/*! \mainpage Muggle: Media Juggler for VDR This is a "plugin" for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR). Written by: Andi Kellner, Lars von Wedel , Ralf Klueber , Wolfgang Rohdewald Project's homepage: http://www.htpc-tech.de/htpc/muggle.htm Latest version available at: http://www.htpc-tech.de/htpc/muggle-dev.htm See the file COPYING for license information. \section foreword PLEASE! This is a difficult plugin. It's nice but difficult. With difficult I mean, that due to the underlying database, many more sources of error can occur as opposed to other plugins. Take some time to carefully read these instructions. Please provide feedback to the authors whenever you think, these instructions are not appropriate, wrong, or useless in any other sense. \section desc DESCRIPTION The muggle plugin provides a database link for VDR so that selection of media becomes more flexible. Prerequisites are describedin Section 2, Notes on Compilation are in Section 3. Before using the plugin, you need to import your media into the database (cf. Section 4). The configuration of VDR and startup parameters are descibed in Section 5. \section prereq PREREQUISITES The plugin is written for VDR 1.2.6. In addition, the following pieces of software are required: - mySQL server (tested with 4.0.18) (Debian packages mysql-server, mysql-client) - mySQL client libraries (Debian package libmysqlclient-dev or http://www.mysql.org) - libmad (for mp3 decoding) (Debian package libmad0-dev or http://www.underbit.com/products/mad/) - libtag (for ID3 tag reading/writing) (Debian package libtag1-dev or http://developer.kde.org/~wheeler/taglib.html) - optionally libvorbis and libvorbisfile (Debian packages or http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/) The developer versions are needed because their headers are required for compilation. The server need not be on the same machine as the VDR. Also, music tracks can reside somewhere else, if they are available through a remote filesystem (NFS, Samba). However, in this case you should know what you are doing in terms of networking and security issues. \section install INSTALLING Unpack the sources in PLUGINS/src below your VDR directory (i.e. where all your other plugins are. For example (paths and version numbers may vary) \verbatim cd /usr/local/src/VDR/PLUGINS/src tar xvjf muggle-0.1.7.tar.bz2 \endverbatim Establish a symlink as you would for other plugins: \verbatim ln -s muggle-0.1.7 muggle \endverbatim Within the VDR main directory (e.g. /usr/local/src/VDR) issue \verbatim make plugins \endverbatim This should build all relevant stuff. If you have difficulties, check that required libraries are in the library directories stated in the muggle Makefile. \section import IMPORT The import is done in two steps: First, a database is created and initialized with proper data structures (so-called schema). Then, these data structures are filled from the ID3 tags of your music tracks. \subsection dbsetup Setup Database This step can be done on the database server or on some other client machine. Within the directory scripts there are a few helpful files to support setting up the database. Change into that directory:# \verbatim cd scripts \endverbatim The first step is to essentially create the database: \verbatim mysql -u root -p < createdb.mysql \endverbatim You will need to enter your root password that you choose during mySQL installation. Next, we generate the database tables (schema): \verbatim mysql -u root -p < createtables.mysql \endverbatim Further, initial data about known languages, genres, sources and musictypes is fed into the database: Execute these commands on a single line, the \ for the linebreak ist just for presentation purposes here. \verbatim echo " use GiantDisc; load data local infile 'genres.txt' into table genre;" | \ mysql -u root -p --local-infile=1 echo "use GiantDisc; load data local infile 'languages.txt' into table language;" | \ mysql -u root --local-infile=1 echo "use GiantDisc; load data local infile 'musictypes.txt' into table language;" | \ mysql -u root --local-infile=1 echo "use GiantDisc; load data local infile 'sources.txt' into table language;" | \ mysql -u root --local-infile=1 \endverbatim You can find the sequence of commands in the file scripts/make-empty-db. Use it at your own luck after making necessary modification (program paths, database names, servers, users, etc.). Please note, that the scripts and commands above are quite basic in terms of security (e.g. no password set for the vdr user, no proper selection of privileges). You may want to spend some time reading the mySQL documentation in order to set up a proper configuration. Especially when VDR and mySQL will run on different machines you'll have to invest some time into mySQL networking and access rights. If you want your database name to be different than 'GiantDisc' you will need to adapt the name in the files createdb.mysql and createtables.mysql and in the commands above. Now your database is ready for import. \subsection importfile Import Music The next step is to feed all music information into the database. There is a small tool called 'mugglei' in the muggle main directory. It connects to the database, evaluates ID3 tags from a file, and writes the tags into the database. It runs on just one file, so you need some more effort using the Unix command 'find' to take all files into consideration. For this step, it is helpful, that all music files are somehow gathered under a toplevel directory. It does not matter whether there are further subdirectories which organize files into genres, artists, album or whatever. If this is not the case, you may want to take some time to do this. Read on before you start You probably do not want to import all files in one go: albums on which tracks of various artists are found (samplers) require different treatment than files of just one artist. What I did: all samplers are collected below a special subdirectory "Assorted". Import is then run separately for those tracks. There has been discussion about this and ideas for better solutions are welcome. For now, let's assume your music tracks are located in /home/music and samplers are in /home/music/Assorted. First, import the files in Assorted. This requires the flag -a to mugglei. Further flags -h, -n, -u, and -p specify database host, name, user and password, respectively. The filename to import is given using the -f directive. Using 'find' you can import all files for assorted albums with a command like: \verbatim find Assorted -name '*' -type f -exec mugglei -a -f {} \; \endverbatim For reasons of simplicity, the arguments -h, -n, -u and -p are not shown. You will need them if the default values do not apply or modify the source code accordingly (beginning of function main). Also, make sure that either mugglei is on your path or specify an absolute or relative path in the above command line. For "regular" albums, the following command may be helpful: \verbatim find * -path 'Assorted' -prune -o -type f -exec mugglei -f {} \; \endverbatim It is important that you perform all these steps from the same location so the filenames are relative to exactly the same directory (e.g. /home/music in the example case). Speed should not be an issue: on my machine, it takes about 10 secs to run the import of 60 assorted albums with more than 600 tracks. Further 1200 tracks or so require 20 more secs. This depends on machine configuration, of course. \section config MUGGLE CONFIGURATION Muggle uses a small set of command line parameters in order to control the interaction with the mySQL server. Let's look at an example: \verbatim -P'muggle -h localhost -u vdr -n GiantDisc -t/home/music' \endverbatim The -h parameter specifies the database host, -u specifies the user, -n is the database name. The scripts mentioned above do not make use of passwords, but restrict database acccess on a server basis. The -t argument specifies the top level directory of the music files. On a local installation, this is the directory in which you executed the import steps (Chapter 4.2). \section quickuse QUICK INTRO Quick version: select Muggle on the OSD, browse titles (using up/down and Ok), add them using the red button. Music will start instantly while you can continue to browse and add tracks. During playback, Up/Down jumps forth and back in the current playlist. Yellow toggles play/pause mode and Ok toggles a display of the replay process. Using Green, the display can be switched between playlist and single display mode, red toggles info and progress view. For VDR 1.3.6- the progress display is "quite simple", unfortunately. \section use DETAILED USER'S GUIDE The core concept of the Muggle user interface is called a *selection*. That is, as the name suggests, a selection of music tracks. Note, that a selection can be as small as a single track (a very simple selection, indeed) or as large as the whole music library. Selections are used to structure all tracks (the music library) into sets (e.g. a selection of all tracks by an author) and subsets (e.g. the tracks of an author on a certain album). Such selections are built by means of keys (e.g. author or album) defined in the database and are displayed in the *music browser*. The current selection in the *music browser* contains all tracks defined by the line the cursor is on. So if you place the cursor on the line "Pop", all tracks with Genre Pop are selected. If you then enter Pop and go to the line "Beatles", you narrow your selection to pop songs from the beatles. A collection is a special selection. Collections can be defined by the user, and he can add or remove any selection to / from a collection. A collection has only ony order: a number which is incremented for every added track. Otherwise, since a collection is also a selection, everything that is valid for selections also holds for collections. Collections can be defined by the user in the sense of a playlist. This is done by adding/removing selections to/from the *default collection*. Changing the contents of a collection changes them directly in the data base. Saving or loading collections is not needed. A very important term while working with Muggle is the *default collection*. This is a special collection which is the target of commands working on collections. Whenever you add selections to somewhere, they will be added to the default collection. The same happens when you remove selections. Another important collection is the 'play' collection. This is a temporary collection. Whatever is added to it will be played in that order. If you add something while muggle is not playing anything, this collection will first be emptied. However 'temporary' does not mean that its content is not saved to the data base. \subsection general General remarks There are two main views in Muggle, the *Music browser* view and the *Collection browser* view. You can toggle between them using the yellow key. Each of the two views has associated commands. To show a summary of the commands available for the current view press the blue key. Note, that the red, green and yellow keys do not have a fixed meaning. Rather, while the commands for a certain view are displayed, you can press red/green/yellow to make the respective key execute the command currently selected (highlighted) by the cursor. The commands you choose for red/green/yellow will be saved for the next time you start muggle. You can define different commands in both view *Music browser* and *Collection browser*. \subsection browse Music browser By default, Muggle starts in the *Music browser* display at the place where you left it last time. This browser displays the music library according to a search order, e.g. according to artists / albums / tracks or genre / year / track. These search orders are currently fixed in the code, but the objective is to make them editable by the user on the OSD. Browsing these search orders is done using Up/Down/Left/Right keys. To display the contents of a currently selected selection, press Ok. To return to the parent selection press Back. A set of commands can be displayed with the Blue key on the remote control. A new menu will open and show the commands explained below. Remember that pressing Red, Green or Yellow will make these keys execute the command currently highlighted by the cursor from now on. Those commands are currently available in the *music browser*: - Instant Play: instantly play the current selection. This does not enter any collection. - Add to 'play': add the current selection to the default collection. After the first start of muggle, the default collection is 'play' - Remove from 'play': remove the current selection from the default collection. If there are more than one instances of a specific track in the collection, they are all removed. - Collections: switch to the collection view - Select search order: select another search order - Export tracklist: generate a file X.m3u containing all tracks from the current selection - External commands: whatever you define By default, the red key adds the currently selected collection to the default collection. The green key instantly plays the currently selected collection. The yellow key toggles between the *Music browser* and the *Collection browser*. Thus, if you want to play an album, browse to it and press green. Remember that you can redefine commands executed by red, green and yellow by pressing them while displaying the command list. \subsection collections Collection browser The *Collection browser* displays a list of available collections. Browse the list with Up/Down and display the collection contents with Ok. Returning to the collection list is done by pressing Back. One of the collections (the one called "play" when you start up muggle for the first time) is marked with a "->" in front of the name, meaning that it is the default collection. Whenever you add or remove selections, this default collection is the current target, meaning that selections will be added/removed to/from this collection. At the bottom of the list, the entry "Create collection" is displayed. Entering it with the right key will make the editor appear on the second half of the line and using the keys Up/Down/Left/Right you can enter the name of the new collection. Pressing Ok will terminate the editing process and add the new collection to the list. Just like with the *music browser*, a set of commands can be displayed with the Blue key on the remote control. Those commands are currently available in the list of collections. Depending on the current selection, not all of them are available: - Instant play: See *music browser* - Add to 'play': See *music browser* - Remove from 'play': See *music browser*. Not available when the cursor is on the default collection. - Remove all entries from 'play': Only available when the cursor is on the default collection. - Search: switch to the *music browser* - Set default collection to 'X': as it says. - Delete collection: Not available for the default collection and for the 'play' collection. - Export track list: See *music browser* - External commands: whatever you define Note that you cannot only add to/remove from collections in the *music browser*. Rather, also collections can be added/removed. The reason is that - as explained above - a collection is also a selection. So everything that can be done with selections can also be done with collections. An example: if you want to give a party, you could create a new collection "Party". Now, steer your cursor to the collection entitled "Lounge music" and select add. Then go to "Pop 80s" and add again. Finally, go to "Dance classics" and add. Now you have created a collection "Party" from three already existing collections. To continue this example, let us assume that one of your guests has a personal dislike against "Modern Talking". Switch to the browser view, go to the artist selection of "Modern Talking" and select "Remove". Now all tracks written by Modern Talking will be removed from your "Party" collection. Please note that "Remove" means removing from the default collection. "Delete" will delete a collection. It is possible that a collection holds the same track several times if you add it several times. However when you remove that track, all of its occurrences will be removed. The remote buttons Play, Pause, Stop are also supported while muggle displays its OSD. If Stop is pressed, muggle first stops playing what was started by Instant Play. Muggle will then continue playing the 'play' collection. A second Stop will stop playing the 'play' collection. */