MP3 Compare

[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.

[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]

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]

• 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.

[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