[Release] CD Art Display RC6

[Meshuggah]

it doesnt see my foobar either...it closes itself after a few seconds Gavin because you have it set to "exit when player is ended." I'm trying to get CAD to currently see my foobar setup, hopefully it will work.

:::I do have winamp installed, and pointing to C:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe did the trick :D

[Carlos11]

Thanks Meshuggah. Maybe that's an alternative for those foobar setup... :)

[ProclaimDragon]

Just find out about this and here are my thoughts on RC6. I'm using Windows Vista by the way...

- When no song is being played, the skin is still on the desktop. I think this should fade out and completely disappear and when a song starts again it should fade in quickly.

- If I start to play a song and then stop it, the song info remains on screen, it should be gone. Better yet is to implement my suggestion above.

- Maybe you could implement an option to "click through"?

- "Pin to Desktop" makes the whole skin disappear (in Vista at least), however, if I right-click somewhere in the vicinity of the skin, the right-click menu popups up anyway.

- Right now, I don't have any covers for my song collection but I started playing a song and decided to test the search cover function with the internal browser. I found a cover and applied it. Now the weird part... I couldn't locate the jpg file anywhere... I right clicked on it and selected the "view" option and I could see it in Windows Photo Gallery, even the location for the file (it was on C:\Program Files\CD Art Display\Covers) but I opened the folder and the file wasn't there? I clicked the "open" option in Windows Photo Gallery to open the jpg file in Paint.NET, but the file couldn't be opened cause it couldn't be found. Then, I deleted it through Windows Photo Gallery and it worked, the file was somehow deleted cause I tried to refresh the song I was playing and the cover wasn't there anymore on the skin (it was there all the time after downloading it).

Now a question... The rate feature is integrated with the one in the system/windows media player 11 or do you keep the ratings in a separate database?

[Carlos11]

Nazgulled

- such feature is in my to do list

- idem

- I'll consider it after 1.0 final

- Pin to Desktop does not work on Vista (the build I'm working on right now will disable it for Vista): for some reason I can't pin a layered window on the desktop anymore and a solution for that was not found yet. It's a Vista limitation.

- Since you're using Vista try to change the location where CAD saves the covers. Just go to CAD "Control Panel>Read cover" and select another "Cover folder". Go to "Control Panel>Download" to change where CAD saves a downloaded cover. Note that CAD is very flexible and you can save the cover in any folder, including the current song folder. See Help for details. Next CAD version, if I don't forget :) , CAD will not use the folder where it is installed to save "Covers" and "Lyrics" since Vista won't let use it unless you give the rights...

- Ratings: for most of the players CAD uses the player database (like in Winamp, WMP11, AlbumPlayer). Some players don't have such database or interface then CAD can store ratings (e.g. foobar2000).

[ProclaimDragon]

Thanks for the input...

- There must be a way somehow to pin to the desktop in Vista... We just don't know how yet!

- About the covers, I think I'll skip that, I'm in the process of placing the covers in the mp3 tags... It will be better this way cause I have very misc songs in the same folder and I want media player to also recognize these covers for individual files... If I paste the cover into mediaplayer, it will be stretched to 200x200 and that sucks... So, placing them in the mp3 tags is the best option IMO...

Is there any mailing list or something or should I just track this topic?

[Carlos11]

Nazgulled,

You can follow CAD developement from here: http://closetosoftware.com/forum/index.php

[Meshuggah]

Nazgulled, I received the same error on the covers. This is what you need to do to ensure it saves, and is quite weird.

When you point to the cover folder ex C:\Program Files\CAD\Covers\ make sure when you hit save it is "x:\Program Files\CAD\Covers" NOT "x:\Program Files\CAD\Covers\"....when you hit save, and look back it will have the \ on it, but from then on in it will save to the correct location.

I tampered with this for a while and found the extra \ to cause the glitch. Tell me if it works for you as well.

[Carlos11]

Meshuggah,

Are you talking about "Control Panel>Read Cover" or "Control Panel>Download"?

[Creamy]

First of all: Great Program, used it 2 Minuets, loved it! :)

Heres a question: I already got many covers for my iTunes Library (in the id3 tags) but CAD won't show them to me....is there any way to make this work?

All I ever see:

Edited April 6, 2007 by Creamy

[Meshuggah]

Meshuggah,

Are you talking about "Control Panel>Read Cover" or "Control Panel>Download"?

read cover

[Carlos11]

First of all: Great Program, used it 2 Minuets, loved it! :)

Heres a question: I already got many covers for my iTunes Library (in the id3 tags) but CAD won't show them to me....is there any way to make this work?

All I ever see:

If you're using iTunes CAD should get the cover from iTunes.

If you're using another player (e.g. Winamp) make sure to have "Read ID3v2 Tag Cover" in your "Control Panel>Read Cover" list.

If you're using iTunes + Vista maybe you should allow all rights for CAD folder.

Next CAD version there'll be some Vista tweaks.

read cover

Interesting. It should work with or without the "\" at the end...

[acies]

I was wondering if there is a way to improve the shadow under the lettering, for example this is a similar app (coversutra I think) on the mac:

It's a small detail, but I think it would make a difference.

[CY:G]

Thanks man, this is exactly what my desktop was missing, i love it, everything is working right with mine.

I tweaked it a little and i ended up with this, it looks awesome:

Keep up the good work, cant wait to use 1.0 :cool:

[Carlos11]

I was wondering if there is a way to improve the shadow under the lettering, for example this is a similar app (coversutra I think) on the mac:

It's a small detail, but I think it would make a difference.

I was not able to reproduce such shadow yet but it's something I'd like to add for sure!

Thanks man, this is exactly what my desktop was missing, i love it, everything is working right with mine.

I tweaked it a little and i ended up with this, it looks awesome:

...

Keep up the good work, cant wait to use 1.0 :cool:

Nice touch! :)

By the way here's what is coming next:

- Round corner for cover area

- new mirror engine

- set mirror size

- toolbar (menu and playback buttons) on mouse over

- skinned interface for lyrics

- notifier alike style

- improved all fade in/out procedures

- current song time as a tag

- Vista tweaks and more...

:cool:

[Shasoosh]

is there a way that the downloaded cover will be saved in the mp3 id3v2?

[Carlos11]

No. For now CAD won't touch any tag.

[Shasoosh]

could be cool though? don't you think?

thats ok, im still inlove..

[Meshuggah]

great update carlos...cant wait to test them out.

[acies]

Awesome Carlos!! Is the next release 1.0??

[Carlos11]

There'll be some builds (just to make sure the new features are working) then 1.0. :)

[Carlos11]

The first build is ready for testing! :)

Go here and read the topic carefully:

http://closetosoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=250

[reach.gkumar]

I've been following this software for a while and eventually I decided to give it a try now that it's close to final. It's pretty nice with Itunes on my new lapotp so far but I've some questions. I just started using Itunes now because my old laptop was too slow. I have some questions so any assistance would be most helpful.

Is there any way to configure the following:

1) Show the total time of the song next to the current time like (2:01 / 5:23)

2) Scroll the song text/artist. This is because some Indian songs/artists have humongous names and when wrapped around it doesn't look as pretty.

3) Hotkeys for Volume Up, Volume Down, Repeat (within playlist, song), Shuffle?

4) Lyrics Windows To be Always On Top

5) Is there a way to automatically tag lyrics to the played song if lyrics are blank? I am not sure think EvilLyrics with an script might do this but its UI is not as good. (If not, how can it be done elegantly?)

6) I haven't tried the Album Art feature yet but does the song have to be in the current folder of the song (if so with what type of filename) or tagged within the song?

7) Is there a way to tag multiple art covers within the song? If so how? (If not, how can it be done elegantly?)

8) What skin would you recommend? I'm a sucker for displaying the maximum amount of information per song while still looking pretty.

Thanks in advance and for a great software. Hope improvements keep coming!

[Wildies]

Great update and awesome improvements u done there carlos

keep up the good work (Y)

[lil_psc]

it doesnt support chinese text =/

[acies]

just trying out the test build, Great stuff in there. But the right click doesn't seem to bring up the menu for me. :wacko: