Welcome to Visual Music Player player, visualizer and organizer! I put a lot of effort in the making of this application and I hope that using this application fills your heart with warmth, pride and childlike joy!
- First start
- The Main Interface
- The toolbar
- The library browser
- The search/filter bar
- The visualizer overlays
- Controlling the application
- Controlling playback
- Handling the library browser
- The search/filter bar
- Supporting user interfaces
- The metadata/tag editor
- The settings viewer/editor
- The about popup
- The activity popup
- Remote control
- Creating song collections
- Command line arguments
- Customizing the user interface
Open a terminal window or your favorite application launcher and type
zenmusic
The application will show you the library selector popup page.
Click on the red button if you want to quit the application.
If you want to continue, enter the path to the folder on your machine where you store your music/music videos and click on the green button.
[note: in the near future a file browser popup will be added to this part]
Visual Music Player will parse your library and create a database from your songs. During parsing the parsed songs will be shown in the library browser.
Visual Music Player's main user interface has five main parts :
- The toolbar
- The library browser
- The search/filter bar
- The visualizer overlays
- The context menu
The toolbar contains the controller buttons and information displays.
Buttons from left to right :
- close application button
- the play/pause/seek multifunctional controller knob
- previous song button
- toggle shuffle button
- next song button
- settings button
- about button
- metadata editor button
- the mute/unmute/volume multifunctional controller knob
- the maximize button
Information displays from the left to right :
- Current playtime of song
- Song length
- Remaining playtime of song
The library browser contains all songs and important file/metadata information about your songs in your library.
The search/filter bar has three parts :
- the genre/artist selector button
- the search/filter input field
- the clean search/filter input field button
The left and the right rectangle are the visualization overlays, the rectangle on the center is the cover art/music video viewer.
To exit the application
Click on the close application button
To maximize/minimize the application
Click on the maximize button
To play a song
a. Double click on its item in the library browser
b. Click on the center of the play/pause/seek knob to continue playing current song ( if paused )
c. Press SPACE to continue playing current song ( if paused )
To pause the current song
a. Press the center of the play/pause/seek knob
b. Press SPACE
To seek/fast forward/rewind the song
a. scroll over the play/pause/seek knob
b. click on the outer ring of the play/pause/seek knob
c. drag on the outer ring of the play/pause/seek knob
A green overlay over the selected song item indicatesd that it is the active song item.
To play the previous song
Click on the "previous song" button
To play the next song
Click on the "next song" button
To toggle shuffle mode
Click on the "shuffle songs" button
If shuffle is toggled the next/prev song buttons will play randomly selected songs.
To mute audio output
Press the center of mute/unmute/volume knob
To unmute audio output
Press the center of mute/unmute/volume knob
How to set volume
a. scroll over the mute/unmute/volume knob
b. click on the outer ring of the mute/unmute/volume knob
c. drag on the outer ring of the mute/unmute/volume knob
To scroll the song list
a. scroll over the list
b. click on the invisible scrollbar area on the right edge of the song list ( vertical ) or bottom edge of the song list ( horizontal )
c. drag on the invisible scrollbar area on the right edge of the song list ( vertical ) or bottom edge of the song list ( horizontal )
To resize the column
Drag on the right edge of the header cell you want to resize.
To rearrange the columns
Drag and drop the header cell onto an other cell
To select multiple songs
a. press CTRL while clicking over an item
b. do a right click on a song and click on select/deselect
To select ranges of songs
a. press SHIFT while clicking over an item
b. do a right click on a song and click on select range
How to select all songs
right click on a song and click on select all
How to initiate metadata editing for a song
right click on a song and click on edit song info
How to delete a song
right click on a song and select delete song
To browse among the genres and artist you have in your library
click on the genre/artist selector button and select a genre/artist. It will be added to the search/filter input field.
To enter search term manually
click in the search/filter input field and enter an arbitrary text
To clean serach/filter field
click on the clean search/filter field button
Visual Music Player's supporting user interface are the following :
- The metadata/tag editor
- The settings viewer/editor
- The about popup
- The activity popup
To start metadata editing
a. right click on a song in the library browser and click on edit song info
b. select multiple songs in the library browser and right click and click on edit song info
c. select a song in the library browser and click on metadata editor button in the toolbar
The table view contains all known information about the song, in the upper part shows the metadata/tags encoded in the media file itself, the lower, pink part shows the file data and miscellaneous info about the song.
The cover art viewer in the upper right corner shows the cover art if available.
How to edit metadata
click on the metadata you want to edit, delete back with backspace, enter custom text with the keyboard and press ESCAPE or click outside of the field. then click on accept button in the lower right corner of the metadata editor.
How to update cover art
Click on add new image button and enter absolute path of image, then accept or press ENTER. Then click on accept button in the lower right corner of the metadata editor.
How to activate
click on the settings button in the main toolbar
How to change library
click on the Library Path item. Enter a valid path in the textfield of the popup, then press accept button.
How to enable automatic library organization
click on Organize Library item. click on accept button.
How to enable remote control
click on Remote Control item
How to activate
click on the about popup button in the main toolbar.
click on any item to open the corresponding functionality in the browser.
How to activate
click on the main info display in the toolbar
It is possible to remote control Visual Music Player.
How to enable the feature
In settings popup, click on Remote Control, click on accept.
How to use the feature
Visual Music Player opens up an UDP port on 23723. ( The port is configurable in the config file )
Send 1 byte packets to this port, 0x00 to play/pause 0x01 to play previous song, 0x02 to play next song
For example, my i3 config for remote control looks like this :
bindsym $mod+F10 exec echo -n "0" | nc -4u -w0 localhost 23723
bindsym $mod+F9 exec echo -n "1" | nc -4u -w0 localhost 23723
bindsym $mod+F11 exec echo -n "2" | nc -4u -w0 localhost 23723
In KDE/GNOME you can also bind keys to commands.
Visual Music Player doesn't have playlists but you can do something similar. You can add tags to songs in the metadata editor, so if you want for example a playlist for monday, select all the songs you want to include at once or one-by-one and add "monday" to the tags field. Then if you search for "monday" in the search field it will show all songs with "monday" tag. Feel free to add more values to tags field using comma as separator.
-c --config= [config file] use config file for session
-r --resources= [resources folder] use resources dir for session
-s --record= [recorder file] record session to file
-p --replay= [recorder file] replay session from file
-f --frame= [widthxheight] initial window dimension
The user interface uses html for structure description and css for design description. The location of the two file is under settings. Feel free to modify them, but beware, the html/css parser is very strict, follow strictly the original files syntax to achieve success. Also some parts are generated from code and cannot be set by css, I will wire out those parts soon