HQPWV (HQPlayer Web Viewer)

[sledwards]

1 hour ago, llamaluv said:

New release, v0.9.7

Look forward to loading this. I have been using the Linux version of HQPWV and want to make sure during updating or loading a new version, is there any procedure I need to follow as to not overwrite existing settings?

 

Steve

[llamaluv]

Just now, sledwards said:

Look forward to loading this. I have been using the Linux version of HQPWV and want to make sure during updating or loading a new version, is there any procedure I need to follow as to not overwrite existing settings?

 

Steve

Yup, you can simply replace the old executable with the new one, and all settings should be preserved.

[antonellocaroli]

2 hours ago, llamaluv said:

I also added a test binary for Linux ARM64, but it is unverified. I'm really not sure it will actually run (for reasons), so would appreciate it if anyone interested could try it out (thanks @antonellocaroli for asking about this).

on my system it seems not to work....

node:internal/validators:119
    throw new ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE(name, 'string', value);
    ^

TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: The "path" argument must be of type string. Received undefined
    at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:363:5)
    at validateString (node:internal/validators:119:11)
    at Object.resolve (node:path:1098:7)
    at resolveMainPath (node:internal/modules/run_main:15:40)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:73:24)
    at node:internal/main/run_main_module:17:47 {
  code: 'ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE'
}

 

[llamaluv]

1 minute ago, antonellocaroli said:

on my system it seems not to work....

 

Okay thank you for trying.

 

I'm wholly dependent on a particular Node.js library called 'pkg' to create the executables for the various platforms, and it appears not to work correctly for ARM64 when built on my system, so I'm not too optimistic about finding a solution for this. However, if I discover that the fault lies with me and I'm able to fix it, I'll make an update.

[antonellocaroli]

2 minutes ago, llamaluv said:

 

Okay thank you for trying.

 

I'm wholly dependent on a particular Node.js library called 'pkg' to create the executables for the various platforms, and it appears not to work correctly for ARM64 when built on my system, so I'm not too optimistic about finding a solution for this. However, if I discover that the fault lies with me and I'm able to fix it, I'll make an update.

if you have instructions on how to compile it, I can try to compile it directly on an arm64 system....

[llamaluv]

1 minute ago, antonellocaroli said:

if you have instructions on how to compile it, I can try to compile it directly on an arm64 system....

I'll PM you thanks.

[Khordo]

22 hours ago, llamaluv said:

New release, v0.9.7

• Consistent track list item styling and functionality across various lists (thanks @sledwards)
• Album genre metadata property is now treated as a delimited list instead of a single value, and group-albums-by-genre should now work as you'd expect (thanks @sledwards)
• Added search-by-genre
• Added 'deeplinking' from album view to genre-search or artist-search
• Further search UI/UX changes

I also added a test binary for Linux ARM64, but it is unverified. I'm really not sure it will actually run (for reasons), so would appreciate it if anyone interested could try it out (thanks @antonellocaroli for asking about this).

 

Tested the win version... Everything works fine ! New features too...
congrats. !

Maybe few requests : On the library view, if i want to listen an album, i need to click on it, Album page appears, then select 'Play Now'...Could be interesting to have directly the buttons : Play now, Add to queue, and 'Favorite' in the library view... Next to the Artist, and album name : Small icon like 'play', 'add to queue' & 'Favorite'.
 

Also, a group by Artist function and sort by 'Year' for album could be very nice :)

Can't wait for the next version !

[llamaluv]

9 hours ago, Khordo said:

On the library view, if i want to listen an album, i need to click on it, Album page appears, then select 'Play Now'...Could be interesting to have directly the buttons : Play now, Add to queue, and 'Favorite' in the library view... Next to the Artist, and album name : Small icon like 'play', 'add to queue' & 'Favorite'.

Cool, I've been thinking about this as well. I'm leaning towards adding a context menu button to the album thumbnail tiles, but one which would only show up on hover, so for desktop only. Maybe I'll do this as a start, and then re-visit how this might be handled for touch devices in a way that doesn't clutter the interface too much, given the limited real estate on, say, an iPhone SE.

 

9 hours ago, Khordo said:

Also, a group by Artist function and sort by 'Year' for album could be very nice :)

Can't wait for the next version !

 

As far as grouping-by-artist goes... see below!

[llamaluv]

New release, v0.9.8

• Improved UX for titlebar and list headers (thanks @sledwards)
• Added "group by artist" option to library view (thanks @Khordo)
• Smoother animation on transitions to album view and playlist view

The titlebar now persists, rather than parallax'ing out of view on-scroll (which could too easily cause jank, among other things), but with the added twist that the 'UI header' that exists at the top of each view's list gets 'pinned' to the titlebar when the list is scrolled. IMO this turns out to be a pretty appreciable UX improvement.

[sledwards]

1 hour ago, llamaluv said:

New release, v0.9.8

llamaluv:

 

I think you may have inadvertently changed something in the favorite tracks selection. Tracks with identical name from two albums show up as favorites. You can't favorite a track from one album without the program selecting corresponding same track name from another.

[llamaluv]

1 hour ago, sledwards said:

I think you may have inadvertently changed something in the favorite tracks selection. Tracks with identical name from two albums show up as favorites. You can't favorite a track from one album without the program selecting corresponding same track name from another.

 

Okay, good (but unfortunate!) discovery.

 

HQPlayer provides a "hash" property for each track, which is what I'm using to keep track of things like favorite tracks and track play counts. A hash is supposed to provide something of a guarantee of the uniqueness of an item among many other items, more or less. But it looks like here, the track's hash property is functionally equivalent to the filename itself (as opposed to factoring in the file's actual contents), thus causing a "naming collision" between different tracks that happen to share the same filename.

 

Making a fix for this will cause previously favorites and play counts to be lost, unfortunately.

 

Thanks again for this feedback.

[Miska]

8 hours ago, llamaluv said:

HQPlayer provides a "hash" property for each track, which is what I'm using to keep track of things like favorite tracks and track play counts. A hash is supposed to provide something of a guarantee of the uniqueness of an item among many other items, more or less. But it looks like here, the track's hash property is functionally equivalent to the filename itself (as opposed to factoring in the file's actual contents), thus causing a "naming collision" between different tracks that happen to share the same filename.

 

Making a fix for this will cause previously favorites and play counts to be lost, unfortunately.

 

Path hash + filename hash is unique as long as there's not another file with same path and filename. These hashes are used as two level tree where first level index is path hash and second level index is filename hash.

 

[Khordo]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but HQPW reads the Library of HQ.Player. If i look at the library in HQP, Metadata 'Year' is not present.
I did use the extract function in HQP and the XML created does not contain other extra information : Year is missing.

So, i think the 'sort by Years' can't be possible until the HQP Library is updated by Miska.

To be not dependant of HPQ Library datas, would it be nicer for you to manage your own library like 'Mu.so' ?
Ok sure that it is a huge work, but it probably can give you more flexibility on your tool...
 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Khordo said:

Correct me if i'm wrong, but HQPW reads the Library of HQ.Player. If i look at the library in HQP, Metadata 'Year' is not present.
I did use the extract function in HQP and the XML created does not contain other extra information : Year is missing.

So, i think the 'sort by Years' can't be possible until the HQP Library is updated by Miska.

 

"date" usually includes at least a year...

 

Quote

To be not dependant of HPQ Library datas, would it be nicer for you to manage your own library like 'Mu.so' ?
Ok sure that it is a huge work, but it probably can give you more flexibility on your tool...

 

That means it would need to run on the same server where HQPlayer server is...

 

[Khordo]

Miska, if i open library, i can see : Path, Artist, Album, Composer, Performer, Genre...

So yes, when you play a file, you see the 'date' in HQP. 

But in HQPWV, you do not see the 'date' because i guess it is not in the Library...

I think it is logic because, in an album, you can have different dates for each files, so you can't regroup them in a libray which contains only one line per album...

The goal here, is to be able in HQPWV to group album by artist, and for any given artist sort album by Date...Newer to older for example.
 

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Khordo said:

Miska, if i open library, i can see : Path, Artist, Album, Composer, Performer, Genre...

So yes, when you play a file, you see the 'date' in HQP. 

But in HQPWV, you do not see the 'date' because i guess it is not in the Library...

 

It is in the library. If it is shown during playback it is also in the library.

 

Quote

I think it is logic because, in an album, you can have different dates for each files, so you can't regroup them in a libray which contains only one line per album...

 

HQPlayer library contains track dates if they differ from the album date. If all tracks contain same date, it is only stored for the album.

 

Quote

The goal here, is to be able in HQPWV to group album by artist, and for any given artist sort album by Date...Newer to older for example.

 

You can always compare HQPlayer Client views where you have albums grouped by artist (or composer, performer or genre) in the playlist editor. You have that too in the cover flow, but it is less obvious.

 

[sledwards]

13 hours ago, llamaluv said:

 

Okay, good (but unfortunate!) discovery.

 

HQPlayer provides a "hash" property for each track, which is what I'm using to keep track of things like favorite tracks and track play counts. A hash is supposed to provide something of a guarantee of the uniqueness of an item among many other items, more or less. But it looks like here, the track's hash property is functionally equivalent to the filename itself (as opposed to factoring in the file's actual contents), thus causing a "naming collision" between different tracks that happen to share the same filename.

 

Making a fix for this will cause previously favorites and play counts to be lost, unfortunately.

 

Thanks again for this feedback.

No problem losing favorites at this stage in your development for myself. Easy to recreate from playlist. Feature request for genre search: can you force/option to have genre search to open in collapsed view, just showing expandable genre list and not showing all associated albums.  Similarly, could you give the user and option to show ALL genres in collapsed view?

 

Steve

[llamaluv]

On 9/16/2021 at 5:12 AM, Khordo said:

So, i think the 'sort by Years' can't be possible until the HQP Library is updated by Miska.

As Miska mentioned, there is a "date" metadata property which HQPlayer exposes through its API. Right now the only place it's being used is in the album detail view (right under the album title).

 

I like the idea of leveraging the date info more though. What I'm doing (adding) at the moment is parsing the year from the 'date' metadata property, and so have added a "group by year" option to the library view.

 

 

Having done that, it's easy enough to "group by decade" as well, so might as well...

 

 

And I'll probably want to add year as a searchable criteria as well.

 

On 9/16/2021 at 7:52 AM, Khordo said:

The goal here, is to be able in HQPWV to group album by artist, and for any given artist sort album by Date...Newer to older for example.

 

I like this idea, and when viewing albums of an artist, I do prefer this sort order as well. I could add year as a new option under the "Sort by" dropdown. I'll think on this.

[llamaluv]

On 9/16/2021 at 9:58 AM, sledwards said:

Feature request for genre search: can you force/option to have genre search to open in collapsed view, just showing expandable genre list and not showing all associated albums.  Similarly, could you give the user and option to show ALL genres in collapsed view?

Yes thanks, I've been considering adding an option to expand all or collapse all groups, probably through adding a context menu button on the album group headers, or maybe just on the one that's displayed first. Now that there are more ways of grouping of albums and it's generally becoming more of a useful thing, I will add this in the next release as well.

[ripples]

Hi llamaluv,

would be nice if  multiple  arguments are used  to find tracks/albums

most of the time i want to look for example something like Adagio and sostenuto  

or Violin and Adagio , etc there are a lot of  scenario's there.

next to that it would be stellar if search could be done on all available  meta data(tracks and album)   and result in tracks/albums😀

but for now let me just say  things are looking good!

 

Derryck

 

 

 

 

 

[Khordo]

It's getting better and better...😄

Very nice work !

 

Because Santa Claus is preparing christmas, few ideas below :

 

- Preset Rules management for DSD settings and not only PCM (@Miska, could be a nice feature in HQP...)
- Catch Artist / Album Biography form external site (Last.fm, Spotify whatever...like we have in roon or musicbee)

- A way to refresh 'on demand' the library (Not sure it's possible at your level  llamaluv but i take my chance)
- When a group by is used, add a button to 'Deploy All', 'Collapse All' at the top of the screen

 

Ok, i ask too much, sorry...I have ton's of ideas...i need to slow down here 😅

Can't wait the next release !

 

Regards 
 

 

[llamaluv]

11 hours ago, ripples said:

would be nice if  multiple  arguments are used  to find tracks/albums

most of the time i want to look for example something like Adagio and sostenuto  

or Violin and Adagio , etc there are a lot of  scenario's there.

next to that it would be stellar if search could be done on all available  meta data(tracks and album)   and result in tracks/albums😀

but for now let me just say  things are looking good!

 

Derryck

 

Thanks Derryck. It's good to know that the kind of functionality you describe would be valuable.

 

Adding functionality in a way that requires minimal explanation to the user and just generally seems "transparent" is the main challenge. So, definitely a "UI design" challenge much more than simply one of code logic. I'll have to think on this one as well.

[llamaluv]

6 hours ago, Khordo said:

- Preset Rules management for DSD settings and not only PCM (@Miska, could be a nice feature in HQP...)

- Catch Artist / Album Biography form external site (Last.fm, Spotify whatever...like we have in roon or musicbee)

- A way to refresh 'on demand' the library (Not sure it's possible at your level  llamaluv but i take my chance)
- When a group by is used, add a button to 'Deploy All', 'Collapse All' at the top of the screen

 

Ok, i ask too much, sorry...I have ton's of ideas...i need to slow down here 😅

Can't wait the next release !

 

Regards 
 

 

Thanks Khordo.

 

Properly adding DSD bitrates to the preset rules action is definitely on my radar, but I'll take this as a helpful nudge, heh (I don't use DSD files in my personal use).

 

The idea of supplementing artist and other info through some sort of external metadata source (a la Roon) is a fun one. Simply linking out to some website could be interesting, like discogs or allmusic or whatever else is out there. For example: https://www.discogs.com/search/?q=hiromi uehara

 

On the library question, as you suspect, it's not something that's afforded through the HQPlayer API. If you update the HQPlayer library while using hqpwv, you have to manually refresh the webpage, and only then will things be back in sync. It wouldn't hurt to me to communicate that somewhere in the app explicitly, maybe in a help page or FAQ or something...

 

On expanding/collapsing groups of albums, see below.

[llamaluv]

New release, v0.9.9

• Albums in the library can now be grouped by year (or decade) (thanks @Khordo)
• Albums can now be searched by year as well
• "Album groups" can now be fully expanded or collapsed using context menu button at the top of a group (thanks @sledwards)
• Bug fix for where different tracks with same filename were incorrectly sharing the same metadata properties. This fix is a breaking change which invalidates previously saved hqpwv track metadata, unfortunately (viz, track favorites, play count, and history) (thanks @sledwards !)
• Regression bug fix for zoomed-in album image.

[sledwards]

1 hour ago, llamaluv said:

Albums can now be searched by year as well

It looks like no dates are being extracted for DSF files. All my DSDs are showing up as "No Year"