don't want to listen to (little annoyance) to having to switch applications or to not being able to lock the phone (big annoyance)
So in my opinion, the only thing that the Sense Music player is missing to be perfect is the ability to tell it which folders to scan for music, like Mortplayer does, for instance.
I use mortplayer for audiobooks, the ability to add bookmarks to mp3 audiobooks is great, no other player can do that as far as i know. (there is Overdrive Media Console, but you have to use THEIR audiobooks)
thanks for your reply, though... as i said, all help is appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
btw, as far as button assignment problems are concerned, did you try third-party tools? see my dedicated article at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=337602
Create a file named .nomedia in the directory in which you don't want them to show up. This works on Android, not sure what OS you're using.
Edit: You're using sense. It will work. Worked for me anyways. I have "Better Keyboard" installed and it stores all sounds on SD Card so I created .nomedia and viola, it's all gone from my music player. File needs to be blank, just needs to be named .nomedia.
Another edit: I guess you're not android. I thought you were talking about Android Sense. I'm sorry, but I can't help on this matter. Very sorry. However, if you ever get Android, there's a trick for you.
will check this out and see what I can do with it.
Menneisyys said:
btw, as far as button assignment problems are concerned, did you try third-party tools? see my dedicated article at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=337602
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried it, but windows doesn't let you create a file with only an extension and no file name... it would have been great if it had worked! There's got to be a registry setting somewhere! if only somebody knew it and shared it!
thank you for your help, though! I appreciate it!
r3s-rt said:
Create a file named .nomedia in the directory in which you don't want them to show up. This works on Android, not sure what OS you're using.
Edit: You're using sense. It will work. Worked for me anyways. I have "Better Keyboard" installed and it stores all sounds on SD Card so I created .nomedia and viola, it's all gone from my music player. File needs to be blank, just needs to be named .nomedia.
Another edit: I guess you're not android. I thought you were talking about Android Sense. I'm sorry, but I can't help on this matter. Very sorry. However, if you ever get Android, there's a trick for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One workaround i found is making a playlist with all the songs on the device and skip all other audio files, but this is annoying and takes a lot of time...
try using A_C S2P AND S2U2
S2P will only detect play/pause. It will not detect track forward/backwards.
iam also looking for this solution on my omnia 2 with sense 2.5, went to the registry with no luck
Another option is to hide all folders you don't want SENSE to scan. Read more here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5504259
I have the same problem... I can't believe HTC didn't think about this issue!
In old version of windows mobile a dummy "ignore_my_docs" file use to do the trick.
Don't know if it is still effective in wm6 or if it works with the sense media player....
+1 i have the same question
The .nomedia works
This is what I did, I followed the advise of the .nomedia, but since windows does not allow a nameless file I created a "a.nomedia" and pasted into the folder I wanted to exclude.
Then with ES File Explorer in the phone I did a rename and removed the "a". It worked like a charm!! Now I can use HTC Sense Music and no third party.
.
Thread moved to Q&A due to it being a question. Would advise you to read forum rules and post in correct section.
The .nomedia worked however how do i remove it if I wanted to?
Hidden file?
Es file explore doesn't find it

Windows Media and Music Tab standard issues.. Detailed

I recently decided to start using my music player on my HD2 due to the newest Cookies HT 1.8 update, and Windows Media and Sense Music player seems to have lots of bugs within the music player and/or missing options and other stuff i cant seem to figure out. I'm just puzzled and thought maybe others are having the same problem
1. I had a ton of music all mislabeled tags and no artwork, so first i tried to use the update on Sense tab to replace the artwork with the generic melody icon. ***That feature NEVER works for me, It doesn't seem to work even on very well labeled music tags. even when i enable WiFi, it doesn't give me artwork. (this is the first issue)
2. Why can I play music from both Windows Media, and Sense Music. its kinda an issue. Sometime I like to go my SD and play a MP3 file, But I'd rather have Sense Music player do all the work, it seems to run much smoother than Windows Media player. How do you relink your mp3's to play to Sense music player when clicking on a Mp3 files from the SD Card??
3. I updated my library using Windows Media, since Sense Music tab seemed to be lacking that feature to update the library altogether. Adding Music, Sense is kinda glitchy and I sometimes just have to soft reset to find a new mp3 just added. Using Windows Media to update your library is a nightmare!! Windows Media took 50++ of my ringtones and placed them into my Music library. then to make it even worst, it added every single sound effect from my phone and all 30 so games with sound effects installed on my SD card. (No one wants to be jamming out, then the music player flips to the next song that just happens to be a Japanese airplane pilot from "Flight Commander" Then another good song. oh back to the Japanese pilot again.) Now i dont know how to untangle this mess. I hate Windows Media. Why wont it just allow me to pick what folder I want to update rather than scan unnecessary files throughout my whole device that i may not want in my library? i get even more angry when of course I can only delete one file at a time from my music library after it just added an unnecessary 200 sound effects; which is now mixed all through my music library list.
___________________________________________________________________________
I am hoping someone here is an expert with the music library and tell me what file to delete to reset the library memory or maybe a way to avoid the media player from adding useless sound effects to my library. perhaps someone that can modify the music player to add features or a program to help modify the music experience.
Thank you
1. I've got this problem too, and I guess it's the lack of sense supporting the ID3v1 or ID3v2 meta data tags. You could use this application to check and edit the data, but -as I said- that's only a guess.
2. No, that's just not possible
3. Open your favorite registry editor, and browse to
Code:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ MediaPlayer \ Preferences \ FoldersExcludedFromLibrary
set the value to the folders you would like to exclude from indexing, like:
Code:
FoldersExcludedFromLibrary="\Storage Card\My Documents\My Ringtones;\Storage Card\Program Files\Flight Commander;"
Good luck!
I can't thank you enough for the info to exclude folders in my music file. YES!!! I'll give it a try... i'll probably have to hand delete unwanted stuff? or will it disengage once i type in the excluded?
can i get sense music to update, or do i have to use the dual setup from media player to search and update tags? i used media monkey to update my tags, but sense shows outdated info. its kinda strange it's sticking on the old file tags as well
Does this effect both music players????
3. It's not working with this registry value! Does it have to be to an specify folder or can i make it broad?
(I tried this to eliminate a whole mess of sound making programs and games)
FoldersExcludedFromLibrary="\Storage Card\Program Files" meaning everything within program files are excluded.
***so far it doesn't recognize this value at all. it's frustrating if I have to add each independent file within a game, ringtone, garmin, etc... that's a lot of research and coding
aoakes said:
I can't thank you enough for the info to exclude folders in my music file. YES!!! I'll give it a try... i'll probably have to hand delete unwanted stuff? or will it disengage once i type in the excluded?
can i get sense music to update, or do i have to use the dual setup from media player to search and update tags? i used media monkey to update my tags, but sense shows outdated info. its kinda strange it's sticking on the old file tags as well
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go to \Application Data\HTC\AudioManager_Eng\ and delete the file AudioManager_Eng.vol that should delete the sense music library, which will be rebuild after a restart of your device. Note that this folder and file may be hidden.
aoakes said:
Does this effect both music players????
3. It's not working with this registry value! Does it have to be to an specify folder or can i make it broad?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it does only effect the windows media player. Have you done a softreset after applying the registry changes? (Then update lib in media player)
Yes, I've been dozens of soft resets after editing my registry. its kinda an automatic thing since i know it must boot the modded material before it can fix/ correct the issue.
In this case, i don't see why i'm adding entries into the registry to exclude folders; if it has absolutely no impact on Sense Music player. I need Sense MP to not play my game sounds effects if i am randomly playing all songs.
I have found a cab that resets my sense library every time i restart my phone, so it doesn't take up additional boot time, with the added benefit of rebuilding the library. I guess truly, i must create a playlist in order to avoid this issue... i wish for a program like the iphone music player but incorporated like Sense MP.
aoakes said:
In this case, i don't see why i'm adding entries into the registry to exclude folders; if it has absolutely no impact on Sense Music player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As said before the registrykey only affects the windows media player library settings.
I found these keys:
Code:
HKLM\Software\HTC\AudioManager_Eng\Config
device_scan_path, device_scan_path_0, ring_tone_path
Edit as follows:
Set device_scan_path_path and device_scan_path_path_0 to \Storage Card\Music
Haven't tested it, but it should work. The ringtonepath can be used as a single exclusion path
I was curious if you updated your rom? I, too, started paying more attention to my music player after updating co0kies to 1.8. I have read on dozens of threads about the issues on the sense music player and have experienced most of them at one point or another to the point of not wanting to even use it. Anyway, after updating to the new rom the player and audio eng. miraculously became dramatically more stable. It didn't solve everything but certainly cleaned it up alot. Just wondering....
eph533 said:
I was curious if you updated your rom?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Look at my signature
i use cht 1.8, but I'm sure that doesn't effect the problems you're facing
yeah, I've updated my Rom a while ago. just updated stock T mobile USA Rom, but i don't think any of this should be an impact because its still sense 2.5 (ver. 2012) within both stock and update.
I think I'll just remove some of the games causing the conflict since i don't even play them. i've cleaned up the music library as good as i could. when i find the cab file, I'll post it on here so others can refresh their library.

Music app that will stream from URLs in m3u playlists?

I used to be able to do this with pocketplayer in windows mobile. I just got an android phone today (G1, old but much better than my even older phone) and I wanted to be able to stream my music library to my phone. I already have the means to stream it to anything else using edna (http://edna.sourceforge.net/), which I managed to run as a service in the background.
The idea was to be able to access my music library on the phone's browser and then have it open the generated .m3u file using a music player. But I have yet to find a single music player for Android that can do this except maybe this app called "Just Playlists", which doesn't really work at all unless I download the playlist first. And it won't do that, it automatically opens them with the program.
So, I'm thinking of downloading subsonic to use as an mp3 server, but the thing is that I feel that it's unnecessary to have two mp3 servers running at a time. The only benefit is having it on my phone, but otherwise I can just use edna on another device, like a computer, and open the playlist files with VLC or Winamp.
Another problem I ran into with Just Playlists is that it won't preload the song titles/artists for the songs, so I'll be looking at the full URL waiting for it to scroll by so I can pick a song. This is if it works at all.
So, help? Anyone know of any apps?
Using CIFS to mount music shares
I've actually been trying to do a similar thing. I've been using cifs to mount my music folder onto my Desire. It seems like a slightly easier way to get access to the files than using edna, especially because it doesn't require any extra software.
I have been struggling to find a decent music player than can easily handle such a large volume of files. I'm using Winamp Beta for my music and whilst I can play files, I need to use a file browser to find the files I want to play.
I also can't find a way of playing the m3u playlists I have stored on my computer. I've used Audio Galaxy and this has the same problem (unless you're using iTunes). Subsonic has better support but it's pretty expensive.
has anyone found a working soultion for this yet? I have a set of m3u and pls files which are saved URL's of online radio stations, some from shoutcast, some from other sources that on Windows Mobile I used GS Player to listen to
Just Playlists seems to come the closest out of any apps I've tried to working but either gives me an unexpected error message when trying to open the file or it looks like it has opened it but I get no playback.
I've tried StremFurious, VLC S&C and I think one or two others but no luck yet, curious if others have a solution
thanks!

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