iSub iPhone Client - Version 2.0 Released

[arogan]

Bookmarks are working nicely in the latest version. Thanks!

I think I found another minor issue though I can work around it.
I have multiple folders added into subsonic (one for music, one for podcasts, and one for audio books).

My first folder (music) seems to work fine. As I add folders and content or delete them if I reload artists in iSub it refreshes properly.

For the other 2 folders not so much. I can add and remove subdirectories in those defined folders yet no matter how many times I reload artists in iSub it still shows the old stale content. Even disabling or deleting the folders from subsonic do not get reflected in iSub. If I actually uninstall iSub and reinstall it then it picks up a fresh current copy of those folders.

so first folder defined in subsonic:
c:\music

adding
c:\music\artists1
properly shows up in iSub after an artist reload

defining a second folder in subsonic:
d:\podcasts

adding
d:\podcasts\somepodcastshow
never shows up in iSub without a complete reinstall of the app.


These are minor feature requests:
- general context persistence. It seems like iSub forgets it's current song it was playing if you leave iSub on pause for say 10 min or so (not sure on the exact same length of time). It remembers the last playlist but say I have a 1000 song play list. I would like to pick up where I left off (say song #153). I can sort of tell by what has been cached (and turning on the way cool cache color option). I know the resume/ask thing works great if you say kill the isub app while a song is playing. But if iSub is in a paused state it's more like saying I'm done playing this playlist instead of an actual I'm just pausing this playlist until a much later time.
- Bookmarks is working great. This request kind of ties into the above point and has to do with context of the current playlist. For individual songs and podcasts the current bookmarks implementation is all kinds of awesome. But lets say my current playlist is an audio book which is divided into 20 mp3 files. When I bookmark it is only aware of that one file in which I bookmarked in. When I choose a bookmark the playlist only consists of that 1 single song. It would be neat (and this is the way rockbox does it) if bookmarking not only captured the current song and position but also the current playlist at that time so the entire state could be restored when you choose a bookmark. This would also solve the above issue where I could say bookmark while I'm on song #153 33sec into it. When I come back later and choose that bookmark, it restores the entire 1000 song playlist and starts me off at song #153 at the 33sec mark.

I just want to close with how thrilled I am with iSub in it's current state. It already does much much more than anything I thought possible with a streaming audio app.

[wunderbred]

Just wanted to say that iSub has been my favorite iPhone app for some time now, but version 2.2 just upped the ante so many times over. It is stable, feature-rich and easily the most-used and most-use*ful* thing my iPhone is used for.

Thanks so much for your continued improvement and support for this wonderful marvel of my daily entertainment!!!!!

[wiseadam]

Is there a way to tell why the isub and subsonic apps show different numbers for album, artists and songs?

Subsonic=1,366 Artists; iSub=1,457
Subsonic=4,144 Albums; iSub=3,915
Subsonic=53,175 Songs; iSub=51,369

It would maybe make more since if say Subsonic was ahead on all, but it's not in the Artists...and yes, all have been updated, I reloaded all album, artists, and songs on isub.

I did a quick manual count of artists in Windows with just folders and iSub is more accurate and is right with it's amount. It's just hard with this amount of music trying to figure out what's missing without adding folder by folder....I may just have to break down and do that. I was just wondering if there was a reason why one saw more than the other....since technically isub gets it's numbers from subsonic. I am using the most recent versions of both apps.

[frason]

Fantastic release, keep up the great work!!

[tenblack]

Is there a way to tell why the isub and subsonic apps show different numbers for album, artists and songs?.

iSub shows 852 Artists and Subsonic shows 1830.
iSub shows 3173 Albums and Subsonic 3278

It doesn't make any sense. It's missing just shy of 1000 artists but only 100 albums...

[arogan]

There does seem to be an issue with even refreshing artists. I just added a new album to a subdirectory (I break up my music into sub directories by genre). It shows up fine through the web interface for subsonic but doesn't show up iSub. Forcing subsonic to rebuild the search index, adding and removing the files doesn't seem to help. It feels like it is maybe related to the multiple paths issue I reported earlier.

UPDATE: Ok weird, the album has appeared now. I just noticed I was on the work's wifi vs the usual 3g. That may have had something to do with it.

[crichardso]

I got a couple suggestions

is it possible to make isub pause and resume on the unplugging of the headphones?

my other issue is along the same lines when i recieve a call and anwser it after the call is completed i would like it to resume playing but instead it just exits so i have to go back in and reload the songs.

thanks
-Chris

[einsteinx2]

Guys I've been swamped for the last week, so I'll have to wait to answer all the individual posts, but wanted to drop in and say I'm working on a massive bug fix update for 2.2 that should be ready next week. Basically correcting all the stuff that everyone found since it was released. Turns out even with 10+ beta testers, stuff slips through, especially with so much code added.

And yes, there will be a toggle to turn off the automatic caching.

Also, I scrapped my plans to make instructional videos after I realized I'm a HORRIBLE videographer, and will instead be putting together pictorial walkthroughs of all of the features of iSub and Subsonic, and general setup and toubleshooting. I'm halfway done with the iSub feature walkthrough right now. As soon as it is ready, all of this new help info will be accessible immediately in the new Help tab in iSub (tap the gear). That help tab is actually a web view that loads it's content from my website, so more tutorials and help information (and hey, maybe even videos one day) will be added as available.

And regarding the mismatching of counts between iSub and Subsonic, the short story is that iSub counts differently than Subsonic. iSub does a straight top level folder count to get the "Artist" count, while Subsonic uses the tags. So if you have albums with multiple artists in them or artist folders inside subfolders, iSub's count will be much lower but the music is there. Also, the "Albums" count in iSub is simple a count of the second level of folders. The song counts should be the same though, so that's something that will have to be looked into.

[Kirk]

And yes, there will be a toggle to turn off the automatic caching.

*cheers*

[kdshaw1984]

Just wanted to reiterate my support for Ben and the iSub project. Also to Sindre, for getting this going in the first place. These programs have completely changed the way I listen to music, and I love it!

Nice job on 2.2! I love the ability to load the whole song and the upcoming track. My neighborhood has crap AT&T coverage, and I was getting tired of speeding through the dead zones to try and get out before the 15 second buffer elapsed! Now I can take my time, and won't have to dodge quite as many children.

I would also be interested in the caching on/off feature. Would suggest that even if "off," the entire track and following track should still pre-load. Heck maybe even cache the entire "session" but auto-clear it each time iSub is restarted? I also don't necessarily want it caching everything I listen to, but see tremendous value in pre-loading upcoming songs.

As always, keep up the great work Ben. I hope it's paying off for you, because it sure is for us!

[guptaas]

Getting closer and closer to the ideal music app! Thank you so much. My issues on a 3GS with iOS4 (The upgrade might be the culprit) and ~69,000 files:
-Very sluggish
-Crashing frequently, practically with every song
-Strangely the same file accessed via the "Artists" tab plays more stable than through the "Cache" tab
-Searches can't be the middle of a word.
-Any new additions require a very lengthy update process. Seems a complete update would require a separate refresh of "Artists", "Albums" and "Songs" in that order to show up under the correct "Genre"
-A "Restore" followed by a "Backup" didn't pick up my cached music. In fact I had to start from scratch

I'm still willing to believe the instability is from the new OS. Is it compatible if I can find a way to revert to iOS3? So far all attempts to revert have failed.

[flicker87]

Getting closer and closer to the ideal music app! Thank you so much. My issues on a 3GS with iOS4 (The upgrade might be the culprit) and ~69,000 files:
-Very sluggish
-Crashing frequently, practically with every song
-Strangely the same file accessed via the "Artists" tab plays more stable than through the "Cache" tab
-Searches can't be the middle of a word.
-Any new additions require a very lengthy update process. Seems a complete update would require a separate refresh of "Artists", "Albums" and "Songs" in that order to show up under the correct "Genre"
-A "Restore" followed by a "Backup" didn't pick up my cached music. In fact I had to start from scratch

I'm still willing to believe the instability is from the new OS. Is it compatible if I can find a way to revert to iOS3? So far all attempts to revert have failed.

I know it's just anecdotal, but here's my experience after doing the same thing. I just updated my 3Gs to iOS4. iSub is still working great, I love this app. Since updating to iOS4, I've had no sluggishness, virtually no crashing, no problem clicking around in the app. I do have less music files than you, about 40,000 files. Maybe the extra 30K of files is the problem?

[wdpaynter]

Just an FYI, but I have around 168,000 mp3s and am not experiencing any of the same issues (iPhone 4 iOS4) except updating the songs tab (which is understandable and known by the developer). Maybe try resetting the phone.

GREAT APP!!!

BP

[guptaas]

I "restored' the phone with iOS4 and iSub is now running well. The only difference I know of was that last time around it was an update of iSub with thousands of songs cached locally and this time it is a straight install with just a handful cached.

Still a devoted fan. Installed it on every phone in the family!

[ajkessel]

While we wait for full id3 tag based access, I reorganized my music into what I thought was the logical folder hierarchy: /genre/artist/album. iSub seems to think the top level folder is always "artists". Is this true? Is there no way to fix it? Isn't this a standard layout?