Highly Experimental Winamp help by dissident93 at 11:55 PM EST on March 9, 2012
Hello. I dunno where else I could ask this, so I'll ask it here. The metadata for PSFs files, using the Highly Experimental plugin for Winamp works perfectly... in the playlist.
I want it to show it correctly in the Local Media section. It becomes very redundant having to apply "fake" metadata over it and then none of that saves anyway, when the data is already there AND I know that Winamp CAN read it, but only in the playlist.
Is this a limit of the Plugin, or is it some option in Winamp that I've missed? I previously had this problem with SPC files, but I found an updated "wrapper" plugin for SNESamp and it fixed it. So I'm also wondering if something like this exists for HE as well.
No, I haven't heard of such a wrapper (I have heard of the SPC one though). Winamp has had a number of updates since HE was last updated. For one thing, the way the Media Library "grabs" its information is a little different than it was a while back. Even so, HE never "communicated" with the Media Library (even back then, at HE's last update, it was *possible* to get the information, but the Media Library was pretty new, and somewhat unused. Also, I'm pretty sure Neill never used it, so he didn't bother with it). So, no. To the best of my knowledge, what you're asking for is not currently possible.
That said, as has already been seen with the SNESAmp wrapper, theoretically such a wrapper could be created to do the same thing for HE. Personally, I entered all the important information manually, or not at all. Aka, load an entire album into the Media Library, select all (of the PSFs in that album), then edit their info (I think it's ALT+3 in the ML, but it's been so long, that I can't say for sure). Add authors/artists/composers, album name, comments, year, genre, etc. (all the info that's shared between different tracks), and then save it. These changes will be saved in the ML's database, but not in the files themselves. You'll then have to manually add all the track numbers, titles, etc. (all the information that is specific to that file) manually, for each file.
Yes, this is time consuming. I did it for a number of GSF, USF, and PSF sets. How many sets, I can't remember. Mostly it was for those that I liked the most (Zelda, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, etc. Pretty much anything by Motoi Sakuraba or Yatsunori Mitsuda(sp)). Unfortunately, there isn't an automated way to do PSFs, that I know of.
Honestly, I think your best bet is putting up a request either on Winamp's forums, or contacting DrO (he's the one that made the SNESAmp wrapper), and asking him about it. I assume that the code from the SNESAmp wrapper could be re-used to create a HE wrapper, and would thus simplify the work necessary to get the needed "communication" in place for HE to "talk" to the ML better.
Hopefully that was informative. A "work-around" is possible (as seen above), but is time consuming. I suspect that the reason the ML isn't saving your changes, is because of the "advanced title features" (or something like that). It' been so long since I used the ML (let alone since I set it all up), that I have difficulty remembering it all. But I think that with the "Advanced Title Stuff" enabled, it pulls that information from the ML's database. But, every time you play the files, that database is updated (and since HE doesn't provide the information correctly, the ML updates badly, thus getting rid of your edits).
Anyway, I hope this, more or less, answers your question, and helps you figure out a way to make your ML database changes more permanent. Mouser X over and out.
Highly Experimental Winamp help by dissident93 at 5:14 AM EST on March 10, 2012
Hmm, I thought so..
And that's the problem I have, I've done this before, but if you accidentally do something so that it reads the true metadata (like I've done so many times), there's no way of retrieving the stuff you've done to it in the ML. I have 1,520 PSFs, so you can see why this is such a hassle.
I'll try and contact him and see what happens. Thanks.
Wait.... You don't know how to export the ML's database? I could be wrong... but I thought it was built into the ML now. You can export (and of course, then import) the ML's database to a plain-text file. Back when I actually used the ML, it was a plugin, but I think it's built into the the ML now. I'd have to look at the ML to be sure, but it might only be accessible (via right-click somewhere) when you're using a "classic" skin. Make the changes in the ML's database, export them, and then if you accidentally re-read the metadata, you can import your changes, to overwrite the new ones. Create backups, of course, and periodically re-export your DB, to maintain the changes you want to keep.
I'm in a hurry to catch a bus, otherwise I'd spend more time on this. Hope it helps. Mouser X over and out.
Highly Experimental Winamp help by dissident93 at 2:07 PM EST on March 10, 2012
Daaaaah, I knew it was something easy that I was missing all along. I would still rather have it directly read all the metadata already there but I can deal with doing this.
i'll reply here instead of via email as there seems to be a few things which could do with being clarified from the posts above.
the issue with the HE plug-in is that due to its age and most plug-ins in this area only being targeted at what Winamp 2.x supported, it's not got the built in support needed for working with the Winamp 5.x metadata api's and so in turn won't work as nicely as it should do with the media library (yes i know to a lot of people it's one of the lame / bloated / crap parts of Winamp but some people like it and get on well with it).
with the case of making a wrapper plug-in, i only ended up making one for SNESamp since the later source code was not available and even with the code availabe, i didn't have all of the tools / means to do a direct compile of it. there were also other other integration issues with SNESamp which i managed to fix up via the wrapper which acts in the middle between SNESamp and Winamp.
as such only a part of the wrapper could even be re-used i think (has been a while since i looked at let alone accessed the code from my archives) since it ended up being specifically targeted at the quirks and ways of SNESamp and with a plug-in like HE, i doubt it would need anything like that to work with a wrapper on it. if anything, the source code from 64th Note is a better starting point than the wrapper.
however, that is not something which generally should be done (as it can cause other issues) and it's best for the support to be natively added into the respective input plug-ins rather than trying to do things with wrapper plug-ins. this was one of the reasons for the minor patches contributed to the 64th Note plug-in to deal with such things (though that implementation maybe isn't as optimal as it could and should be).
a few years back i did attempt to make a wrapper for allowing any xSF based file to at least allow for the tags to be read from them so they could be used with the media library but it never worked as i'd have liked and for it to work correctly, either needed api changes in Winamp or more invasive injection into the Winamp process from what i remember (though we're talking 5-6 years back now so my memory is somewhat fuzzy on that). maybe it could work now but it's still introducing something else into things which should and would be better done in the native plug-in itself.
ironically i've seen complaints over the years from people about Winamp and it's metadata support not being there when a) that's not true as the metadata api's appeared in Winamp 2.9x but no one can be bothered to use them and b) how other players are are so much better since it allows for those formats to have their tags read / edited - only because people have bothered to implement the metadata handling needed *shrugs*
as for the comments about doing a backup / restore of the library's contents, Mouser is sort of right as there was a plug-in which did it, but that then got updated and then became an officially shipped plug-in (since it started off as something from one of the Winamp devs which wasn't quite ready for native shipping). that is available via the menu's Mouse has mentioned as well as via the options on the 'library' button in the media library window.
and with the case of setting custom information in the library, it shouldn't generally be overwritten - i know from Mouser's previous experiences that when doing a re-scan that it could be cleared out but i'm not sure about now so that may or may not still be the case (isn't a feature i've ever really used so i'm not sure what the expected behaviour is for that case anymore).
so back to the original question, if the HE plug-in was updated to support things then that would be the best solution. a wrapper could be done but it's not something i'd really suggest doing (as it can and has caused issues as has bitten me in the bum a number of times), especially for someone without much knowledge of the workings of Winamp in such matters. maybe i could find some time to try to resurrect my attempt but this funny thing called work seems to take up most of my coding time nowadays.
Highly Experimental Winamp help by dissident93 at 11:10 PM EDT on March 12, 2012
Well i've got my answer! :)
And I don't really wanna switch to foobar, because it doesn't have the Media Library GUI I prefer over a straight playlist of 15k songs (which is basically what foobar is). Also the plugins for emulated game music lacks the options that I use.
dissident93: i know it's not ideal and i'd have really hoped to see more of the game music plug-ins having finally been updated to support not only the metadata api features of 2.9x and 5.x by now (Winamp 5.0 was released over 9 years ago) and even some attempts at using the unified alt+3 dialog (introduced over 4.5 years ago) but it just doesn't seem there's an interest other than getting something which plays and will then work in xmplay or anything else which will load a Winamp 2.x style plug-in.
alas it's quite frustrating but without hacking thins or trying to submit patches, there's not too much which can really be done as there's no real interest from the original plug-in devs to support such things - i can see and know why it was not done at times but it just leads to a crippled experience where people have to start doing things like library data export-import cycles which isn't the way to do *shrugs*
-daz
Highly Experimental Winamp help by dissident93 at 7:36 AM EDT on March 13, 2012
And the HE project's been dead for years, right? I wonder what Neil's been up to since.
there's been at least 2 converter api's present with the current one (api_decodefile) in place for almost 5 years. the best example for it being used would be the wavpack input plug-in which supports pretty much all of the newer features from the last few years.