yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
I will try to get swipe for skip next/skip previous in next update.

I shall stick with the metadata being extracted at play time (including images).

I will also try to implement a special live tile design.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] TheIronMaiden:
[MENTION=4622571]mcosmin222[/MENTION] you've come a long way, the app is great, looking good and organized, and is becoming more efficient than the native player. Customization is even cool. Good job. I was even going to ask about swipe to skip. Maybe even borrow the gestures from vlc player and MX player? Controlling the brightness/volume by sliding your finger up/down on the screen? Or when watching a movie, you can lock the screen so you don't accidentally hot a button to close or skip a chapter ? Just throwing out some stuff to make it the ultimate media player. Seems like you love a challenge. Keep up the good work
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Thanks ^^. I will try to improve the video player once I am done with the music one.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] VSparxx:
It indeed made significant progress, if in the beginning i was just checking for changes between updates, now i'm constantly using it.

Great and hard work always pais off.

Also Cosmin you can start a uservoice page and say about it in an update so users can provide feedback quicker and also propose new features with the ability to vote so you always know which are more important to end user.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Hmmm...

Maybe.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
I am going to merge shuffle and randomize in next update.

Swipe to skip previous/skip next is now implemented.

Double tap on album art will commence playback at current track.

I am going to remove the shuffle feature (the app bar button) in the next update because it was causing dead locks with large playback lists. I decided to remove it because it was basically overlapping both the change song order feature in now playing page and the randomizer.

Tags will be read properly at play time. Live tile image will not be updated in real time due to memory constraints for background audio.

Instead, each time you start the app, it will render a special live tile image with album art it managed to dig so far. The live tile will flip between current now playing art and that particular image.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] rezniqsvk:
lumia 630 cannot start > loading then it throws me back to menu

dled tru store
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
There will be an update tonight or tomorrow. Hopefully that issue will be fixed
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Yeh well, Microsoft decided it is time to check my updates more thoroughly...
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
In the next update I will try to make this as fast to load as the old music+video hub from windows phone 7.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Ok, I've done some twinkling with execution order and the app is about 2 times faster at start up, with the exception of the first execution round after install/update to new version. When it starts for first time after install or new version, it makes sure the update was successful or initiates some files/folder on first run. I don't think I can get it any faster than this.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Another update with small improvements will be released soon, once I am satisfied it works fine.

Ability to resume music playback from the exact position upon player deactivation (similar to how xbox music does). This is turned on by default starting with next update, but the current behaviour (restart tracks when play button is pressed after player deactivation) can be re-enabled from settings. (needs testing)

You can now use the seek bar when the player is paused. (checked, works fine)

And if anything else comes to mind...
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] VSparxx:
A "stop music on given time and exit player" option would be great, u know...for those who like to fall asleep with some music.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Will do, once i fgure out why a particular user has issues with flac playback.

It will only work if the app is in the foreground, so if you want to fall asleep while listening to music, make sure the screen doesn't time out.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] VSparxx:
It can be done so it works with screen off, I'm sure as I've seen a dozen of apps with this function.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
There is a screen time out button now.

Those apps run under the lock screen and are written against a different API, which can't be accessed. Long story behind it.

I can make it run in background, and it will run in background at some point, but execution may drift and not stop at exact moment but at a subsequent time.

I already tried this but I couldn't make it stable.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
If all goes right with the current internal version, I will submit to for certification on sunday.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Shuffle button is back in now playing list.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
I've submited an update with bug fixes and ease of access UI changes.

Next one will bring support for high quality flac/ogg/opus.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] CSMR:
Does this mean gapless? In my testing, .ogg files in folders on the sd card don't play gaplessly. Thanks!
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] ales_x1:
Feature request

Hello mcosmin222!

I've got a feature request, a hard one.

I've got a Lexus GS300 2007, it came with Bluetooth handsfree that doesn't support Bluetooth music streaming.

I've a Nokia Lumia 920 with Lumia Cyan and the latest DP installed. There's no way to listen to the music via Bluetooth in my car, the voice of the CoPilot GPS navigation comes out of the phone speaker, but the voice of the Here Drive goes through Bluetooth to my car's speakers! Here Drive is the only app that can stream voice and other audio signals to my car's speakers.:eek:

Do you think it's possible to discover how the Here Drive works and implement the same solution for music streaming in your app?

Thanks!

Best regards,

Alex
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
There are different protocols used for streaming music. The car probably doesn't support them. Do other phones work with it?
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
It is more like high sampling rate.

The gapless playback is influenced by the random access speed of your SD card.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] GoodDayToDie:
It's quite simple how Here Drive uses your car's Bluetooth: it plays through the HandsFree (Headset) Bluetooth profile. Other apps can do this too, if they're coded to use that profile for audio output. However, it'll sound awful for a music player; HFP is low-bandwidth (it's meant for phone-quality audio) and mono (not stereo).

Gapless playback generally requires pre-sampling the next track so that you can pump it immediately as the previous one finishes. Not sure how practical it is to do that on WP8, though. Simply telling the audio framework to play the next file will never be gapless.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] noyfound:
Hi,

Any news from the equalizer ? For cheap lumia phones there is only one option to have EQ and thats "Flac Player SD" which comes with a 5 band eq which only works for flac files :(
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
I could implement equalizer for ogg, flac and opus but not for the other types.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] CSMR:
This doesn't make much sense to me, firstly because I have a high end class 10 SanDisk microsd card and a Lumia 1520 which should give 10MB/s, and secondly more because smooth playback of a 200kbps file should only require 200kbps plus a bit of headroom. So I should have enough speed by a factor of about 200. And I don't understand how card speed could possibly make a difference.

Does your app support gapless playback at the moment and if so for what file types and in what conditions?
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Flac and ogg gapless playback is supported, but they depend on sevreal things:

1) size of metadata

2)random access speed for SD card, if you use it.

3) other processes running on the phone.

It is not a manner of how much info is transfered per second, but how fast the SD cards deal with the burst request of info at track change, where the decoder needs to parse metadata in order to initialize correctly.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] CSMR:
May I ask how much time do you give the decoder to parse this information? I.e., at what time before track change does the application start to process the next track? Could this time be increased to something that would work in all normal conditions?
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
It depends.

if the decoder is playing normally, once it provided the last sample, the next track will begin load.

If you skipped tracks, it will continue to provide samples from the current track until the next one is ready.

There is also some system induced latency.

But the current decoders are bugged and will be reverted to the last version in the next update. I am currently looking into some weird issues.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] CSMR:
OK that is the problem. It is not a gapless player. This method is the reason why non-gapless players are non-gapless.

In order to have gapless playback you have to be ready to submit the first sample of the next file immediately after the last sample of the previous file. That implies reading and processing all the necessary information in advance. That means starting to load the information significantly before the end of the track. Perhaps 1s before.

If you read this sentence out loud and wait until you have finished speaking each word before you start to read the next, you will hear the problem with this approach!
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
While I see your point, there are a few issues with initializing decoders before hand, especially that of timing. The pipeline is a carefully tuned machinery with perfectly matched timings. Go adrift by as much as 1 ns and everything will perish in flames.

There actual initialization of the decoders is less than 100 ms. You won't hear the gap because of the decoder initialization. You will hear the gap because there are a few things the player does in the time frame between decoder initialization completion and actual playback start, such as live tile update (which has been removed in this update and moved to another background task) and some DB updates for top played mix (this will be removed in the next update, as it appears to be the one causing some issues).
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] CSMR:
OK but timings must also be perfectly matched to get gapless playback. I am getting about a 1s gap which needs to be reduced to <1ns !

Why is that? Doesn't it result in a 100ms gap?

Thanks for taking the time to reply!
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
You won't hear an 100ms gap. Trust me.

At the moment I am having trouble getting it to work properly.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] CSMR:
I'm sorry but I don't think you understand what gapless is or why it is needed.

Even a gap of a single 1/44000s sample can be extremely audible and heard as a click if music is continuing between two tracks.

A gap of 100ms will be very audible even if no music is playing across the track divide because it will be a gap in the noise floor.

More rarely even with no music or noise floor so a gap is inaudible, a musician may have a tempo connection between movements that a 100ms gap would disrupt.

That is why gapless is important but the important thing is what it is, which is no gap, not even a single sample. It's important to describe your application accurately. If you're not interested in making it gapless then please don't advertise it as gapless, so that hopefully someone else can take up the task.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Sure I am interested in implementing it the way you want, but there is a huge problem with the stability of the media pipeline. I am currently using the unreleased version and I can tell you the "gap" is a lot less "gapping".

I will *try* to implement it the way you want, but I am not sure either me or you will like the outcome. If you have an unlocked device you can even test it if you want to :)
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] CSMR:
Great that you are trying then! I've been waiting for many years for a gapless player for Windows Phone that can play by folder so I don't mind waiting longer!

I don't have an unlocked phone for testing though sorry.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] le vien:
I wanna install this, but in my country it doesn't appear!:crying:
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
It is hidden from the store. Use the link in the first post to download.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] le vien:
Thank U so much! I just come to WP from Android and it's the first I get a MS phone!
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Use your iphone 3 to order a windows phone.

Once the windows phone arrives, install it on your new phone.

Hope this helps.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] Thardo:
It doesn't appear in my country...
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
According to dev center, the app is visible in all countries
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
It appears some people do not understand that this is a beta and on-going development. SO I will be hiding this from the marketplace search and it will most likely stay that way.

To download the app, use the link from the OP. The app will continue to work for those who already installed.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] J.Stim:
Good

I really liked the player. Simple and easy
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] le vien:
The player runs flawlessly, thank dev. But it can't read wav file. Could U add this feature?
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Will do.

I thought wav was working fine, since Microsoft says it is hardware accelerated in windows phone 8.1

Expect it to come by next update. probably next week.

I am also working in improvements to gapless playback. The gapless player is mostly stable but sometimes skips tracks (I am yet to figure out why). So if the next update deadline does not have this issue fixed, gapless will stay at experimental level.

There will also be enhancements to music explorer feature in the next update: combined file & folder view. yep, I am slowing turning this into a full fledged file browser.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Liniar PCM wav files will be supported in the next update.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] pegran:
does'nt work on Lumia 520 with the Denim update sadly
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
What do you mean by not working?

No sound or the app does not start?

I regularly download the store version to check it from a user point of view, and it works flawlessly, aside from the gapless playback bug, it does not crash and sound plays well.

Speaking of gapless playback. I will change its implementation (or attempt to). It will no longer support format mixing, and the files will have to be encoded with same profile (sampling rate, bit depth, sound channels, codec) for it to work.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] edwardmax2010:
Hmmmm. I guess I would try this. I'm curious on the app details.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] bkrishna963:
Hi guys music player from windows 8.1 can be ported to android
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] emptyhead41:
[MENTION=4622571]mcosmin222[/MENTION]: fantastic app. Really good work. Only just discovered it, but can see from this thread you've done alot of work on this. Very impressive.

Bug I've noticed that can't seem to find mentioned anywhere else is, when going back into the app after leaving it running in background mode, the current song will skip to the next.

Also when selecting 'stop the music' option, a warning appears that the app will no longer function until being restarted. I'm a total noob at with windows phone and I can't for the life of me figure out how to totally kill an app. I've even restarted my phone but it still loads up with the app at the same point. Anyone got advice on this?
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] pegran:
app starts with a black screen and stays active but thats all
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Hold the back key until the task manager appears. Swipe the thumbnail of the app down to kill it off completely. It will then start a new instance.

As for the bug, strange, I haven't had this problem and nobody else reported. Are you sure you don't accidentally swipe over the now playing image art (which causes track skips depending on swipe direction), or press some button by mistake?

[MENTION=3698395]pegran[/MENTION]

What phone do you have?

I know some people can't launch the app, but there is kinda no way of tracking it down and I can not reproduce it on my phone or emulator.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] emptyhead41:
Was sure pressing and holding 'back' was one of the first things I tried. How stupid of me :o Thanks

The 'bug' I'm unable to reproduce now. I'm reasonably sure it wasn't me doing something silly like pressing a button or the screen, but it could have been.

However my phone was acting very strange and I wonder if that was the issue. Like I say, the app completely refused to work after selecting 'stop music' - it was possible to navigate around, etc, but the play screen would not change at all (would not update the playlist files, or play or anything) - this stayed even after rebooting phone, which seems odd.

After uninstalling and reinstalling by pushing it from PC to phone via the store on the internet, it then crashed to start menu and would refuse to start up. Uninstalled and reinstalled again with same results, uninstalled and reinstalled this time from the phone's store and now it is working flawlessly. I've now found my music player of choice.

Has WP8.1 has any instability issues? It could just be me being an idiot with my new phone :silly:

Anyway. Thanks so much for your help. This app really is a major achievement, going by the quality of similar apps available on the windows store.

It's C# on WP yes? And are you open sourcing this or are you doing the work on your own?
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
As I said, there are some people who do not have any issues with the app and others who do. I haven't found a pattern yet.

If you stopped the music, you completely stopped the background media player process of the app, which is responsible for signaling the foreground when to update stuff.

The app is a combination of C++ (performance critical components are C++) and C#. I do not yet intend to make it open source.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
I will be on a business trip till the 1st of April, I am not sure if I will be able to push more updates. There will be one tomorrow.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] JLowe:
My first impression is that the gapless playback is much improved. Thank you for your hard work and have a successful trip!
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Huge update coming in April^^
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
The update is now live.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
I noticed a strange behavior with the app, like it tries to start but it fails, even though it was working fine before. Or once it starts, it fails to play music.

This issue is caused by a system policy bug with regard to background processes. The app uses such process to play music (and attempts to start it when the app starts). If you experience this issue, please restart your phone.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
The video player app will be split into a different application (Microsoft style xD). It can get more support and easier feature integration.

The music player portion is just becoming waaaay too big (source code + assets + optimization DBs and stuff is well over 2 GB in size!). It will also help me integrate video decoders easier.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] f1ux:
Just installed this and about to test it out!

Is there any chance Apple lossless support may be added?

Many thanks!
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Maybe.

First I have to see if there's any breaking changes in WP10.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] VSparxx:
I was browsing the store and found an app with the same icon you use, idk what's the story of this icon but just thought i'll post here about this, as further this can confuse people a lot.

Also by the way your app doesn't load under Win10, just a black screen, but this may be due to unfinished/unstable apis
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Report that app to Microsoft :P

Windows Phone 10 is not "officially" supported. There is no point trying to fix bugs on a system that is not yet in a stable build.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] anatoli_k:
Requesting some enhancements

Hi mcosmin222,

I'm very happy that I've finally found a player which can play folders one after another! Seems it's a unique. Well done!

Can I ask for some improvements? Hope they will bring more attraction to the app.

1. You know, the world is not perfect. There are a lot of mp3's with no (or some only) tags set. Can you do a trick and use the following instead?

Title - the file name

Album - the folder name

Artist - the upper folder name

If you think this will not be good for everybody - make an option for this.

2. If "Now Playing" collection list goes from discovering folders, can it look like the following, using the folders structure?

Paul McCartney
1970 - McCartney
1	01-the_lovely_linda.mp3
2	06-junk.mp3
3	11-singalong_junk.mp3
4	12-maybe_im_amazed.mp3
1971 - Ram [Remastered]
5	01-too_many_people.mp3
6	02-3_legs.mp3
7	03-ram_on.mp3
8	04-dear_boy.mp3
9	05-uncle_albertadmiral_halsey.mp3
10	07-heart_of_the_country.mp3
11	08-monkberry_moon_delight.mp3
12	09-eat_at_home.mp3
13	10-long_haired_lady.mp3
14	11-ram_on_reprise.mp3
15	12-back_seat_of_my_car.mp3
16	13-another_day_bonus_track.mp3
1971 - Wild Life (Paul McCartney & Wings)
17	02-bip_bop.mp3
18	04-wild_life.mp3
19	06-i_am_your_singer.mp3
20	07-bip_bop_link.mp3
21	08-tomorrow.mp3
22	09-dear_friend.mp3
23	14-mamas_little_girl_bonus_track.mp3
1973 - Band On The Run

By the way, the trailing ".mp3" can be removed, I think.

3. When navigating to "Now Playing" collection, can the current playing song become visible additionally to highlighted, so no need to scroll the list manually trying to locate it. It's essential for long lists.

4. Can the "Now Playing" icon be placed somewhere near other controls (stop/start, next, prev...)?

5. Can the details of current song not be over album art but below it? Sometimes it's hard to read. Can details for previous and next song be with smaller font than the current one?

6. Can the words "Title", "Artist", "Album", "Genre" on "Now playing" details page be not so bright or even smaller than now? I'd try to place them without left padding also but the values to shift right.

That's it for now :)

I wish you all the best. Please continue your great work!

Thanks,

Anatoli
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
1) Will be done.

2) You mean the now playing list from now playing page? That is rather difficult to do as the tracks can be randomized and they would no longer reflect the playback order.

3) Will be done.

4) You can tap the now playing image (the big one). It will take you to now playing page.

5) I suppose so. The spacing is an issue.

6) You can change colors. I can change the font and alignment.

7) Thank you for your feedback.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] demon2112:
Black screen on opening in lumia 930 denim
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
Restart your phone and try again.
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] demon2112:
Didnt work
[Windows Phone 8 Apps and Games] mcosmin222:
I will check the dev center and see if your crash has uploaded. The problem seems to be occurring randomly. I just downloaded the marketplace version on my phone and it works fine.

I will try and track it down, although it might be a problem strictly related to your phone and firmware. Is your phone carrier locked or international version?