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Use Standalone player with big SDcard to store music

Luyckx Bart

July 06, 2020 16:39

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Setting up hifiberry OS where I wanted to use the SDcard as storage for my local music wasn't as straightforward as with MoOde or Volumio.

Still hifiBerry is my favorite as it handles album and artist pictures better. (and looks likes it handles updates better too)

NTFS storage is't recognized by hifiberryOS, so no option to add my USB-drive to the Rpi.

Formatting the SDcard, 1 partiton FAT32 for OS and the rest as NTFS for the music isnt possible as hifiberry takes the whole space of the SDcard.

So best aproach for me is to handle things from my windows laptop.

Installed WinSCP and copy the files fro; there to /data/library/music/local.

 

Still facing some problems/improvements : 

1) Picture isn't shown properly on screen album detail:

File structure =<album>     subfolers : <Disk1>     <Disk2>

The cover-thumb.jpg is copied in <disk2>  but not in <disk1>  Putting  the cover-thumb.jpg in <disk1>  solves the problem

 

2) Formatting isn't ideal on screen 1366 x 768 (need scrollbar even only 1 album)

3) Artist and Album pictures are quiet big. (maybe OK for tablet use)On laptopscreen/smarthphone some smaller pictures will suit better

 

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48 comments

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 06, 2020 16:55

  Thanks for the feedback. We'll look into these these. 

  1) looks like a bug and should be easy to fix

  2 + 3 might need some more research to find the optimal size for objects on lower resolution screens. 

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 06, 2020 16:58

  One question on 1: Do you use exactly the same album name or do you have something like the disk number as a part of the album name?

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  Luyckx Bart July 06, 2020 17:12

  topic 1)  Yes exact the same albumname is used for disk1 and disk2.  Disknumber is not included in the name.

  Related to topics 2+3 

  sorting options can be improved.  

  Sorting by year doesn't show the years.eg : 60's, 70's, 1985, ... 

  handling big library can be improved if you add option of indexing like A,B,C..,Z or 60's, 70's, 1985, ... so you're able to jump to the right place iso scrolling through a very long list.

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  Tuomas July 06, 2020 20:05

  Thanks for the feedback. It's early days for the music library functionality – we wanted to put it out there in its very basic form to gather feedback from our users on how it works for them and how they would like to see it evolve.

  Your suggestions for sorting options are very good and in fact were already on my list of things to add.

  I'll look into improving the artist layout for wide-but-short displays. The current layout has some space reservations for things like artist biographies and other relevant information so it looks very empty right now – once we start adding these in I think you'll see it will start making more sense.

   

  Best,

  Tuomas from Bang & Olufsen

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  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 06:36

  Luyckx Bart

  Unfortunately I can't reproduce your problem with separate folders for each album here. With my test, cover art get's extracted for each disc. One thing I could think of is that only some files contain cover images. Are you sure all your files have attached cover images?
  
  It's also possible that this is a bug that had been fixed accidentally last week ;-) We've uploaded a bugfix release 20200706 now, you might try this. 

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  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 07:42

  

  Above a screenshot from the 2 CDs taken from windows but it's copied this way to the Rpi.

  The thumb.jpg was found in de CD2 but not in CD1.  After copying the thumb.jpg to CD1 the problem was solved.

   

  Im newbie and installed HifitberryOS for the first time yesterday.  I have version 20200701

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 07:45

  Ok, in this case, I understand what's happening. This isn't a bug. The "thumb.jpg" file isn't created by HiFiBerryOS at all. If you have covers in the files, HiFiBerryOS will extract these and create a "cover.jpg" file.

  HiFiBerryOS will just use existing thumb.jpg files, if you have these.

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  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 07:55

  Hi Tuamos,

   

  I feel Hifiberry OS is still early days, specially compared to Volumio and MoOde that I used before.

  But I feel Hifiberry OS has great potential.

  Handling the library isn't easy and I find MoOde and Volumio as coming short.  The Approach from Hifiberry OS looks to be a better track. 

  To give some suggestions.  Handling artist and albums can be straight forward.  But also consider the compilation albums.  Many artists- many songs (some are 10CDs).   To handle this well you need to think things over.

  As a user you want to find your compilation album, but also when you search by artist you want to find all the songs you have from them.

   

  About the screen sizes.  I think its not easy to handle all kinds of screen layouts and will take a lot of effort to implement.

  As I feel the HifiBerry OS want to be an easy software to use.  Things need to be straight forward.  One thing that bugs many people is the fact that on smartphones the URL doesnt work and you need to find out the IPaddress.  Not so easy for some users.  Maybe an appropriate APP can solve this and fix the screen layout aswell.

  Also handling NTFS USB should be implemented.  This makes things userfriendly.  Many people use windows and big USB drives with their music.  

  Just some ideas...

  Regards,

  Bart

   

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 08:02

  I don't see a problem with compilations. You simply tag the "album artist" as "Various artists" and the artist of the track with the correct artist. This way, you will also find them using search.
  
  I can't say if we will implement NTFS at some point. Linux NTFS read/write supports isn't part of the standard kernel which makes this quite complicated. I won't say no, but it definitely hasn't a very high priority.
  As FAT32 and exFAT are supported, it shouldn't be a big deal to use these instead of NTFS.

• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 08:05

  Hi ,  I didnt had thumb.jpg files.  The are created after i copied to the music to the Rpi.  Í only have Cover.jpg, or front.jpg files but never -thumb.jpg

  An other problem I encounter :

  From this compilation album I dont see any song.  Also can not search it.  It only shows in the menus the CD cover but no songs

  

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 08:11

  Ah ok, the "cover-thumb.jpg" is created by HiFiBerryOS. I understood that you're using a "thumb.jpg" file. It might still be a bug in the 20200701 release.
  
  About your compilation. Check the metadata. Do your files have an "album artist"? The easiet tool to check and edit metadata on Windows seems is imho mp3tag. If there is no "album artist", just set this to "Various artists". HiFiBerryOS relies on metadata in the files, not directory structure (as there is no standard for this).

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  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 08:11

  Maybe the above problem will be fixed with the answer you just gave me about tagging the compilation albums.  I will check if the labelling is done correctly.

  about NTFS :  Isn't installing ntfs-3g enough?  It worked in MoOde as standard, didnt had to do anything to the OS. 

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 08:13

  It's not that simple. Adding more software always adds complexity and different file systems need different mount options and more.

• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 08:16

  Im using Foobar for tagging and other stuff.   Works well for me.

  I checked the album artist.  Its labelled correctly.

  

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 08:17

  Ok, I recommend to try the latest version. It might still be a bug in the 20200701 release as this is working here.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 08:20

  I see another problem. For some reason, no album was detected. Delete the "noalbum" file before upgrading.

• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 08:31

  How do I upgrade to 202020706?   Im on 20200701 and it said there are no new updates.

   

  BTW great response from your side...much appreciated 

  

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 08:39

  Set "automatic updates" to quick to see the new release.

• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 08:44

  Same

• 0
  
  Tuomas July 07, 2020 08:45

  Please check back after 5 minutes or so.

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  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 09:35

  Still the same, album stay empty.

  I have 1 various artists with 1 album 60s pop but there are no songs shown :( 

• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 09:41

  

  got the '"no album" again in the file list

  The folder 60s contains FLACfiles derived from many DC rips and just grouped here together.  At the moment only the files from 1 CDrips are copied to the Rpi.  The album name is embedded in the files together with the album artistname as "Various Artist" 

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 09:44

  Can you provide some sample files? We need to dig deeper into this.

• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 09:49

  How can I do that?  Also considering the law... 

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 10:13

  We only need a few samples and I will delete these immediately when we finished debugging. You could share these via Dropbox.

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  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 13:16

  Dont feel comfortable doing so....

  A Bit annoying.  maybe with a few songs in it, it doesnt have the problem.  I try to do some testing on my behalf first.

   

  About the approach of handling various artists.  It isn't as straight forward as tuomas sugests.

  Consider following situation :  you have 1 compilation album with 100 songs and 100 different artists.  Next to that you have 10 albums from 5 different artists.  Those 5 artists may also be on the compilation album.

  In the artists view you may want to see only those 5 artists of who you have real albums. Showing all 100 artists there you may loose track. (compilation often have many 1 hit wonders) and can not find your 5 real artists easily.  

  In your physical collection you have your 'real album' easy accessible and separated from your compilation albums.  you have good overview on your 'real albums' and real artists.

  Same counts from the album view.

  Still when you search you want to search through your whole collection, you want to look in all the artists/albums you have.

  If you search on 1 of your 5 artist, you want to find the real albums and the songs on the compilation albums.

   

  in my opinion you need different views based on artists/album-artists combinations.

  Artists incl compilations and artists not incl. compilation albums

  When they are equal or different (ref. for compilation albums/album-artisits = various artists).

   

  Hope this make some sense. 

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 13:29

  I don't think, that your differentiation between "real albums" and "non-real" compilations is what many users want (I personally do not). As with physical media, every album is an album. In the album view you will see all, independent if these are compilations or not.
  
  It's even hard to find a clear definition what an "compilation albums" is. Many albums today integrate multiple artists, but are not "compilations" (as I would understand the word "compilation"). 
  
  Anyway, we'll work on improvements and you will see improvements coming in the next months. Feedback is very important for us to see what different users are looking for. We might not implement everything that users want, but we'll definitely look into ideas from users.

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  Tuomas July 07, 2020 13:47

  I also agree that the top-level "albums" view probably should not make a distinction between what kind of album it is. However, I could see the individual artist pages gaining a dedicated section for multi-artist compilations (similar to how Apple Music does it with an "Appears on" section). It would collect albums where that artist appears but whose "album artist" is not the artist you're viewing.

  The top-level "artists" view is already implemented such that the entries in it are based on "album artist". This means that for example, you should only see Daft Punk in it and not Daft Punk (feat. Panda Bear) (or the other 8 featuring artists) just because that appears on their Random Access Memories album – given that your content is properly tagged.

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  Luyckx Bart July 07, 2020 13:57

  I agree that different users wants different things and from your side it's not easy to handle all request and wishes.  I respect that.

  For me I will loose track to find the real artists if the list contains all the compilation artists aswell.  like in my example, you want to find those 5 artists in a list of 100.   In real world this is even worse and you may have to multiply those numbers by .... .

  To differentiate them may be a setting the user makes on how he/she wants to see things. 

  Filter : "Show Artist ín Artist-list if  'artist' name = 'Album=artist'name    Y/N

  According to those settings the displayed list can then be filtered.

  Wikipedia has a definition on what a compilation album is. Doens't make things more easy though.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 07, 2020 13:59

  As Tuomas said, in the artist view, you see only album artists (at least this is how it's working today).