Playlists

Tabs

Every player has a row of tabs, one per playlist. All players see the same playlists; each player chooses which one it shows. A dot on a tab shows where the player’s tracks are: red for the track on air, green for the next one.

The tabs share the width of the player. A name that does not fit ends in “…”; hover over the tab to read it in full. With many playlists the tabs stop shrinking at a minimum width, arrows appear at the ends of the row and the mouse wheel over the tabs scrolls them. The tab you choose, and the one a player shows, is brought into view.

Switching tabs never changes what is on air or what is next. When a track ends, the player continues in the playlist that contains that track.

The + at the right end of the row makes a new playlist: type a name and press Enter or Create (Escape or a click outside cancels). The new playlist appears at once in that player’s tabs and the player shows it. Playlists can also be created, and are renamed and deleted, in Settings. The last playlist, and a playlist with a track on air, cannot be deleted.

The track table

A new installation shows #, Title, Artist and Dur. The other columns are optional; see Choosing the columns below. A track that lacks a value shows an empty cell, except Artist, which shows “Unknown artist”.

The columns fill the table and keep their proportions when the window is resized; the text columns get the most room. Drag the header separators to change the proportions: the columns to the right of the separator follow the pointer on every frame (they share what is left in proportion to their width), the ones to its left stay, and the widths are saved when you let go. No column gets narrower than its minimum. The widths are remembered per player; a column you show later starts with its default width and the others keep their proportions.

Choosing the columns

Title and Dur. are always shown. Every other column can be shown or hidden, and any column, those two included, can be moved. The list is the same for every player and playlist, and it is saved in config.json as ui.table_columns. Three ways to change it:

• Settings → Playlists → Table columns: tick the columns to show; the arrows move a shown column up or down (they read left to right in the tables). Default columns goes back to #, Title, Artist and Dur.
• Right-click a header: a menu with a checkbox for every optional column. A column you show appears at the right end; drag it from there.
• Drag a header onto another: drop it on the left half of a header to put the column before it, on the right half to put it after it. Dropping anywhere else does nothing.

A name in ui.table_columns that this version does not know is ignored, and a missing Title or Dur. is added back.

When the application opens, each table scrolls so that its player’s next track is in the middle of the table (as near as the ends of the list allow). That happens once, at start-up, and only when the next track is in the playlist the table shows.

When a player moves on to another track, its table shows that track’s playlist and scrolls its row to the top, unless you used the table in the last 10 seconds (scrolled it, dragged a track, opened a track’s menu or clicked a tab): then it waits until you leave it alone for that long. The time is ui.follow_current_grace_secs in config.json; 0 turns following off.

Players are independent: several players can show the same playlist, each with its own next track, its own played marks and its own times in the footer. Playing, stopping or skipping on one player never moves another player’s next. The same track can even be on air on two players at once. Editing the playlist (adding, moving or removing entries) or a file becoming unreadable can still change the next of any player that shows it.

Row colours:

Track tooltip. Hover a row for a moment to see its title, artist, album, date, genre, length, format (type, sample rate and bit depth when known) and the path of its file. A field the file does not have is left out. The popup is the only hover information on a row, and it never moves while it is shown. For a missing or unreadable file it starts with the reason.

Mouse

• Click selects a track. Double-click makes it this player’s next track. On the track on air it makes it play once more when the current pass ends.
• Right-click opens the context menu:

Editing tags

Edit tags… opens a window for one track. While it is open no keyboard shortcut acts, and files dropped on the application window are ignored.

• What you see. The editor reads the file when it opens (it shows “Reading tags…” meanwhile). Always shown: title, artist, album, album artist, date, track number and total, disc number and total, genre, composer and comment. Shown when the file has them: subtitle, grouping, BPM, initial key, mood, ISRC, publisher, catalog number, copyright, original artist, original album, original release date, lyricist, conductor, remixer, arranger, performer, language, encoded by, lyrics, sort title, sort artist, sort album, sort album artist, sort composer and artist website.
• Add field. The menu below the fields lists the other fields. It offers only what the file’s tag format can store (a WAV with RIFF INFO, an AIFF or an old ID3v1 tag store fewer fields than ID3v2, FLAC or MP4), and it is dimmed when there is nothing left to add. One of the always-shown fields that the format cannot store is greyed out with a note. Clearing a field removes it from the file; an added field left empty is not written.
• Several values. Fields that can hold several values (artist, album artist, genre, composer, mood and the credits such as lyricist, conductor, remixer, arranger and performer, and language) show one value per line; Save writes one value per line in the format’s own way. Comment and lyrics are free text over several lines.
• Checks. Date and original release date are ISO 8601 (2019, 2019-05 or 2019-05-14, optionally with a time); track and disc number, their totals and the BPM are whole numbers, and a total needs its number. A field with an invalid value is marked and Save stays off. A value the file already had and you did not touch is kept as it is.
• Fields that are too long. A field whose text is longer than limits.max_tag_chars, or that holds more values than limits.max_tag_values, is shown read-only with the note “Too long to edit here; kept as it is in the file”. It is never written back, so a save cannot cut it.
• What is kept. Everything the editor does not show (other standard keys, custom keys, pictures other than the front cover, binary frames) stays in the file with the same values. The editor says how many such tags are kept (and “more” when the format holds frames that cannot be counted). Saving re-encodes the items the editor maps, so a kept item can differ in its bytes (text encoding, frame order) but not in its value.
• The cover. The editor shows the front cover, or the first picture of the file when there is no front cover, as a thumbnail.
  • Change… opens a file dialog for a JPEG or PNG image (at most limits.max_cover_bytes, and it must decode). If it does not, the editor says why and nothing changes.
  • Remove clears the front cover. It is off when the file has no front cover: a picture shown only because there is no front cover is display only and is kept as it is.
  • A cover that is in the file but cannot be shown (an image that does not decode, or a GIF, BMP or WebP) is announced with “This cover cannot be shown; it is kept as it is”. Change… and Remove still work.
  • The change is written by Save and discarded by Cancel. Back covers and every other picture are never touched. A format with no place for pictures (WAV with RIFF INFO, AIFF, ID3v1) shows the area disabled. After a save the player’s cover shows the new cover.
• How a save works. The file is copied next to the original, the copy gets the tags, is synced and replaces the original, so a failure leaves the file as it was. The reason shows in the editor, which stays open to retry, and in the status bar. Only the fields you changed are written. After a save the table shows the new tags at once, and markers and the waveform are kept. If the file did not keep a field you changed, the status bar names it.
• After an update. Tracks of an earlier version get their date, genre and other tags filled in quietly in the background (no full analysis).

Drag and drop

• Drag a track within the list to reorder it. A violet line shows where it will land: it is at the row boundary nearest to the pointer, and only in the list under the pointer. Releasing over the header, a column edge, the scroll bar or a window that covers the list (the CUE window) drops nothing.
• While you drag a track, hold the pointer near the top or bottom edge of a list to scroll it: the closer to the edge, the faster it goes, and it stops at the ends of the list or when you move away from the edge. The mouse wheel scrolls the list during the drag too. The violet line keeps following the pointer as the list moves. Dragging files from the file manager over a list scrolls it the same way where the system reports the pointer position, once you move the pointer over the list.
• Drag it onto another player’s list to move it there.
• Drag it onto a tab to append it to that playlist.
• Drop files or folders from the file manager onto a list to insert them at the drop position. Over the header, a column edge, the scroll bar or a window that covers the list nothing is inserted. If the system does not report the position, they go to the end of the list shown.

Footer

+ Add opens a file dialog, starting in the music folder set in Settings. Reset played (the arrow icon next to it) clears the dimmed “already played” mark of every track of the playlist, for every player, after asking “Clear the played mark of every track in this playlist?” (Cancel, Esc or a click outside keep the marks). The track that is on air keeps its state and is marked when the player leaves it. The button is dimmed when there is nothing to clear. The footer also shows the number of tracks, the time left in the playlist and its total length.

Playlist files

• Import: Settings → Playlists → Import M3U / PLS…, or drop an .m3u, .m3u8 or .pls file on the window. It becomes a new playlist named after the file.
  • Relative paths are resolved against the playlist file’s folder.
  • file:// addresses are understood.
  • Files that cannot be found are still added, marked unavailable.
  • Internet streams are skipped; a message says how many.
• Export: the M3U button on each playlist in Settings saves it as an M3U8 file with titles, lengths and full paths.