MP3 Compare

[chrroe]

I took a brief look at the new MP3 Compare in build 445.
But first of all I must confess that even under BC2 I've never seriously used it .

It took a second look for me to realize the playback feature above the status line. When you play two totally different mp3 files simultaniously you can get a very funny mixture .

On the first look It seems to work all fine, but I discovered some small glitches:

1. When a file is played and you use Swap Sides, the progress display doesn't get swaped. It stays on the original side.
2. When you play a song and then use the Reload Files button, the icon for Play/Pause doesn't get resetted.
3. When the focus is on the progress display the whole song can be made stutter by using the arrow keys on the keyboard.
4. What about a display of the over-all playtime of the file and the current time-position?
5. With focus on the progress display you can use the mouse-wheel in order to jump forward and backward in the song. But this only works in the first ca. 35 seconds.

Bye
Christoph

[Erik]

• When a file is played and you use Swap Sides, the progress display doesn't get swaped.
• When you play a song and then use the Reload Files button, the icon for Play/Pause doesn't get resetted.

These will be fixed in the next release.

• When the focus is on the progress display the whole song can be made stutter by using the arrow keys on the keyboard.
• With focus on the progress display you can use the mouse-wheel in order to jump forward and backward in the song. But this only works in the first ca. 35 seconds.

This is the behavior of the windows control. You can actually drag the slider while it's playing also.

[Tom]

It's great to see the MP3 tool! Got a couple bug reports.

I unchecked everything but "data" in the comparison criteria. (This really needs a context menu item for check/uncheck all.) When I compared two known dissimilar files, the data line highlighted red showing the difference, and the incidental differences (song title tags, etc.) were highlighted orange showing their differences. So far so good.

Then I clicked Ignore Unimportant Differences and everything went black & white. All the highlighting disappeared, meaning (I presume) that they're all unimportant? When I disabled that option again, the orange items reappeared but the data lines remained B&W as if they were the same. (FWIW, one file was 7 megs and one was 7.8 megs.) Refreshing the files brought the red highlight back to the data comparison lines. If I understand it right, the orange highlighting disappearing is normal for the "IUD" feature, but not the red.

The other item is that the play controls are all dimmed (disabled) here. Any ideas on that one?

Otherwise, lookin' good so far!

[Erik]

This really needs a context menu item for check/uncheck all.

We'll add "Mark/Unmark All" buttons in the next release.

Then I clicked Ignore Unimportant Differences and everything went black & white. All the highlighting disappeared, meaning (I presume) that they're all unimportant?

Yes, that's what orange means.

When I disabled that option again, the orange items reappeared but the data lines remained B&W as if they were the same.

Only "Song Data" should be changing to same. This will be fixed in the next release.

The other item is that the play controls are all dimmed (disabled) here.

The problem is that we're asking Windows to play the file and it chooses to use an older player (Windows Media Player 6.4) which fails. We hope to have a fix in a future release.

[Tom]

We'll add "Mark/Unmark All" buttons in the next release.

Thanks! I'm sure lotsa folks will appreciate that.

The problem is that we're asking Windows to play the file and it chooses to use an older player (Windows Media Player 6.4) which fails. We hope to have a fix in a future release.

Sounds good. I tried opening an MP3 in Media Player 6.4 (mplayer2.exe) and it acted like it was playing but either did nothing or pegged the CPU. Do you think anybody has an MP3 codec that 6.4 would recognize?

Using the oldest NT-ready Media Player (mplayer.exe in system32) is worse -- it complains that it can't determine the filetype from the (MP3) extension. <sigh> I still keep it around for MIDIs, though, because it's much faster than any of the others for that.

[Tom]

The problem is that we're asking Windows to play the file and it chooses to use an older player (Windows Media Player 6.4) which fails. We hope to have a fix in a future release.

Just checking back on the status of MP3 playback. Have you guys considered incorporating the open source MPLAYER.EXE? It seems to be very widely used.

[Tom]

.

[Aaron]

We have, though we can't implement just any open source project into our commercial product. This kind of change is quite large and would be scheduled in the same way as 'better zip support.'

WMP6.4 is not exactly what we are currently calling, but seems to have similar limitations/error handling as the method we are using. Most of the issues we run into deal with malformed tags in the mp3 files that cause problems.

[Tom]

We have, though we can't implement just any open source project into our commercial product.

Understood -- I realize there are licensing issues to consider. Some do permit commercial use, or maybe you'd only need to release the modified source of the player (if any) and not BC itself.

Most of the issues we run into deal with malformed tags in the mp3 files that cause problems.

Hmm. Is there any straightforward way to diagnose the issue here locally? I ask because I've been reporting playback capability being completely disabled on and off since the turn of the century. Heh! It's definitely not something so simple as corrupted tags on my system -- I've even tried files with all tags removed, or after processing with an MP3 "cleanup" utility to make the files meet specific standards. Controls remained dimmed/disabled.

What would you think about a configurable way to hand off both files to a couple instances of a player of one's choice from within the comparison module? That might let you reuse code that's mostly in place already. I know there're overarching business considerations that affect development decisions, but maybe that'd eliminate the need for a complete redesign if it's going to remain a lower priority.

BC3 sure is lookin' good, though!

[RunnerBiker]

Hi Tom,

I too have difficulty with some MP3 files. Here is a synopsis of what I found:

I am running Windows XP Media Center Edition (SP3 Beta) This system does not include WMP6.4, it uses MPlayer.exe (11.0.5721.5145 8/19/2004)

None of these lockup problems occur on my wife's computer. She is running Windows XP Home (SP3 Beta).

1) If the tag is large, the player controls are disabled (dimmed)
2) If the audio frames are preceeded by a LAME or XING or INFO frame, BC3 locks up and must be killed.

Notes about large tags. In my experimentation, I have altered an MP3 file by adding additional $00 pad bytes to the end of the TAG and preceeding the first audio frame. I have not found the "Exact" threshold where the problem occurs, but when the first music frame is at offset $1FF43 (Hex of course) the player controls are dimmed. (this also occurs on my wife's computer)

When the first audio frame is at offset $1F343, the player controls are enabled.

When the first audio frame is at offset $1F343 and it is preceeded by an INFO frame, BC3 works correctly, and enables the player controls.

When the first audio frame is at offset $1FF43 and it is preceeded by in INFO frame, BC3 locks up. (My wife's computer does not lock up, but the player controls are dimmed)

The audio frames in these test files are all identical.

All these test files play correctly when you launch them (Alt+A X P) from within BC3 or when you double click on them in the Windows Explorer.

All the symptoms are the same with BC2 and I have been working with Aaron since last fall on attempting to isolate the issue. Aaron believes (and he is probably right) that I have an errant codec installed that is causing the problem, but we haven't been able to isolate it yet.

Has anyone else with windows Media Center Edition experienced this type of lockup?

[Tom]

That sounds very thorough, RunnerBiker! Here're a couple things that might help you track down squirrely codecs. Marc Liron, Microsoft MVP, created Sherlock, a software-based "Codec Detective". The app will point out the details of your codecs (audio & video separately) and highlight any problematic ones it finds, but doesn't offer any repair capability.

A good companion is the K-Lite Codec Tweak Tool. It seems to be a script-based approach created using Inno Setup and was just updated a couple of weeks ago.

[RunnerBiker]

Tom! Woo Hoo!

You are my hero.

I ran the CodecTweakTool and it "fixed" 23 errors in the registry.

Now BC3 doesn't lock up for me any more.

It still disables the play controls, but that seems to be consistent across all other platforms.

If you are interested, I snapped screenshots of all the errors the CodecTweakTool fixed. I can post these, but I'm guessing you don't really care what was screwed up.

Thank you again.

RunnerBiker

UPDATE 1 ==================================================

While BC3 no longer locks up, I cannot play MP3 audio files any more. Windows Media Player displays this error:

Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file.

I'll update this when I discover what needs to be put back.

UPDATE 2 ==================================================

I rebooted and can play MP3 files again. That is the good news.
BC3 locks up again, so I'll see what CodecTweakTool finds now.

[Tom]

I rebooted and can play MP3 files again. That is the good news.
BC3 locks up again, so I'll see what CodecTweakTool finds now.

Sorry to hear that it's turning out to be more of a challenge -- but it sounds like you're making progress! Don't forget that the tool has backup capabilities in case you need to undo any changes.

[RunnerBiker]

Yes, I saw the backup and restore functions, and I also saw the ability to create a TXT file with the details on all settings.

BAD NEWS -

Using the CodecTweakTool I disabled EVERYTHING.

Disabled ALL the filters
Disabled ALL the codecs
Disabled ALL the Direct Show objects
Disabled ALL DirectX Media Objects

I can not play an MP3, but I didn't expect to be able to.

BC3 still locks up. I have waited 30 minutes to see if maybe something was going to take a long time.

Is there anyone else out there with Windows XP Media Center Edition that can try one of these problem MP3 files?

[Tom]

Weird. What is it exactly that locks up BC3? Comparing 2 MP3s? I take it you rebooted after disabling all that stuff?