Prefpane updates

[Max Howell]

Yo peeps,

So I've released 4 builds over the last 2 weeks, the latest one at
http://playdar.org/download is fairly solid.

Notable features include:

* fsevents monitoring, so once you've scanned new files or metadata
changes will be observed. Note that you must *rescan* for this feature
to start being used.
* Scrobbling via Audioscrobbler.app, so you can have Growl
notifications: http://www.last.fm/group/Audioscrobbler+Beta/forum/30705/_/553795

Minor improvements:

* On/Off behaviour is more solid now, menu item reflects playdar state
accurately (provided the playdar internals don't crash, but we'll fix
those).
* Scanning shows number of files scanned
* Selecting additional directories scans them when playdar is on
* Scripts and configuration is usable

Other stuff:

* We bundle the aol music resolver ready for use but blacklisted by default
* You can keep the playdar daemon up to date by:

cd ~/Library/PreferencePanes/Playdar.prefPane
make

And from then on, use make update && make.

Note that you must have git and GNU-make installed for this to work.

Max

[Lucas Gonze]

Seeing number of files scanned is a cool kind of instant
gratification, as well as a good way to know if there was a problem
with the scan.

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[Daniel Kantor]

This is great. Thanks Max!

I am curious about the scrobbling - how does it know when the song is halfway through? Also, I see "audioscrobbler" in the blacklist. Is this related?

Dan

[Max Howell]

Thanks Dan :)

The audioscrobbler and scrobsub modules are separate modules, which is
indeed confusing, and may need a rethink. So as a consequence I
blacklist the audioscrobbler one.

So the audioscrobbler module was written by RJ in erlang and scrobbles
inside playdar, scrobsub marshalls the scrobbles to Audioscrobbler.app
(and Last.fm's client 2.0 which is still unreleased). External clients
also scrobbles iTunes etc. and it means you don't have to edit
playdar.conf to enter your Last.fm password, so there are a number of
reasons people may prefer this. Personally I did it all for Growl
notifications from playdar apps as it makes the whole experience feel
really integrated.

The scrobbling knows when a song is halfway by timing it. When the
track starts playdar.js tells Audioscrobbler.app how long the song is.
A scrobble is 50% length. playdar.js tells a.app if the song is
paused, or if a new track starts, so from that you have all the data
you need to determine the scrobble.

Max

[marcel corso]

Cool guys

One small thing. If you need to know the size of the song you should
worry about this when integrating commercial players (rdio and
spotify) they should give this information somehow.

By the way, do you have more on how this is going to work? This is a
very interesting problem.


m

[Daniel Kantor]

Ok that makes more sense. You said - 'playdar.js tells Audioscrobbler.app'. How is this done? I am asking b/c I am not using playdar.js and probably as a consequence, don't see audioscrobbler.app scrobbling anything.

[James Wheare]

Playdar.js has a scrobbler module that hooks into the playback events and makes jsonp requests for song start/pause/resume/stop. 

http://github.com/jwheare/playdar.js/blob/master/src/scrobbler.js

[Max Howell]

It calls a number of localhost urls:

http://localhost:60211/audioscrobbler/start
http://localhost:60211/audioscrobbler/pause
http://localhost:60211/audioscrobbler/resume
http://localhost:60211/audioscrobbler/stop

Start has a number of query parameters that should be documented
fairly clearly in the erlang module code. But yeah pretty simple to
do.

Stop should only be called when the playlist ends though, when a track
ends but a new track is about to start, just call start again.

Max

[Daniel Kantor]

It doesn't look like anything is listening on port 60211. Do I need to change something in the config?

[James Wheare]

He meant 60210

[Daniel Kantor]

I get 'Not found.' on 60210

[James Wheare]

You need to supply an auth code e.g. ?auth=. Just sniff the network calls on Playlick.

[Daniel Kantor]

sweet, that worked! Thanks