iSub iPhone Client - Version 2.0 Released

[einsteinx2]

I have a massive music collection as well. Just bought the app today and I have not yet been able to load my song list...

Is it possible to just have a shuffle all button at the top level that would not require the loading of all songs? Thats pretty much what I want to do.

This has more to do with the way the Subsonic API is setup than iSub. Basically the only way for me to load all of the songs in order to shuffle them is to actually do an empty search and retrieve all of the songs, which can take a while if you have a big collection. In version 2.1 of iSub that's still sitting in the purgatory I like to call the app review process, the song list is saved between app sessions, so you could load it up on wifi in your house (which still might take upwards of 20 minutes if you have a VERY large collection) and then once it's loaded you'll never have to load it again unless you add songs to Subsonic and want to update the list.

There is currently no way for me to just ask Subsonic for one random song at a time (or even a group of random songs) which would let me bypass loading all of your songs first. However, coming in Subsonic version 4.0's API there is a call for retrieving random songs that I should be able to harness to create an all songs shuffle that doesn't require loading your whole library. Until then, it has to work this way. Subsonic itself doesn't even have a shuffle all feature, it was something I implemented on my end in the best way it could currently could be done. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[u2jrmw]

The new cached songlist feature should help a lot.

I look forward to version 4... Any idea when they plan on releasing it?

[einsteinx2]

The new cached songlist feature should help a lot.

I look forward to version 4... Any idea when they plan on releasing it?

I believe Sindre said that he will have a beta version out within a week or so, but it could still be a bit before 4.0 final is ready.

[dsnhdiv]

@einsteinx2 thanks for the great program, I am enjoying it a lot! I was a huge Simplify Media user and subsonic along with your iphone app has made me pretty happy so far.

I did have one question, I am really looking forward to version 4.0 because a lot of my music is in m4a format. The question I have is will 4.0 still work with iSub? or will it break this? Not sure if it has been tested or how they will affect each other so I need to decide which is more important, iphone use or work use on my PC.

Thanks!

[einsteinx2]

@einsteinx2 thanks for the great program, I am enjoying it a lot! I was a huge Simplify Media user and subsonic along with your iphone app has made me pretty happy so far.

I did have one question, I am really looking forward to version 4.0 because a lot of my music is in m4a format. The question I have is will 4.0 still work with iSub? or will it break this? Not sure if it has been tested or how they will affect each other so I need to decide which is more important, iphone use or work use on my PC.

Thanks!

I have not tested iSub with version 4.0 yet as the beta was just released and I'm knee deep in song caching and offline browsing code at the moment. However there is nothing in 4.0 that should break iSub support. There are additions to the API that iSub uses to connect but not subtractions. As long as you have it set up to transcode your m4a's into mp3's, iSub should have no problem connecting and playing your songs. I haven't however tested yet and 4.0 is still a new beta so of course there may be bugs.

[GregF]

Is Subsonic and/or iSub not able to deal with m4a's? I thought m4a and aac were native formats that could be streamed without problem? I just found my external iSub player in the Subsonic interface and unchecked transcoding those two formats and they're still working in iSub, unless iSub is using some other player I didn't find?

(regarding following post, I meant "works with" as in "doesn't need to transcode"...I unchecked the transcoding box for m4a and aac and it still seems to stream fine.)

[dsnhdiv]

subsonic works ok with m4a's but I occasionally have issues as well as the "unknown" length of a track issue since subsonic transcodes them. Subsonic 4.0 is supposed to allow m4a files to work just like the mp3 files so that it does not need to be transcoded which will fix a lot of subtle weird things.

[dsnhdiv]

einsteinx2 thanks for your reply, I guess the only thing I can do is try!

[thomasbruce]

just noticed something in isub. when a playlist have more than 99 tracks in it i only says 1 and not 100-101-102

97
98
99
1
1
1

a bug?

[einsteinx2]

just noticed something in isub. when a playlist have more than 99 tracks in it i only says 1 and not 100-101-102

97
98
99
1
1
1

a bug?

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. It's always the little stuff that slips through because I'm a one man coding and testing team. I just need to set the label to autoshrink the text or make it a bit wider. This will be fixed in 2.2.

EDIT: this is fixed in the currently available version

[einsteinx2]

Version 2.1 just finally hit the App Store. SSL, cached albums/artists/songs lists, increased buffer, current playlist view, and interface tweaks.

Let me know if you guys find any bugs that might have slipped into this version so I can fix them for 2.2.

[einsteinx2]

(regarding following post, I meant "works with" as in "doesn't need to transcode"...I unchecked the transcoding box for m4a and aac and it still seems to stream fine.)

I just did some testing, and other than it not returning any tag information, it does seem to work fine streaming an aac .m4a file that I encoded with iTunes. Maybe when Sindre said support was coming in 4.0, he was referring to it correctly parsing tags because it does seem to stream fine now (unless maybe it's actually transcoding it even with the box unchecked)...

EDIT: another quick test confirmed that it does seem to be transcoding the m4a files to mp3 even with the box unchecked. I cached the file locally in the Simulator using my new caching code that I'm working on and I can confirm it was an mp3 file.

[wraithdu]

Yep, just grabbed new version today. I haven't had a chance to test on my drive to work (will get to that tomorrow), but I have noticed that seeking seems to be somewhat broken:

1) Seeking a non-transcoded mp3: first time works ok. Seeking a second+ time results in the seekbar jumping around a lot, but ultimately works.

2) Seeking a transcoded mp3 or other filetype (flac): doesn't work at all. It has the same seekbar jumping as above, but seeks to the wrong place in the song, usually about 5-10 seconds ahead of the current time in the track, regardless of where you actually try to seek to.

[einsteinx2]

1) Seeking a non-transcoded mp3: first time works ok. Seeking a second+ time results in the seekbar jumping around a lot, but ultimately works.

Just tested that and I can confirm that for some reason the code to stop updating the progress bar while moving is not being called the second time you skip through a track. It does seem to seek fine though as you said, but I'll make sure that piece of code is called properly when seeking multiple times for the next version.

2) Seeking a transcoded mp3 or other filetype (flac): doesn't work at all. It has the same seekbar jumping as above, but seeks to the wrong place in the song, usually about 5-10 seconds ahead of the current time in the track, regardless of where you actually try to seek to.

I'm not sure why you are having this problem. I cannot seem to duplicate that on my end. Also, as far as I can remember, no code was changed related to track seeking, so this most likely was already part of the 2.0 code. I just tried seeking in a transcoded FLAC file and although it took a few seconds before the audio loaded, it did seek to the proper position. The lag time for seeking through transcoded files happens because Subsonic has to finish transcoding the file up to the position you are skipping to. This is affected greatly by the speed of the computer you run Subsonic on. My Subsonic server is on a quad-core Xeon box and it only takes 2-3 seconds. I've tested on someone else's machine that was much less powerful and it took a good 15 seconds to seek. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about this lag time, it's on Subsonic's end. Subsonic's transcoding functionality is awesome, but it really complicates things for external players like iSub. If it just streamed mp3's and aac's straight and nothing else my job would be 100 times easier

Can anyone else confirm trouble seeking through transcoded tracks? Unfortunately, seeking through a streaming file is a bit of a hack (especially seeking through an on the fly transcoded streaming track) so it will probably never work 100% for all people in all cases. I had two choices, not to implement seeking, or implement seeking as it is currently done, so I chose to implement it even if it is a bit hacky. This will be helped a lot in version 2.2 though with local caching because as long as you're not seeking past the end of the portion that has been cached, it'll be seeking the local file rather than using the hack I have implemented now to jump to a later point in the stream.

[thomasbruce]

i really love your app. the best one i've used when it comes not only to apps for subsonic. i used to use simplify media and then orb before i discovered subsonic and i think both the "userfriendlyness" and how it looks is way ahead of the other ones out there. i was just thinking about some small changes you could make that is not a must and maybe i'm alone in this but here goes...

1. when you first open the app or when you choose artists, albums or songs at the top in 2.1 the reload bar shows. i think it would look better if it just showed from the search bar and not the reload bar, and if you scroll then the reload bar shows. the "play all" is fine only the reload bars i'm talking about.

2. the colour you use on the reload bars (light blue) it would look better i think if you used that colour aswell instead of the grey one on everyother track or artist and so on. make it more unified and look cleaner if you know what i mean.

3. keep the font size the same in all the choices. it's the same in all of them except playlist that is smaller. not a big deal but i think will make the look more unified.

4. i get why the buffer screen is there in this version, but for version 2.2 when you impliment the new buffering code maybe that screen will be unnecessary?

again, keep up the great work and thanks for an amazing app!