[Music UI] 'Flow'

[el maco]

So... this thread is about my third music screen UI for the S9.

I have to say it straight up: this UI is not for everyone. For example, I cannot give you that normal music.swf file because you have to build it yourself... And not just once, but every time new albums are added to the S9 or old ones are removed.

Sounds inconvenient and unpractical? It is. But its also the only solution I could come up with, because I wanted to have as fast cover art browser as possible. After a lot of experimenting I concluded that the only way to get the browser perform well enough is to embed all cover art images inside the UI program itself. This way the UI doesn't need to read cover art images dynamically because all required artwork is already available in the internal data library. As a result the browser performs quite nicely (well, there is always room for improvement but its quite good, even when music is playing and flash interface gets that infamous slow-down).

Other notable features include full-sized, anti-aliased cover art view in the now-playing-screen. You can use larger images than 272*272 without the usual aliasing artifacts, optimum size being 544*544 theoretically.

User interface is divided into four components. Below is a short description of each of them.

album browser

• the UI will start from the integrated browser if playback is paused
• swipe up/down to scroll the music library. Scrolling will wrap around from both ends
• swipe left/right to swap to the now-playing-screen
• tap an album shortly to activate it, tap again to see the tracklist
• long press on an activated album to start playback immediately
• long press when no album is selected opens the shortcut page

tracklist view

• swipe up/down to see next/previous page
• tap track name to activate, double tap to start playback

now-playing-screen

• swipe left/right to return to the browser
• swipe up/down to adjust volume
• tap on the timeline to enable seek
• tap the album cover to launch the standard browser
• pull down command panel by swiping down at the top of the screen
• command panel contains four buttons: play/pause, shuffle toggle, jump to settings and quit

shortcut page

• alphabetical "quick" jump based on first letter of the album name
• history of four most recently played albums

-----

To build the Flow UI (semi)automatically one must run a utility program called MakeFlow.exe. Some facts:

• MakeFlow is available for Windows only
• it does NOT support embedded cover art. Each album (=folder) needs to contain cover.jpg file in order to show up in the browser!
• it does not support deep folder structures:
  • "X:\Music\Artist - Album" is ok (1 level)
  • "X:\Music\Artist\Album" is also ok (2 levels)
  • "X:\Music\Genre\Artist\Album" is not because it is too deep (3 levels)
  • finally "X:\Music\LargeFolderWithManyAlbums" is not a good idea because it will show up as one big album in the browser
• Currently MakeFlow does not recongnize unicode characters. This means that any 'special' characters in filenames may cause albums to be unselectable and/or missing in the browser. Consequently, if you are unable to select some albums in the browser, check their names! The easiest way to make an album unselectable is to have a "^" character in its name (which is used internally to indicate a folder separator)
• MakeFlow needs an external SWF linker called swfmill. That is free software which can be downloaded from swfmill.org.

Installation & use:

1. Extract MakeFlow.exe together with resource.uci into any folder.
2. Copy swfmill.exe into the same location
3. Connect your S9 (and wait until the drive letter gets assigned)
4. Create a back-up of all of your data, just in case!
5. Launch MakeFlow.exe
6. Select the drive letter of your S9
7. When prompted, press "D" or "N" to skip missing covers for the first time. They can be added later.
8. If everything went as planned, MakeFlow should finally produce the music.swf and place it in the System\Flash UI folder.

You will notice two additional cache folders created into the filesystem. These files are required for the UCI to work properly. They should be removed only if you decide to stop using this UI.

Disclaimer: You use this program at your own risk! I take no responsibility if you manage to lose data or brick your S9 (or your computer or whatever). No, it should not be possible but, you know, don't blame me if something unimaginable does happen.


Download: MakeFlow_104.zip

Version 1.04:

• experimental support for Cowon J3 (I don't have a J3 so I don't really know if it works or not). Only music in internal memory can be browsed.

Version 1.02:

• fixed crashing on 8-bit greyscale jpg's
• added support for folder.jpg's
• optional possibility to disable the light reflection effect on covers

Version 1.01:

• fixed browser bug (showed only first album when language setting was not english).

-----

ps. Thanks for everyone involved in beta-testing! Special mention to uphaillife for giving a name to the uci

[Uphaillife]

Also: If you know that you don't want album covers for certain folders but feel like it's a waste of time pressing "N" everytime makeflow.exe asks you about a missing album cover, you can spam the letter "n" and the "enter" button and the process should zoom right through.

EDIT: I suggest using mediafire. it has a hit counter and i feel that it's the fastest file hoster. however, the site does go down at times.

[surgency]

this is awesome!
thanks el maco

[noobdeagle]

holy shit thats epic!

shame it cant read mp3 tags :\ too much effort to re-organize my library for this but for those that use a cover.jpg this is damn nice

[Adapada]

Excellent work!

Glad you pushed this out!
Have you found a way to recognize when to load album art a second time (for example: same album, so it doesnt reload the album art?)

[seojuhwan]

WOW... I am blown away!!!

This is so innovative compared to many other music UCIs for S9 so far...

[or8560]

Can X:\Music\Album work? I seem to be getting only one albumart on the album art browser.....

[Adapada]

Originally Posted by or8560

Can X:\Music\Album work? I seem to be getting only one albumart on the album art browser.....

I don't think it supports more than 1 albumart per album (if you have multiple)
I do believe that it needs album and artist so:

X:\Music\Album - Artist
or
X:\Music\Artist - Album
or
X:\Music\Artist\Album (this is how I structure mine)

[or8560]

Originally Posted by Adapada

I don't think it supports more than 1 albumart per album (if you have multiple)
I do believe that it needs album and artist so:

X:\Music\Album - Artist
or
X:\Music\Artist - Album
or
X:\Music\Artist\Album (this is how I structure mine)

Thanks Adapada!! It's working now!!

[da1writer]

Told you guys, This is what me, uphaillife and lane32x have been beta testing over the past couple weeks. There is NO MUSIC UI like this on the Cowon S9 PERIOD! Be proud to be a Cowon S9 owner now that this music UI is out!

As El Maco knows, this is a music UI I've been dreaming of for a long time as I missed Ultimate Mod on the D2. No one has bothered to even try to make something similar to it but El Maco decided to give it a go and went way above my expectations. In all honesty, this is the Best Music UI on the Cowon S9 and the only one of it's kind too. As stated before, there is absolutely no other music UI like this one on the Cowon S9.

I give my highest thanks out to El Maco and all the time and effort he did in order to make this ! Video coming shortly !

[Sixteh]

The creator crashes for me after processing "Temple of the Dog - Temple of the Dog". The next album is "The Mars Volta - A Missing Chromosome".

That's 40ish albums in.
edit: windows 7, my bad. Maybe it can only process so many before crashing?

[Uphaillife]

Originally Posted by Sixteh

The creator crashes for me after processing "Temple of the Dog - Temple of the Dog". The next album is "The Mars Volta - A Missing Chromosome".

That's 40ish albums in.

i had the same problem. is there a coverart for it?

[da1writer]

Originally Posted by Sixteh

The creator crashes for me after processing "Temple of the Dog - Temple of the Dog". The next album is "The Mars Volta - A Missing Chromosome".

That's 40ish albums in.

How deep are your folders and does it have a cover.jpg in it (not png)? Are you running this under Windows (not bootcamp)? You can also try restarting the computer and trying again. I have 250+ albums batched and had no problems.

[KromaXamorK]

This UCI is AWESOMAZING.
Just one problem all my covers are the same take from my first album.

[da1writer]

Originally Posted by KromaXamorK

This UCI is AWESOMAZING.
Just one problem all my covers are the same take from my first album.

It doesn't read embedded albums, so each folder must have a cover.jpg (folder.jpg not supported).
Folder structure has to consist of:

X:\Music\Album - Artist
or
X:\Music\Artist - Album
or
X:\Music\Artist\Album (this is how I structure mine, along with adapada)

Also make sure your album covers aren't "too big" as it may cause some problems.