All,

I have finished developing an mp3 search utility for windows. Its ultra fast and uses a sql (sqlite) backend - so memory footprint is quite small

I developed this program for a client of mine who needs to create playlists out of a colloection of 30000 mp3s, the existing windows search was too slow and lacking and most mp3 management tools out there were too bloated and confusing

The program supports drag and drop so you can drag stuff directly into emplode

The hilighting feature is used in a somewhat similar fashion to playlists just press ctrl-r on the song you would like to highlight and there after the song will be marked in red.

<IMPORTANT> I do not modify or remove any ID3 tags or filenames</IMPORTANT>

my database uses an md5 hash to uniquly identify tracks so it is trivial to detect duplicate songs in the collection (in a later release i will add this feature)

my program requires winamp is installed if you want double click to fire up the song in winamp

you will also need the latest version of vb runtime (most of you will already have it)

I have not made an installer yet you can simply decompress the files into a directory and go .. (cdex style install)

Please let me know if you find this useful

Cheers

to download music search go to
http://samsaffron.com/musicsearch.zip

I just checked out this program and it is pretty cool. Like you say, it is very fast. There are some features that may be useful such as customizable display formats for the mp3s and such, but I understand that you want a simple program and that it was designed for a specific application so this is not really needed. There are two little things though that I would like to mention. First of all, and you may have designed it like this, it does not show up as a taskbar button while the program is running. I know that it is a taskbar icon, but that is non-standard and takes a little getting used too. The second thing I noticed is that everytime you add another song to the winamp playlist, it restarts the playing of winamp as if it emulates a 'play' command. When making playlists, I put winamp in enqueue mode and just double click the songs I want in the playlist. Winamp just adds the new songs. When I do this from Music Search it restarts the current song every time I add a song.
I am not complaining, this is a very fast simple program that does what it is supposed to do, I just thought that perhaps part of the reason you posted this was to get some feedback.

This fails for me, anyone any ideas?

I get a pop up window on execution that states, and this isnt a typo:

Run-time error '372':
Failed to load control 'UVirtualListView' from . Your version of may be outdated. Make sure you are using the vewsion of the control that was provided with your application.

Now, i've installed VB runtime 6 SP5 from Microsoft, so I hope im uptodate, but I got this error, before and after VB runtime was installed.

Im on XP+sp1(1078)

Thanks FOX for your feedback I really appriciate it.

I just rolled out a few fixes

1. music search now shows up with a taskbar icon - the taskbar icon vanishes when minimized - I will add an option tomorrow so by default Music Search acts in the standard manner (never vanishes from task bar) - if advanced users want to hide it i will allow the option

2. I added an option to enqueue songs in winamp without playing them. just highlight the songs you want and right click -> enqueue the selected songs

3. support for automatic refreshing of the music database (by default Music Search will scan daily at 12AM for changes in the library)

you can download the new version from
http://www.samsaffron.com/musicsearch.zip

Cheers

The new changes look really good. I am not sure how people feel about the taskbar functionality, but I personally prefer it the way you have it now. While it is restored, it is nice to have it in the taskbar. As far as the enqueue in winamp thing, the right click option works good, but I was thinking more along the lines of having it act the same way as it does in Windows Explorer. If I have Enqueue set as the default action in winamp and I double click in Windows Explorer it will enqueue the song, but continue playing the current song as it is. That is almost how your program responded before, except it would keep restarting the current song.
Oh, I just noticed something. I just changed winamp so that is not Enqueue by default. Now from windows explorer it replaces the current playlist with the selected song and with Music Search it enqueues, which is good, except that sometimes it plays the most recently added song, but sometimes it just restarts the song that it is currently on rather than the new song. I am not sure what the intended response is.
One final little thing, (this is not an issue, just something I noticed), the task icon shows 'NetQ ...' when you hover over the icon.

Once again, nice work.

Fox,

I just posted another fix, now double click in music search acts exactly like double click in explorer does (doing a shellexecuteex)

Also removed NetQ ... - NetQ is another beast I have been working on - basically its a networked mp3 player ... reused a lot of that source code ...

Investigating now

Thats a weird bug, that control really does not exist - its compiled into the exe ... very strange

testing on my brothers xp machine

Fixed - download from http://www.samsaffron.com/musicsearch.zip

XP does not ship with vb5 version of common controls, I used a virtual listview to display the mp3s I did not notice but i was using vb5s version of the common controls.

Tried subclassing version 6 and got nothing but wows so removed the virtual list view and replaced with a standard listview

will be rewriting this in mfc in the near future so i can have my virtual list view that i so much cherish ... besides i want multiple threads and am not that happy implementing curland hacks ...

Hmm, I am sorry to keep you busy like this, and dont feel obliged to make the changes. The program works as it is, but I have one more observation.
When I first tried your latest version, I thought there was still some problem with selecting songs, but I then did some testing with Windows Explorer, and it does the same thing, so I think it is actually a winamp bug. The problem is that if you have winamp in non-enqueue mode and double click a song, it is supposed to replace the current playlist with the new song. If, however, you double click another song too quickly, it actually enqueues that song rather than replace. I have only tried this on my system, but with both winamp 2.78 and 2.80. I am running win2k on a 800MHz machine. So this is not a problem with your program, but with winamp.
The latest thing I have noticed though, is that if winamp is not already running, and you double click a song in Music Search, it opens winamp, but not the main window. The playlist window and the EQ are shown, but the main winamp window does not show up. I can close both the playlist and EQ windows, but then I have winamp playing with no way to access it. There is no taskbar button. I can hear the music playing, but there is no other indication of winamp running. I can shut it down with task manager, but an easier method is to start winamp. The winamp main window then appears as normal, and the song that was playing continues playing. I can then close that winamp window and the music stops.
It seems like you are somehow starting winamp minimized, but in a nonstandard way, as the EQ and playlist still show up, just not the main window. As I said, this can all be avoided by starting winamp first, and then using Music Search.

Fox,

No worries

This is what im doing when a song is double clicked
With SEI
.cbSize = Len(SEI)
.fMask = SEE_MASK_INVOKEIDLIST
.hwnd = Me.hwnd
.hInstApp = App.hInstance
End With
With mp3
SEI.lpFile = .filename & vbNullString
SEI.lpDirectory = .Dir & .Subdir & vbNullString
End With

ShellExecuteEx SEI

This emulates what explorer does when a file is double clicked. The Enqueue feature is non standard - there I do start winamp minimised

Anyway what do you suggest I do about this?

I suspect your winamp settings must have changed to somehing non standard

On another note my musicsearch with 13562 songs has the memory footprint of 1.6Megs, pretty proud of that - wincue + winamp with the same setting has the footprint of 45Megs

working on an mfc version - multithreading rules

Cheers

Ahhh

I figured this one out

The reason winamp adds songs to the end of playlists when you rapidly double click on songs and clears a playlist when you double click on a song after waiting a few seconds is by design.

ShellExecuteEx only takes in one file at a time but the winamp guys wanted right clicking on group of songs to play all the songs in winamp. right clicking on a group of songs sends a stream of shellexecuteex. so winamp /add has two behaviors

a. if period of time since last winamp /add is really small then add to end of playlist and play
b. else - clear playlist and play song queued.

Sam

I see.
Sorry to make you think it was a problem in your program. Next time I will check things out a little more. I had started to believe it was a winamp thing towards the end, but I probably wasted a bunch of your time That is interesting how winamp does it. Not really the best way if you ask me, but I am not sure how they could have got around it.
I dont think it is really an issue with Music Search. The time between adding songs has to be very fast before strange things happen, and in normal browsing/playlist building, I dont think this would happen.
This program will be very useful. I like winamp, but it is hard to build playlists, especially for my computer illiterate friends. Adding songs from explorer is just too difficult with a large number of songs. And the ability to mark tracks is also very handy. This will definately get some use. Thanks.

New version of Music Search Available at:

http://www.samsaffron.com/musicsearch.zip (btw, those upgrading need just replace the musicsearch.exe with the new one)

The new version removes all arbitrary limits from search results and adds a very cool rating system!

It's free - so please try it out and let me know what you think.

btw. Is anyone still using the version I posted in July?

Cheers

This is a bump. I just started using this last night and it rocks for my purposes. Very fast and very lightweight!

Unfortunately the link to download it no longer works.

Good job!

Any chance for an updated URL?

I'd like to try this out!

Thanks,

Jim