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Hey Maxim,

first a few words about my person, I'm a long time Winamp user and game music lover. I'm also moderator in the winamp.com forums.

When I started to add game music stuff with album art to my library, I noticed some glitches in in_vgm:

1. in_vgm beta versions from: http://www.smspower.org/maxim/forumstuff/in_vgm_latest/ produced a nasty Winamp preferences crash when viewing the 'File Types' page. I've reported it internal to the winamp devs and they worked around that glitch. I can talk back and provide you with more infos, if you want. I guess it's better if the issue will be fixed in in_vgm as well.

2. in_vgm beta versions crash as soon as i try to add a vgm music folder to my library. in_vgm 0.35 doesn't crash. You can reproduce this, when you simply install the public Winamp 5.59 beta and add a folder, which contains vgm or vgz files to your media library

3. in_vgm 0.35 and beta versions don't report itself correctly as audio files.
Go to Winamp Preferences > File Types > press 'Audio only' button, you'll notice, that none of the file extensions which are associated with in_vgm are selected. But if you press 'video only' button, vgm and vgz files will be selected.

I guess the issues is related to 1. But I have to talk back with the devs again to make it sure.

4. Is more a feature request, since I saw in Winamp development forum, that you tried to support as many of the 5.x specific APIs as possible (ReplayGain etc), I hope to see Winamp 5.5 based language file support in the plugin too.

5. File info editor does not open with latest in_vgm beta and latest Winamp. Pressing 'Alt+3' or using the right click menu in playlist has no effect. It's also related to in_vgm beta only,

I'm sorry if I posted this at the wrong place, but I wasn't too sure, if you're still reading the Winamp Dev forum and I couldn't find the 'in_vgm2 suggestions' thread here anymore.

And I want to thank you for all the work, you've done with the plugin so far.

Best regards,
Chris

The current (!) beta line is very feature-lacking. Get in_vgm_1_last_beta.zip for the most mature support.

I don't see much chance of me doing any updates on it in the foreseeable future. I just don't have the time needed.

Maxim wrote

I don't see much chance of me doing any updates on it in the foreseeable future. I just don't have the time needed.

if it's any help then i can provide some time to resolve the compatibility issues with the current beta version of the plug-in (if only to stop koopa pestering :o) ).

-daz

Nah, it's just an experimental line that has died out. I ought to take it offline. Most of the complaints are about the "new line" beta (January 2009). The fact that I haven't worked on it since then ought to be a hint about the situation...

The issue with VGMs not reporting themselves as audio: this is on purpose, because I like to not have my VGMs and regular MP3s mixed up, so it reports itself as a configurable type (262144 by default). The config lets you change it back to 0. If Winamp interprets 262144 as 1 in some dialog then that's unfortunate.

I just wish the new in_vgm could be compatible with Winamp 2, since I refuse to install Winamp 5...
in_vgm 0.34 still works fine but 0.35 doesn't; not that it matters because as of now I am using ValleyBell's vgmplay.exe to play vgm files, but still... I'd love to get back to Winamp if the new in_vgm will support all the new chips AND works in Winamp 2.

Tom - I'm not sure why would want to bother sticking to a 10+ years old software. Lets not turn this into a trolly debate - and I probably don't need to hear the details - but developers time is precious and requesting such support can only hurt their time and attention that would be better spend toward improvements (or in this case fixing bugs).

I apologise.

I intend it to work with WA2, even though it's fairly easy to cut the crap from WA5 to turn it into WA2 with modern features and less vulnerabilities. In what way does it not work?

Maxim wrote

In what way does it not work?

It crashes with no error message when I hit play. All the dialogs (settings, vgm info) work fine though.

Maxim wrote

Nah, it's just an experimental line that has died out. I ought to take it offline. Most of the complaints are about the "new line" beta (January 2009). The fact that I haven't worked on it since then ought to be a hint about the situation...

rightio, was an offer that's still open if needed though i'm a bit confused as to what is the correct version to use as i'm seeing 0.35, 0.36beta (last one i was using before moving from XP to Win7) and the other v2 ones. was the source for 0.36 ever released (i know there's the 0.35 about) but if you don't have the time and there is some source then i can add in a few things (as i'd personally prefer using the 5.5+ unified file editor and it can be done without breaking 2.x support (as that seems to have reared it's head in here).

Maxim wrote

The issue with VGMs not reporting themselves as audio: this is on purpose, because I like to not have my VGMs and regular MP3s mixed up, so it reports itself as a configurable type (262144 by default). The config lets you change it back to 0. If Winamp interprets 262144 as 1 in some dialog then that's unfortunate.

The %type% was only designed for dealing with a 0 or a 1 so returning 262144 caused issues on the file types page but it's been internally fixed in the Winamp client for a while so that's a non-issue now :o)

-daz

Tom: if I have the source code (!) and if I get the time (!!), I might have a try at fixing it.

DrO: It's odd, I played with the 262144 a lot before going "live" with it and had no serious issues.

0.35 is "released" and 0.36 was the "last beta" line (with some experimental stuff like the MAME YM2612 core). V2 was the "new line" which was aiming to please all the major complaints, and also let me get rid of the awful old code (it was my first C project), but it fell down mainly when trying to get a liberally-licensed sample rate conversion library.

I was looking into the unified editor, it's just that I don't want it to be writeable, and also there's a bit of mismatch between the tag fields. The famously absent Winamp API docs weren't good enough when I last looked at it.

I'll see if I can dig up some source in the next few days.

Maxim wrote

I was looking into the unified editor, it's just that I don't want it to be writeable, and also there's a bit of mismatch between the tag fields. The famously absent Winamp API docs weren't good enough when I last looked at it.

the input_plugin_api/Unified_File_Info_Editor_Integration.txt on my site should be enough to work from for implementing it (was pulled from the Winamp source code so should cover most of what is needed). i'd have to have a rummage around to remember what is needed to set the basic info aspect to be read-only (am using it for rsn archives so it is possible). plus i think a proportion of the information (mainly in the vgm file groupbox) could be moved into a %formatinformation% string (as shown in the 'format info' box).

as for the mapping of things, most game formats don't map cleanly though it's usually possible to map the tags to the winamp metadata queries in a reasonably sensible manner so it will work (have done that with ymamp, the SNESamp wrapper and 64th Note - it just takes a bit of usage adjusting when it has been changed over that's all :o) ).

-daz

Maxim wrote

The issue with VGMs not reporting themselves as audio: this is on purpose, because I like to not have my VGMs and regular MP3s mixed up,

Just a small tip, the query builder for local media views is very powerful, there are many ways to specify, which files should be shown in a specific view and which not.

For your mp3 view, a simple 'File Name > Ends with > mp3' would do it for example. Or for a vgm view with 'File Name > Begins with > paths\to\your\vgm\files'
Here is an example for a vgm only view: http://meggamusic.co.uk/shup/1288721708/mastersystem.png

But i found the option to set it to 0 (audio) in 0.36 beta. :)

DrO has updated YMAMP and made a SNESAmp Wrapper, which vastly improves WA 5.5x compatibility, including the unified tag editor (which remaps the internal game specific tags to general tags) and localization support.
And having an album art tag for game music in the tag editor is just awesome for game music freaks, like me.

Other game music plugin devs just ignored me, when I mailed them so I'm happy, that you've replied to that thread, thanks.

-Chris

Tom,

Much like yourself, I stuck with Winamp 2 because 5 was pretty bad. But recently I upgraded and am using version 5.56 which (IMO) is totally stable, works with all the video game music plugins I can throw at it, and looks, feels, and runs just like the classic Winamp. No extra bloat.

There were valid reasons for not upgrading, but now I think there's no need to. You might want to try it again (or at least, specifically version 5.56 :)

Koopa wrote

Just a small tip, the query builder for local media views is very powerful, there are many ways to specify, which files should be shown in a specific view and which not.

I know, I used that feature but I preferred to have it by default not requiring people to set up complicated Media Library views to achieve this filtering.

Koopa wrote

DrO has updated YMAMP and made a SNESAmp Wrapper, which vastly improves WA 5.5x compatibility, including the unified tag editor (which remaps the internal game specific tags to general tags) and localization support.

in_vgm has always remapped the internal tags to the Winamp ones. Your own screenshot shows that. (This causes some annoyance to people who don't like "artist - track" titles for VGMs.)

However, the unified tag viewer/editor came about relatively late in the WA5 line so it doesn't support that. The handling of non-standard data is sub-optimal (e.g. multilingual tags) so the transition would be "lossy".

Koopa wrote

And having an album art tag for game music in the tag editor is just awesome for game music freaks, like me.

VGM packs have been "shipped" with album art for a long time but I object to storing it redundantly in every file, and Winamp's album art discovery algorithms aren't very good in my experience. I was hoping the input plugin API could provide hints, or even just a raw bitmap, but I don't think that happened yet.

Maxim wrote

Koopa wrote

And having an album art tag for game music in the tag editor is just awesome for game music freaks, like me.

VGM packs have been "shipped" with album art for a long time but I object to storing it redundantly in every file, and Winamp's album art discovery algorithms aren't very good in my experience. I was hoping the input plugin API could provide hints, or even just a raw bitmap, but I don't think that happened yet.

input plug-ins are able to provide Winamp with the album art instead of allowing Winamp to guess (as happens when the query fails). it's reasonably flexible so anything is possible i.e. returning album art from an archive or a separate associated file without letting Winamp guess the file.

it involves implementing a wasabi album art service to return an ARGB value and is reasonably easy to do. best example of this is available source code is in the wavpack input plug-in (in the wasabi.* files).

with the comments about the unified file editor, i do agree that there are compromises with using it and with the handling of extended values though it should be feasible to work out something which would work well without causing too many issues for the different needs people have.

if the current alt+3 dialog is a read-only thing anyway then that lessens most of the complexity. the only issue i can currently see is how to get it to show the japenese version of the tags (if present) but that could possibly be indicated as being present in the %formatinformation% string and a prefs option to show it (not ideal but then adding a second page just for that option seems a bit weird) - i know there's a use japenese tags when available option but sure how well that goes with this.

actually the more thought put into this, the more a pain to update the plug-in to use things it seems to become so i'll now shut-up.

-daz

Author	Message
Koopa Joined: 29 Oct 2010 Posts: 2	in_vgm 0.35 and beta glitches Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 12:21 am
Koopa Joined: 29 Oct 2010 Posts: 2	Hey Maxim, first a few words about my person, I'm a long time Winamp user and game music lover. I'm also moderator in the winamp.com forums. When I started to add game music stuff with album art to my library, I noticed some glitches in in_vgm: 1. in_vgm beta versions from: http://www.smspower.org/maxim/forumstuff/in_vgm_latest/ produced a nasty Winamp preferences crash when viewing the 'File Types' page. I've reported it internal to the winamp devs and they worked around that glitch. I can talk back and provide you with more infos, if you want. I guess it's better if the issue will be fixed in in_vgm as well. 2. in_vgm beta versions crash as soon as i try to add a vgm music folder to my library. in_vgm 0.35 doesn't crash. You can reproduce this, when you simply install the public Winamp 5.59 beta and add a folder, which contains vgm or vgz files to your media library 3. in_vgm 0.35 and beta versions don't report itself correctly as audio files. Go to Winamp Preferences > File Types > press 'Audio only' button, you'll notice, that none of the file extensions which are associated with in_vgm are selected. But if you press 'video only' button, vgm and vgz files will be selected. I guess the issues is related to 1. But I have to talk back with the devs again to make it sure. 4. Is more a feature request, since I saw in Winamp development forum, that you tried to support as many of the 5.x specific APIs as possible (ReplayGain etc), I hope to see Winamp 5.5 based language file support in the plugin too. 5. File info editor does not open with latest in_vgm beta and latest Winamp. Pressing 'Alt+3' or using the right click menu in playlist has no effect. It's also related to in_vgm beta only, I'm sorry if I posted this at the wrong place, but I wasn't too sure, if you're still reading the Winamp Dev forum and I couldn't find the 'in_vgm2 suggestions' thread here anymore. And I want to thank you for all the work, you've done with the plugin so far. Best regards, Chris

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14770 Location: London	Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 7:32 am
	The current (!) beta line is very feature-lacking. Get in_vgm_1_last_beta.zip for the most mature support. I don't see much chance of me doing any updates on it in the foreseeable future. I just don't have the time needed.

DrO Guest	Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:03 pm
DrO Guest	Maxim wrote I don't see much chance of me doing any updates on it in the foreseeable future. I just don't have the time needed. if it's any help then i can provide some time to resolve the compatibility issues with the current beta version of the plug-in (if only to stop koopa pestering :o) ). -daz

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14770 Location: London	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 8:39 am
	Nah, it's just an experimental line that has died out. I ought to take it offline. Most of the complaints are about the "new line" beta (January 2009). The fact that I haven't worked on it since then ought to be a hint about the situation... The issue with VGMs not reporting themselves as audio: this is on purpose, because I like to not have my VGMs and regular MP3s mixed up, so it reports itself as a configurable type (262144 by default). The config lets you change it back to 0. If Winamp interprets 262144 as 1 in some dialog then that's unfortunate.

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1357 Location: italy	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 2:04 pm
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1357 Location: italy	I just wish the new in_vgm could be compatible with Winamp 2, since I refuse to install Winamp 5... in_vgm 0.34 still works fine but 0.35 doesn't; not that it matters because as of now I am using ValleyBell's vgmplay.exe to play vgm files, but still... I'd love to get back to Winamp if the new in_vgm will support all the new chips AND works in Winamp 2.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8675 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 2:26 pm
	Tom - I'm not sure why would want to bother sticking to a 10+ years old software. Lets not turn this into a trolly debate - and I probably don't need to hear the details - but developers time is precious and requesting such support can only hurt their time and attention that would be better spend toward improvements (or in this case fixing bugs).

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1357 Location: italy	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 2:37 pm
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1357 Location: italy	I apologise.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14770 Location: London	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 2:48 pm
	I intend it to work with WA2, even though it's fairly easy to cut the crap from WA5 to turn it into WA2 with modern features and less vulnerabilities. In what way does it not work?

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1357 Location: italy	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 3:05 pm
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1357 Location: italy	Maxim wrote In what way does it not work? It crashes with no error message when I hit play. All the dialogs (settings, vgm info) work fine though.

DrO Guest	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 3:32 pm
DrO Guest	Maxim wrote Nah, it's just an experimental line that has died out. I ought to take it offline. Most of the complaints are about the "new line" beta (January 2009). The fact that I haven't worked on it since then ought to be a hint about the situation... rightio, was an offer that's still open if needed though i'm a bit confused as to what is the correct version to use as i'm seeing 0.35, 0.36beta (last one i was using before moving from XP to Win7) and the other v2 ones. was the source for 0.36 ever released (i know there's the 0.35 about) but if you don't have the time and there is some source then i can add in a few things (as i'd personally prefer using the 5.5+ unified file editor and it can be done without breaking 2.x support (as that seems to have reared it's head in here). Maxim wrote The issue with VGMs not reporting themselves as audio: this is on purpose, because I like to not have my VGMs and regular MP3s mixed up, so it reports itself as a configurable type (262144 by default). The config lets you change it back to 0. If Winamp interprets 262144 as 1 in some dialog then that's unfortunate. The %type% was only designed for dealing with a 0 or a 1 so returning 262144 caused issues on the file types page but it's been internally fixed in the Winamp client for a while so that's a non-issue now :o) -daz

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14770 Location: London	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 3:33 pm
	Tom: if I have the source code (!) and if I get the time (!!), I might have a try at fixing it. DrO: It's odd, I played with the 262144 a lot before going "live" with it and had no serious issues. 0.35 is "released" and 0.36 was the "last beta" line (with some experimental stuff like the MAME YM2612 core). V2 was the "new line" which was aiming to please all the major complaints, and also let me get rid of the awful old code (it was my first C project), but it fell down mainly when trying to get a liberally-licensed sample rate conversion library. I was looking into the unified editor, it's just that I don't want it to be writeable, and also there's a bit of mismatch between the tag fields. The famously absent Winamp API docs weren't good enough when I last looked at it. I'll see if I can dig up some source in the next few days.

DrO Guest	Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 5:25 pm
DrO Guest	Maxim wrote I was looking into the unified editor, it's just that I don't want it to be writeable, and also there's a bit of mismatch between the tag fields. The famously absent Winamp API docs weren't good enough when I last looked at it. the input_plugin_api/Unified_File_Info_Editor_Integration.txt on my site should be enough to work from for implementing it (was pulled from the Winamp source code so should cover most of what is needed). i'd have to have a rummage around to remember what is needed to set the basic info aspect to be read-only (am using it for rsn archives so it is possible). plus i think a proportion of the information (mainly in the vgm file groupbox) could be moved into a %formatinformation% string (as shown in the 'format info' box). as for the mapping of things, most game formats don't map cleanly though it's usually possible to map the tags to the winamp metadata queries in a reasonably sensible manner so it will work (have done that with ymamp, the SNESamp wrapper and 64th Note - it just takes a bit of usage adjusting when it has been changed over that's all :o) ). -daz

Koopa Joined: 29 Oct 2010 Posts: 2	Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 6:11 pm
Koopa Joined: 29 Oct 2010 Posts: 2	Maxim wrote The issue with VGMs not reporting themselves as audio: this is on purpose, because I like to not have my VGMs and regular MP3s mixed up, Just a small tip, the query builder for local media views is very powerful, there are many ways to specify, which files should be shown in a specific view and which not. For your mp3 view, a simple 'File Name > Ends with > mp3' would do it for example. Or for a vgm view with 'File Name > Begins with > paths\to\your\vgm\files' Here is an example for a vgm only view: http://meggamusic.co.uk/shup/1288721708/mastersystem.png But i found the option to set it to 0 (audio) in 0.36 beta. :) DrO has updated YMAMP and made a SNESAmp Wrapper, which vastly improves WA 5.5x compatibility, including the unified tag editor (which remaps the internal game specific tags to general tags) and localization support. And having an album art tag for game music in the tag editor is just awesome for game music freaks, like me. Other game music plugin devs just ignored me, when I mailed them so I'm happy, that you've replied to that thread, thanks. -Chris

Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1198	Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 5:40 am
Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1198	Tom, Much like yourself, I stuck with Winamp 2 because 5 was pretty bad. But recently I upgraded and am using version 5.56 which (IMO) is totally stable, works with all the video game music plugins I can throw at it, and looks, feels, and runs just like the classic Winamp. No extra bloat. There were valid reasons for not upgrading, but now I think there's no need to. You might want to try it again (or at least, specifically version 5.56 :)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14770 Location: London	Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 9:25 am
	Koopa wrote Just a small tip, the query builder for local media views is very powerful, there are many ways to specify, which files should be shown in a specific view and which not. I know, I used that feature but I preferred to have it by default not requiring people to set up complicated Media Library views to achieve this filtering. Koopa wrote DrO has updated YMAMP and made a SNESAmp Wrapper, which vastly improves WA 5.5x compatibility, including the unified tag editor (which remaps the internal game specific tags to general tags) and localization support. in_vgm has always remapped the internal tags to the Winamp ones. Your own screenshot shows that. (This causes some annoyance to people who don't like "artist - track" titles for VGMs.) However, the unified tag viewer/editor came about relatively late in the WA5 line so it doesn't support that. The handling of non-standard data is sub-optimal (e.g. multilingual tags) so the transition would be "lossy". Koopa wrote And having an album art tag for game music in the tag editor is just awesome for game music freaks, like me. VGM packs have been "shipped" with album art for a long time but I object to storing it redundantly in every file, and Winamp's album art discovery algorithms aren't very good in my experience. I was hoping the input plugin API could provide hints, or even just a raw bitmap, but I don't think that happened yet.

DrO Guest	Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:10 am
DrO Guest	Maxim wrote Koopa wrote And having an album art tag for game music in the tag editor is just awesome for game music freaks, like me. VGM packs have been "shipped" with album art for a long time but I object to storing it redundantly in every file, and Winamp's album art discovery algorithms aren't very good in my experience. I was hoping the input plugin API could provide hints, or even just a raw bitmap, but I don't think that happened yet. input plug-ins are able to provide Winamp with the album art instead of allowing Winamp to guess (as happens when the query fails). it's reasonably flexible so anything is possible i.e. returning album art from an archive or a separate associated file without letting Winamp guess the file. it involves implementing a wasabi album art service to return an ARGB value and is reasonably easy to do. best example of this is available source code is in the wavpack input plug-in (in the wasabi.* files). with the comments about the unified file editor, i do agree that there are compromises with using it and with the handling of extended values though it should be feasible to work out something which would work well without causing too many issues for the different needs people have. if the current alt+3 dialog is a read-only thing anyway then that lessens most of the complexity. the only issue i can currently see is how to get it to show the japenese version of the tags (if present) but that could possibly be indicated as being present in the %formatinformation% string and a prefs option to show it (not ideal but then adding a second page just for that option seems a bit weird) - i know there's a use japenese tags when available option but sure how well that goes with this. actually the more thought put into this, the more a pain to update the plug-in to use things it seems to become so i'll now shut-up. -daz

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