Recently I sent out a U2U message to many of the active members on this forum to gauge the enthusiasm towards making an eJ that is Open Source. A few of you replied and we now have enough of a development community between us to start an eJ5 project. Other non-developers have also responded stating that they are willing to help in any way to help keep eJ alive.

For this project to work requires a committed community. The Open Source piece of work is to be modular – broken down into small pieces so we can all work on little bits to bring the whole application together.

I shall be working on the interfaces between the various ‘bits’, the installation packaging MSI and the interface to Winamp.

I suggest the initial beta to be almost an exact copy of eJ before we start influencing our own desires before public viewing.

Development language will be any Microsoft 2003 .NET language (VB, C++, C#, VJ, ASP, etc.) for the one single reason that with .NET you can combine different modules written in different languages into a single project (eJ5 application). All object methods and properties are to be exposed for us all to link into. Configuration is to be held in xml files as .NET natively has no registry.

The ‘bits’ that require ownership by people to do are as follows:
Interface to Winamp and object model exposed for all controls, status, etc. (me)
Default skin design (to include also Kiosk mode)
Skin SDK (including 16:9 support?)
ID3 tag management + cover art lookup (bags not me!)
Pocket PC interface
Track ratings management
Search routine
Track database schema design
Tools menu constructor to hook to exposed object models of other ‘bits’
Popularity mode algorithms
Next-up list

Please help me with this list…..

Nice initiative. But, are you planning to start this project from scratch? Not to ruin the pleasure, but a lot of functions in ej works incredibly fine already and a lot of time would be spent on reinventing the wheel (and maybe add a few bugs in the process). The best would be if one could take the current ej codebase as a point of departure, but then audiosoft would have to release the sourcecode. Don't know if that will happen, since there are not many lifesigns from audiosoft these days

Are you a programer rlailey?
And do you weigh the extent of the -hard- work need?

I think you can pluck up courage...

Yeah I know the uphill battle, but the design of eJ is sound so I just have to copy it (and I hope to have help).

I plan to have a really crap version of eJ5 released this month on May 26th. It's better to pick faults with something you can see than create perfection from the start.

Please don't have a go at me as the initial version will be functional, but rubbish

I'm really hoping for help with this - especially graphically. I'm a programmer of distinction but when it comes down to the user interface and what people want, I'm natually unbranded.

well, I wish you succeed rlailey!

NB: Junk and Fishy are very good for graphics...

Thanks for the tip on graphics. My initial release will not contain much graphics - I'll do my best but I'd rather spend my time on defining the object model to the skin interface to which someone else can do.

I've gone through the whole architecture of the project and I have one lacking skill - cover art. I really really really need help with this in understanding how to extract the image from an ID3 tag.

Everything else is routine

It's not imposed to extract covers from tags, you can use a cover.jpg file for each album instead...

You seem to be very confident!

http://gjukebox.sourceforge.net/

Don't know if there still is any acitivity on those forums. But, since that seems to be an open source project, you might meet some skillful guys over there that have an idea or two?

Good luck with this project. If the software turns out to function well, I am sure the skins will start rolling in

It's just my perfectionism. I like the idea of the cover art stored with the MP3 file, that's why I'd rather extract the art from the MP3 than cover.jpg.

I understand that to get a community on board a tangible product is required to be visible (developed) before it can be imporved in an Open Source way (hence May 26th release date).

My choice for Open Source is because an Open Souce product can never die.

Hope you're on-board

...and by the way, this is an improvement to eJ v3.97, not a new venture

But you don't have the sources files, it's not a problem??

I love your precision concerning the release date: "May 26th"!

I can tell you're not a develper Pirk! If you've ever tried to take on anybody elses code you'll realise it's easier to start from the beginning as it won't be documented in an Open Source way!!!

It's far easier (and quicker) to replicate the functionality or at least I've found so. I use eJ a lot so I'm comfident I won't mess up there. My parents are both artists, but my ability in this area may urge you to throw-up with the initial eJ5 design.

Don't have a go at me with the initial release, I only eat constructive critisism.

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 is launched on my PC. eJ v5.00 development has now started...

Ok rlailey, you are right I'm not a programer! It's just I think about the way we will have to cover again... But as you say, that will be a copy so certainly you will gain some precious time.

So good work! I'm already impatient to be on the day 26th of May...

Good night...

Thanks for the support Pirk. Although I'm committed to create an eJ v3.97 perfectionist clone without bugs myself for my own self-interest, I'd appreciate some support from otehr peopel and would thrive on suggestions for improvements. This is Open Source, so please help me...

Richard Lailey richard@lailey.com

Thank you rlailey.

I think your first release will put you on the test... but you will win your fan.

Let's go!

no, my first release will meet the project date - my second release will put me to the test

The initial release will be a read-only mode - that is a source directory of MP3's can be specified, but no updates can be made to the MP3 tags.

No CoverArt functionality will be included. >32768 MP3 file limit will be removed.

No Pocket PC support will be provided with the first release, although this is going to be a much develped feature.

eJ3.97 is going to be cloned as closely as possible

16:9 widescreen support will be incorporated.

Many features will be missing from the initial v5.00 release, but please be patient.

Richard... Good luck !
I Hope you can put this together.

I personally use use this for my album cover tagging:
http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/dist/

I think I saw the source code up there.

Also
one fo the things it references is:
http://www.josephson.org/projects/pyamazon/

which is an Amazon web api wrapper which could be used to lookups.

and:
http://icepick.info/projects/pyid3/

PyID3 tagging resource

Thanks for that CiXel, I'll look into that later on today...

Thank you so much for what you are doing! I know everyone really appriciates it. I am not a programmer, but feel free to contact me for any other help you may need.

Don't know much about programming etc, but I use MP3Tag to tag covers, lyrics and to sort files that I obtain. It might be useful to take a look. to see if it can give you any ideas how it is done.

http://www.maniactools.com/soft/mp3tag/index.shtml

Cheers

Just installed MP3Tag - thanks VWBUG

You certainly have my support, too.

I am not a programmer but I am a systems engineer and a live audio engineer and sometimes I DJ--whatever that may help you with. I would certainly be more than happy to assist in any way I can. I have virtual PC that I can use to build virutal machines for beta testing if you like.

Has Audiosoft been in contact with you or have you tried to contact them about this (well, we all have been trying to contact them without any sucess)? I would hate for them to cause any backlash from this project to you but I certainly would love to see someone take up the slack and I like the features you want to incorporate.

I'm not that worried about creating an eJ5 (eJukebox v3.97 lookalike) as I'm creating it from scratch in a different programming language using different methods.

I've tried to contact Audiosoft to no avail. I've called this eJ5 as I realise eJ4 may one day appear in which case it may save me a bit of work!

The look and feel of eJ5 will be (as much as I can) identical to v3.97, although underneath I'm going to offload much of the work to that already provided within Winamp.

The playlist within Winamp will replicate what is viewed through eJ's Up Next list (or whatever you want to call it). This will enable the Prev track to function better.

The random play mode will remotely control this feature of Winamp and the Winamp media library will be shared with eJ's. This is all controlled through an excellent Object Library interface called ActiveWinamp which is accessible via .NET applications.

The currrent Star rating feature of eJ is a different rating to that of Winamp. I plan to use the Winamp rating feature and so will have to work out an upgrade path as I have 10,000 tracks rated in eJ and don't want to re-rate them in Winamp!

The greater than 32768 tracks issue of eJ v3.97 will not be an issue with eJ5 as I'll be using the Library of Winamp, so if there still is an issue - it's with Winamp, not eJ5.

The main eJ Forms application will be browser controls (like eJ) although I may have to make some bits forms-based for GUI speed reasons.

The eJ2Web interface will be a non-framed ASP.NET application for maximum browser support which means users wishing to use this will need XP with IIS installed (or W2K/2003/Longhorn).

My system I'm currently testing on is a VMWare Windows XP SP2 image, but I'll need volunteers to test on other OS's.

.NET applications naitively do not contain registry - it's all file based much like Java, so to delete the application completely without trace, just delete the files - cool for beta testers

Sounds very, very promising if you're able to implement all those ideas. I am sold If one will be able to use 300x300 images in now playing and albumlist as well I am unfortunately not a programmer, but I sure will provide help through ideas, testing and feedback. And maybe a little skinning as well Keep it up!

I like your plan to use the Winamp features: the Winamp playlist work well in random play mode...
But do you plan to create a specific database like in eJ?


Requested features for future versions:
- The now playing image would need to be freely resizable...
- The actual songlist is already very good, with its images!
- The Album list: already very good too... maybe you could enlarge a bit the images?
- The actual Artist list is good too.
- The Playlist would be great with one small image for each different album en queue.

Thanks very much for those encouraging words Fishy.

My primary objective is to get an eJ v3.97 without bugs which unfortunately has led me to do the job myself.

However, I need support like yours and everybody else to expose the bugs so I can fix them as well as steering the development with fresh ideas to enhance this new version.

This is Open Source

hmm from my point of view it doesn't have to be freely resizeable. An alternative could be to make the now playing area large enought to hold a scaled 300x300 image. 300x300 is large enought to see details and read text from a coverimage.

And maybe one could have a little button which allowed one to see the backside of the cover as well.. Hmm I am getting carried away

Ok, if you reach to avoid the database...

Now playing image resizable:
I mean the panel would have borders resizable (horizontally and vertically) manually by the user moving the borders, and the image would be enlarged proportionaly to the new panel size.

Yeah I've been reading-up a lot about the APIC ID3 tags that store the Cover Art (and back cover art, pictures of the artists, band, etc.) - all on http://www.id3.org/develop.html

I don't think I'm at that stage yet!

Fishy: that would be good if the image be resizable in order to use -comfortably- different screen resolutions... And nothing prevent you to Pin it to 300x300 if you want!

probably you're right. The default size of the now playing and playlist area is to small by default anyway. No room for extra information in the playlist and absolutly no room for large images in the now playing. But I guess Rlailey got a lot to do before this is one the agenda. Ej is quite packed with funcionality here and there, and this is mainly a (important) cosmetic feature

300x300 it is then

Image freely resizable: that was planned to be like that in the next version of the official eJ!

If I make this a browser control, the image would naturally scale down, but not up. I could make the default 300x300 no problem, but I think we'll have to discuss this again when I'm at that point in the code.

Ok rlailey, I understand the images can't be biggers than the original in browser mode. This is why I've started to stock my images in 300x300 at least or more if i find bigger ones!

Quote:

Message original : Fishy And maybe one could have a little button which allowed one to see the backside of the cover as well.. Hmm I am getting carried away

What res are you guys planning on running in order to have 300x300 Now Playing images? How much space is that going to leave for the Album & Song List view? I know Pirk mentioned previously that he liked to have all the views currently available in eJ present on the same screen. How is that going to be possible with such a big Now Playing area?

I'm all for the larger Now Playing area as I always thought it was too small in eJ. The playlist beneath the Now Playing album cover was too small to read on a TV screen from a distance. However, I understand that other areas of the screen will need to be compromised in order to gain more space in the Now Playing area.

Thanks,
Steve

If we're going to be serious about this, might I reccomend setting up a forum dedicated to this, at least for the sake of being organized?

I can find a free hosted forum if you guys want.

Steve, the native res of my 17" LCD screen is 1280x1024 (or 1024x1280 when I rotate it to 90°). So I have enough space to display a 300x300 image in the now playing panel, a comfortable playlist underneath (including a small image per album) and the "EDV" songlist/albumlist (including genres and years columns or the artistlist expanded) on the right side.
Using a such configuration eJukebox would just fill all my screen width...

Nowadays most of the PC screens use such res...
Also I remind you guys that was planned, by Audiosoft themselves, to be -exactly- like I describe for the next version of the official eJukebox!

I just hope that rlailey can also reach a so awesome result in eJ v5!

NB: It is possible to have a 300x300 image in the Now playing panel even if you are only in 1024x768... In this case the songlist is displayed in its normal width (without the genre and year columns).

Thanks.

OK I've worked out how I can stretch and shrink the playing now cover art at will with window resizing, but I've hit on another problem of changing the opacity (transparency) value on mouse-over as most controls don't seem to have a transparancy setting. To get this to work my code is going to be a bit wierd...

It's sounds very nice and I have high hopes from how you describe all of this, although I'm still a bit confused why you are risking calling it "eJulebox 5.00" instead of just picking a new name. Sure it seems obvious that Audiosoft is out of the picture, but why risk it?

Again, I recommend something simple like iJukebox. Close enough to be obvious it's a clone, different enough so that nobody can claim that you are trying to simply take over something which hasn't been offered.

wow, i just read through all the posts in this thread. thats quite the project you are commiting yourself to, i admire that. if i knew code, i would help, but i am pretty clueless when it comes to that. i lack art skills as well... but if i think of something i can help with, i will let ya know!

I'm actually running 1024 x 768 on my lcd touch screen (native), and 800 x 600 on my CRT. I think when I move, I'm going to make them both 1024x768.

Just laying that out there, as I operate all my music via touchscreen.

Hmmm.....

I've just logged on here for the first time in six months or so to see if there was any sign of EJ4 yet. Typical that i pay for something just as it dissapears without a trace

Anyway, then i noticed this thread and was seriously cheared up at the prospect of an open source implementation, even if not an official one. (I really hope that Audiosoft don't take badly to any copyright infringement if you head towards a copy of ej3.97!!!)

Sadly, my heart then sank again!

I use linux on all four of my PCs here except for one. The one that has EJ on it. So i figured great! An open source solution normally includes ports for other OSes, i'll finally be able to switch.

I know opensource doesn't mean non-windows. I appreciate that. But then you're writing it in .NET 2003? You want to hear from people willing to test out on other OS's, but they will need to be running XP and IIS to run it.

/me rather confused at this stage!!!!

Or should i not be reading the whole thread from start to finish?

I'm a programmer and a windows one primarily at that so don't get me wrong i'm no windows basher but in my job i need to ensure that any code i write can be ported to AIX if needed so these days i don't go anywhere near .NET if i can at all help it.

Is there a site where i can see the workings of your thoughts? Ie, why ASP.NET, why .NET in general? Which language in particular (did you say this?, surely it's not all ASP, the UI and all?)

One other thing? Any chance of dropping the WinAMP dependency and replace it with some plugin api. Again, to aid in porting to other OS's?

Looking forward to May 26th. If i can be of any assistance please let me know. I can do C/C++, some java, i did do a bit of C# but thought it was far too buggy so rapidly dropped it again and then there was about 10 years of VB.

Good luck though, i just hope it turns into something great and more portable than it sounds it may be heading for as of the first version

Martin.

PS: Rather than ej5 (surely a rather dodgy thing to call a copy since this has no grounding to the original source code at all), how about FreeJ 5 ??

PPS: (I've just thought of something else!!)

The main thing that i would DEARLY love to see, by Audiosoft or ANYONE is an option i can tick that basically says "leave the directory structure the <beep> alone when handling compilations"

Any chance of this being thought about at some point?

In fact from what i remember of the whole process of when i set it up, compilations was the biggest PIA ever. eJ basically tries to be far too clever. Say for instance that i have "Dark Side of the 80's - disc 1" and "Dark Side of the 80's - disc 2" (which i do). About the only thing it managed to get right was that disc 1 and disc 2 went together

Now say that disc one contained "This corrosion" by the "Sisters Of Mercy". I'm not sure entirely the process it went through but all of a sudden it sits in a directory on my disk called "Sisters_of_Mercy_This_Corr_Dark_Side_of_the_80s_Disc_1_" that has just the one track in it.

What on earth!!!

All i really wanted was a folder called various (i'd settle for "compilations" or something) which inside that had all the compilation albums. Maybe on the import dialogue or wherever there was a tick box you could select to tell ej to "dumb down" it's processing for this disk?

Sorry to rant, i didn't mean to, but i just looked in the music directory on my server and boy, it's in a mess. I really don't want to have to redump 300 CDs so i have a lot of tidying up to do at some point.

Just an area worth thinking about if you're embarking on a new coding effort. I personally would far sooner see a lot of back end things worked on like this than things like album art image resizing and stuff like that. Sure album art is nice, but it works okay in the current version AFAIK so could wait until later maybe?

Just a thought.

Martin.

While I hear your Linux point, It's relatively easy to make a standard player for mp3s, however it's much more difficult to build one with the plugin functionality of Winamp and the community behind it to support them. I personally use a crossfader plugin as well and a multiband compressor/limtier for my backend. I went through quite a few options to land on what I'm using now, and having an internal player would surely limit those options.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not for a second suggesting a built-in player that would be ludicrous. All I'm asking is to look and see if there's a way of not locking it to winamp. I use winamp plugins on my current setup too. Namely a shoutcast streaming server plugin so certainly right now i wouldn't want to loose the winamp output either, but looking forward i'd welcome the addition of an extra api layer between the jukebox and the player which would mean that any player with a plugin that can implement that api could be used.

Let's not forget i could quite easily be talking about something that already exists, i've no idea how ej is currently implemented, however if a version is implemented with this extra layer (call it / implement it as an interface, api or whatever you wish to) then noone would be forced to use any particular player.

You (or i) want XYZ player, produce a plugin for said player that can implement the ej interface.

To keep existing users happy, develop the winamp plugin as an example...

Again, just an idea

Martin.
PS: Ignore the FreeJ suggestion, i looked and it's taken!

I believe there are several fairly standarized MP3 decoders that are open source. You just need to slap an interface over them.

Missed my scheduled Beta release today - sorry.

Cover Art is doing my head in.

Ok, no problem...

You are right cover art is a important point!

I'd rather see something that plays tunes with no album art seeing as we're talking about a 0.000001 version anyway...

(Don't forget it's not really EJ v5, it has nothing to do with EJ)

Ok... we will see this mutant!
I'm sure Audiosoft will be inspired by your version if it is good.

All work on the eJ5 Open Source Programme has been temporarily suspended until the next 'official' version of eJukebox has been released - eJ5 Open Source Team

Care to shed some light as to why??