04-06-2003, 05:25 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,060
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New Ideas Wanted For MP3 Player
http://www.pocketmind.com/pocketmusic.htm
If you use your Pocket PC for listening to MP3 music, you might be able to help PocketMind enhance their PocketMusic player.
"PocketMusic is a freeware MP3 player for Pocket PC, complete with a 10-band equalizer. It plays MP3 files with all known bitrates along with possibility to recognize some not fully ISO compatible MP3 files, so you can enjoy your favorite music no matter how it's encoded. You don't need to copy MP3 files to "My documents" folder anymore - PocketMusic plays them from any folder on your Pocket PC device."
You can read a Pocket PC Thoughts review of PocketMusic here.
PocketMind is looking for people willing to make suggestions for their add-on Feature Packs, which add even greater functionality to the player. Right now, the Feature Pack includes things like skins, various equalizer presets, playlist organization and button mapping.
So, go ahead and download the free PocketMusic application, play with it for a while, and post your ideas, questions and suggestions to this thread. The experts at PocketMind will then select the people giving the most and best suggestions and award 20 free PocketMusic bundles, consisting of the player, Feature Pack (valued at $19.95) and free future updates.
Cut loose, be creative, dare to think "outside the box!" I want to see some TERRIFIC ideas.
[BTW, the decisions of the judges are final, no whining, blah, blah blah...]
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04-06-2003, 05:28 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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I have one obvious one: Ogg support! And preferably have the mixer support Ogg. I currently have a player with both (iPlay), but I know there are other people who are interested in such functionality and who don't need the other features iPlay has.
--janak
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04-06-2003, 06:28 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 31
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First of all, GREAT PRODUCT. Now for my suggestions:
1) Add an option to crossfade the audio between tracks.
2) Add a simple VU meter to the minimized (one line version of the player). By the way, I LOVE the minimized version that lets me see all the crucial info while playing MP3's while also letting me see what is behind it, like all the plugins on my Today screen. I also love that it lets me use the buttons to control it even when it is not in the foreground.
3) For "connected" or WiFi PDAs, support streaming audio such as the streams on shoutcast.com.
4) Give the shuffle feature a bit of "memory" so that it doesn't repeat songs that it played recently. Also, make the "previous" button actually go to the track previously played (even when shuffling).
5) Support signal processing effects like "hall", "stadium", "surround", etc. If you really want to go crazy you could do additional processing to change the characteristic of the music itself, for example make a dance version of a song by adding extra beats and effects. This would take some very clever software but the end result could be amazing. Ok, maybe I'm going too far here.
6) Additional visualization options for different graphical patterns that follow the music.
7) OK, trying to think out of the box here...something I think would be really cool would be an automatic "remixer" that mixed all the songs in the playlist, fitting them together based on tempo/beat and resulting in one continuous "megamix" that transitioned between different portions of all the songs. I've heard DJ's create mixes like this before but I've never heard of anyone writing software to automate it.
8) A replacement for the top bar, similar to WisBar or Icbar, but with player controls. Squeeze whatever you can in there, like the basic player controls, track name, and track time. Note: The source code for WisBar can be obtained free, but I don't think it can be used in a "for profit" product so that might not be helpful to you.
9) How about a "variable" playlist, so I can just point it to my storage card or to a particular folder and it will always play everything there, even when I change the files over time. No big deal, but this would save me from needing to create a new playlist every time I change the MP3 files on my storage card.
10) Do the skins also support the small one-line "minimized" version? If not, I think they should.
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04-06-2003, 09:39 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 12
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One thing that no MP3 player has at the moment is an optimised layout for in-car use. I use my ppc mounted on the dash, and with a 512Mb memcard you can fit a lot of music on there! The only problem is trying to find a particular track while on the move - rather distracting and potentially dangerous as you can imagine!
An in-car layout would have large finger-friendly buttons, be full screen to maximise screen real-estate, and have a variety of info layouts. The most essential would be a large, easy-to-read playlist, then you could have one with more detailed track information - you'd have to be able to switch between layouts easily of course!
The killer addition to this would be if you could record voice tags to launch particular songs, so just press a button and say the name of the song/playlist you want to hear! You could also have tags for simple controls e.g. forward, back, volume up/down, etc. Now that would be really cool 
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04-06-2003, 09:59 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 11
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1) Has to be OGG support - but also in a way that you can use with EQ (most ogg players don't support EQ)
2) Gapless transition between tracks - vital when playing those continous mix albums. Crossfader would also be vital.
3) Sort options for the playlist (orders by album/track number and gendre/album, gendre/artist). Of course this would also require OGG tag support  Also have an enque option for the playlist so that you can browse your PPC and add additonal music to the current playlist.
4) Button lock mode: something i currently miss with any player, the ability to lock all buttons/screen so that i don't accidentally knock anything and interupt playback when the PPC is in my coat pocket. To disable button lock you could have a custom button press combination, or touch two areas of the screen (like you have with the nokia mobile phones)
Will add some more if i think of any (still early in the morning here ATM!)
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04-06-2003, 12:54 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 1
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I listen to a lot of spoken word and the files are often more than 30 minutes long. Sometimes I leave a file part-way through and want to navigate to the right place later, and PocketMusic isn't very good at this - especially as many of the alternative programs can move to a different place in a long track instantly, where PocketMusic can take a long time to get to the right place in the file.
So, ways to improve the program (either base or add-on features) for use with long tracks:
Improve the time it takes to move to a different point in a file
The ability to show the time elapsed and/or remaining from the current track, and from the total playlist
A Go To Time (elapsed or remaining) function - being able to type in the time to go to; showing the time being selected when the slider is used
The ability to set the time to go to in a file, even when play mode is stopped
The ability to set, delete and go to bookmarks within a track
For music, I'd like to see:
The shuffle mode altered so that a list is generated of the order the tracks will be played in, allowing the user to skip forward and backwards within the list (and to re-shuffle if the user doesn't like the order suggested).
It would be nice to enhance this by setting the number of times that individual tracks would be played, so that a favourite track might be played three or four times within the shuffle (this could be saved within playlists).
I listen to a lot of spoken word and the files are often more than 30 minutes long. Sometimes I leave a file part-way through and want to navigate to the right place later, and PocketMusic isn't very good at this - especially as many of the alternative programs can move to a different place in a long track instantly, where PocketMusic can take a long time to get to the right place in the file.
So, ways to improve the program (either base or add-on features) for use with long tracks:
Improve the time it takes to move to a different point in a file
The ability to show the time elapsed and/or remaining from the current track, and from the total playlist
A Go To Time (elapsed or remaining) function - being able to type in the time to go to; showing the time being selected when the slider is used
The ability to set the time to go to in a file, even when play mode is stopped
The ability to set, delete and go to bookmarks within a track
For music, I'd like to see:
The shuffle mode altered so that a list is generated of the order the tracks will be played in, allowing the user to skip forward and backwards within the list (and to re-shuffle if the user doesn't like the order suggested).
It would be nice to enhance this by setting the number of times that individual tracks would be played, so that a favourite track might be played three or four times within the shuffle (this could be saved within playlists).
I was going to add the ability to move tracks up and down within the list, but I've just discovered how to do this while playing, so can I add something very important: better documentation!
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04-06-2003, 01:26 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 64
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Here is my list of recommendations:
1) Support for DSPs like the popular DFX (www.fxsound.com).
2) Visualizations like in WMP and Winamp.
3) Full screen mode (hidding the top bar)
4) Support for more formats: WMA, Ogg, MP3 Pro
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04-06-2003, 01:29 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 29
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1- I agree with the ogg support comments.
2- since all Pocket PCs have microphones, maybe a configurable option to turn the volume down when noise is heard (for example- you're listening on headphones and someone comes up and starts talking to you and the volume automatically turns down)
3- an "always on top" option for the windowshade mode (if that's even possible on a PPC) so you could use other programs but still have the player visible
4- along with the "always on top" functionality, the ability to change the position of the bar on the screen (or maybe make some kind of button for the task bar that would show/hide the player)
5- this may be a lot to ask but faster seek times when moving the position slider would be nice (it would be great if it could be as fast as skipping tracks is), but if nothing else, at least show the new time or even an approximation as the slider is moved instead of waiting until playback resumes
6- add an option to have the screen automatically turn off after a user configurable period of time
7- it's been mentioned already, but gapless playback would be very nice
8- full screen visualizations might be fun
9- remote control support- for example: you have your PPC across the room/car/wherever, hooked up to some speakers and want to control it without getting up. you wouldn't even need a universal remote because you could just program the PPC to use any remote control
10- I also like the idea of a car/dedicated mode. you could have the display turn sideways, have large scrolling track information, have on screen buttons and alternate hardware mappings, etc.
11- I can't tell if you have it already or not, but hardware mappings for searching within a song would be nice (ie- press and release to skip 10 seconds, press and hold to fast forward)
12- audible battery level notification (between tracks and only at certain levels, say when battery reaches %50, %25, %10...)
13- ability to insert "now listening to: Artist / Song" text into e-mail/other text
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04-06-2003, 01:41 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 3
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pocketmind suggestions
This might seem too simple, but:
Since reviewing the battery life stats on my IPAQ 3660, I keep sounds turned off in general. This gives a very substantial benefit in prolonging charge life, and I have never really used, or become dependent on, system souns and such. When I want to use the sound system, I just activate it through WISBAR. It would be nice, for folks like me, if the MP3 player would take on the system settings when it starts running, to turn on sound, and then kill the system sound "on" setting when it closes.
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04-06-2003, 02:50 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 2
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Some come out of the box but most are just prepackaged...
Repeats from earlier statements that I think would be great (and so I'm repeating  ) :
1- Shuffled lists with some kind of memory so they don't repeat
2- Bigger buttons for us driving users
3- Crossfade between songs so they switch smoother
New ideas:
1- Volume control linked to hardware buttons, if there was some way to fine tune it I would love that. For example if I have it set on the lowest volume setting it still is too loud.
2- Landscape mode!! (This could be the solution to the PocketMusic for drivers)
Well, those are all my bright ideas for now. Thanks for such a great music player its great I use it ALL the time and I'm overjoyed that you are continuing perfecting it.
-Clint
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Linear Mode
