OK, I now realized that eJukebox 3.53 hangs on every track that contains a "ä" or "ö" either in Artist or Track name. Version 3.4 plays these tracks without any problems.

Am I the only one with this problem? Can someone else try this, please, i.e. add and play a track with "ä" or "ö" in its name and see what happens?

hm I have no problems playing tunes with the norwegian letter "å". Playing 4-gir - Skeve kråke" right now So this is possible maybe your own personal hell. Don't got any plausible explinations for it though..

I think i have a similar problem than Demnos:
My eJukebox hangs on the song "L'île de Ré". Winamp play the right song, but eJ don't display this song in the now playing panel (it stay on the previous song). When the song is finished eJ stop playing. If i click on the Next button, eJ play again the same song... (and it stop again at the end of the song) while the playlist is not empty!

I hope that will help to solve this problem.

No, I don't think, that's the problem; or not that alone.

I don't have any problems listening to "Die Ärzte" for example.

But if you can provoke the error with these special characters, maybe it's that in combination with another factor.

Well, I had tried to play with this some more in the last days. It definitely hangs on *ANY* file with ü, ö, ä characters. This happens with 3.5, 3.53 and 3.6 but not with 3.4 and before.

Now, one thing I can imagine is: I am using the US English version of Windows 2000. Brandir, Pirk, Fishy and the others who play files with such characters are using a localized Windows (french, german, norwegian). Maybe there is some special support for these characters that is missing from the US version of Windows? Did Audiosoft put in some new feature in 3.5 that required this special support from Windows??? Is there some special language pack I need to install? Or some other setting in control panel?

At the moment they are in both (I always sync filenames and tags), but I will try tonight with having them appear in only one of the two and see which one causes the problem.

I can play songs with äöü in the ID3-Tag, in Title, Artist and Album
And it works also with äöü in tags AND filename and directory-path

I think, I have tested rather every combination.

Also do I use an (US) english version of Windows XP, but the language settigs set to german.

I hope I could help with these facts.

Wow, thanks for testing and posting your results!

Count yourself lucky that it works for you. Btw, how are your tags when it comes to ID3V2 vs ID3V1?

Ok, I went and installed 3.6 into a totally fresh directory and only added 4 test songs to eJukebox.

The 4 songs I had prepared with Tag&Rename so that:
A) had no "ä" at all,
B) only had "ä" in the file name,
C) only had "ä" in the tag and
D) had the "ä" both in file name and tag.

Result: Songs A and B played fine, songs C and D locked up. So we conclude: File name doesn't matter, Tag does.

I finally reinstalled the update and its running fine again. I originally installed the update and nothing worked. Then I used the full install and it worked only for one song. I gambled and trieed the update again and everything is working good again. This is the main program I've been using for playing music for as long as I have had it and it was a little depressing when it went sort of screwy but I was confidant that it could be corrected.

Demnos,

before I add new files to EJ I check them with ID3-TagIT.
Here I edit the ID3V2.3-Tags and after that convert the ID3V2.3-Tags to ID3V1.

So, in most cases (and definitly in the tested files) the ID3V1 and ID3V2.3 have the same data, as long as the datafields are compatible.

Demnos,

Can you give us a detailed account of what happens before it hangs and what you mean by "hangs" .... we are having a tough time finding out what is going wrong.

Sure. I think I even have some idea what might be happening: I think it must be in the area of communication between Winamp and eJukebox. Specifically, my theory is that eJukebox monitors what Winamp is playing, but for songs with foreign characters might not get the response it expects and loops forever on "Synchronizing"

Why do I think this? Have a look at the screenshot below: When I play a song by "Øye, Erlend", you can see that WINAMP (2.91 version) displays the artist name correctly in playlist and ID3 Tag view...but not on its own display!!!! There you see it only shows " ye, Erlend".

So, is it possible that eJukebox waits for Winamp to say "yes, I am now playing Øye, Erlend" but Winamp says forever: "yes, I am now playing _ye, Erlend" and so eJukebox goes into an endless loop?

The only flaw in my theory: There are some songs with "ä", "ö", "ü" that also cause the lockup, yet Winamp displays them correctly. But who knows what Winamp reports back to eJukebox on these? By the way, I noticed that Winamp displays the info CONVERTED TO UPPERCASE. Is it doing that on the programming interface as well? Maybe eJukebox and Winamp have different theories about how an "ä" should be capitalized?

Anyway, the exact symptoms are always that eJukebox first behaves fine, as soon as a song with foreign characters starts playing (no matter how it was started, e.g. by playlist, by "play now" or by random play/popularity mode etc.) eJukebox displays "Synchronizing". You can hear the song playing fine in Winamp, but it never gets displayed in eJukebox. CPU usage goes up, eJukebox sits om "synchronizing" for the entire song, accepts no input whatsoever, and when the song has finished playing, no new song is queued and basically all that can be done is to kill eJukebox from Task Manager or reboot the system.

Here the screenshot.

PS: When you look into this, please remember what I wrote earlier: Every single version of eJukebox up to and including 3.4 did NOT have this problem. Even today I can simply go back to 3.4 and all my tracks play fine. So when you look over this problem, maybe you can see what has been changed after version 3.4 in the "Synchronizing" area. I think with this info, you hopefully can pinpoint the source of the error better.

I don't think the font used in the version of Winamp you are using contains these characters, and that's the reason they are not displayed. (And why all characters re in uppercase) It's a custom made font (pixel-drawn, so everyone could draw a new one for their skins) for Winamp in the old days, and i don't think the graphician ever thought of the "weird" characters.

Have you tried the new Winamp 5? It's a direct descendant of the good old 2.x series, and works smoothly with eJukebox.

junk, you are probably right, I didn't think of that. So I was probably way off. But nevertheless the error has to do with "Synchronization" between eJukebox and Winamp, so there is something going on between the two of them that doesn't work too well.

I haven't tried Winamp 5 yet and I don't think I want to put it on my production machine. It is a slow machine, so I have to be careful what I put on. One experience with Winamp 3 was bad enough (I know that Winamp 5 is supposed to be better).

The thing is: There is absolutely NOTHING in Winamp 5 that I would want that Winamp 2 didn't already have. As the machine runs exclusively with the eJukebox interface all day, I could care less about skinning and databases and CD burning etc.

Well, maybe on my normal working PC I may give it a try once just to see if it gets along better with eJukebox...

Demnos: I ran 5.x at a fairly slow system for some time and it was ok. Just set the skin to classic and go through the settings and set them as "light" as possible. Then winamp 5.x shouldn't act more slowly than the 2.x series really..

I don't think Nullsoft have changed something radically in the pluginsystems used to decode mp3's in 5.x. Please correct me if I am wrong on this. I think the changes are mainly in the skin architecture, library functions and such.. Thus as you choose the classic skin and run winamp in the background you shouldn't notice any big difference from 2.x.. Maybe with the exception that your problem with characters will let go?

Are you running an international or german version of windows by the way? I run a norwegian version of windows and have no problems with special characters like æ, ø and å. Haven't seen how it works with an international version though..

Hi Fishy,

I upgraded to 5.02 "lite" on my production machine and it is as you say. Very fast, very small and looks and feels 100% like Winamp2. So no problems and thanks for the recommendation. It didn't fix the öäü thing, because the error was somewhere else, but now I found it. You can read all about it in the other thread here .

Well, I was so happy with 5.02 lite, that I installed 5.02 full version (with database etc.) on my desktop PC. I really like it!

About the recommendation, no problem. More importantly I am glad you figured the foreign characters thingy out

He He...I thought your original post (before you edited it today) was much funnier ;-) Well, I hope you had a good evening and have recovered well!

*lol* well I had hoped that my edit actually took place before you got to read it.. My present shape is ok thanks

Ah ah! I've also seen your attempt in German Fishy!

You be aware. Next time I might just as well try out my "abilities" in french

No problem Fishy! That will be a pleasure of hear someone to talk French here, even if your French is not perfect... after a few drinks...

I'd really like to read that drunked post that Fishy edited..

You wish really hard then.. It's gone forever

junk,

Unfortunately, on my computer, internet explorer never keep an historic for the audiosoft forums! I don't know why, i'm sorry...
But maybe Demnos still have this precious post on his computer?

The one that starts looking after that post in his history. Or, even worse, posts it in the forum will play a major role in my next voodoo session

You don't scare me! I have your post. If you don't want your dirty little secret to leak out, you better send me 10 Euros in small unmarked bills right now, or otherwise.... Har Har Har Har

Actually...I just changed my mind. I will sell your post to the highest bidder on eBay!!!



(just kidding, I also don't have any history, you are safe)

Damned! :mad:

So our only chance would be Audiosoft restore your post from the log files of the forums!