You can drop a file or folder on MrQ's icon or use the shell integration.

Ah, well... for me, it's easier to type a directory than to navigate with the mouse. Force of habit, I guess. (I guess they call this the "Address Bar" in Windows explorer. In my opinion one of the best improvements ever made to that utility, although I don't use it anymore.. I use Directory Opus by GPSoft now. (http://www.gpsoft.com.au))

It's not hard if there's some kind of path completion mechanism, like in explorer (i.e. hit tab, or down arrow to cylcle through the possible directories that your incomplete entry could be)

Uhm, could I ask what was broken? Cause from the code it looks like you broke it in your code...

Well, try to load this ("Mr QuestionMan.exe" Paganiniana.m3u):
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:191,07 Bernd Steidl - Dreams
07 Bernd Steidl - Dreams.mpc
#EXTINF:185,02 Bernd Steidl - Made In Germany
02 Bernd Steidl - Made In Germany.mpc
#EXTINF:290,03 Bernd Steidl - Apocalypse
03 Bernd Steidl - Apocalypse.mpc
#EXTINF:121,04 Bernd Steidl - Paganiniana 1
04 Bernd Steidl - Paganiniana 1.mpc
#EXTINF:187,05 Bernd Steidl - Paganiniana 2
05 Bernd Steidl - Paganiniana 2.mpc
#EXTINF:259,06 Bernd Steidl - Albinoni Adagio
06 Bernd Steidl - Albinoni Adagio.mpc
#EXTINF:25,01 Bernd Steidl - HRX
01 Bernd Steidl - HRX.mpc
#EXTINF:184,08 Bernd Steidl - Scriablo
08 Bernd Steidl - Scriablo.mpc
#EXTINF:244,09 Bernd Steidl - Infinity
09 Bernd Steidl - Infinity.mpc
#EXTINF:190,10 Bernd Steidl - White Nights
10 Bernd Steidl - White Nights.mpc
#EXTINF:213,11 Bernd Steidl - Cyberworld
11 Bernd Steidl - Cyberworld.mpc
#EXTINF:199,12 Bernd Steidl - European Heaven
12 Bernd Steidl - European Heaven.mpc

Mr QuestionMan (0.6->0.7beta) fails, whereas Mr QuestionMan ME works just as expected.

I'll take into consideration such feature, smells good.

Wow, if you could make software that smells good, then maybe you could open up a whole new market! AromaShop CS anyone?

Maybe we can open up a division of this site called "HydrogenPheromone.org"

Okay, enough of my stupid puns Thanks for considering my ideas Miriam. Despite the noise in earlier threads, I appreciate the effort your putting in, and of course, I very much appreciate that Gambit has created this program and chosen to release it as open source. Thanks guys!

Great program Is it a continuation of encspot? the linux source was released under a bsd license. Amazingly, the website is back up, even though the author died:

http://www.guerillasoft.co.uk/encspot/download.html

MQM detects iTunes-encoded files as FhG, which is wrong, correct?

Well, he came back a few months ago but then vanished again.

PS: "the author died" ->

For those interested in (especially Gambit), I'm proud to say I've finished converting to Unicode last ATL (Audio Tools Library) v2.2.

Though unofficial, I labeled it as ATL v2.3 *Unofficial* BETA.
Please test it, lots of internal file-handling changes.

Here are the chages:
- full UNICODE support (Miriam)
- JCL dependency eliminated (Miriam)
- WAV multichannel support (Gambit)
- OGG Vorbis multichannel support (Kurtnoise)

You can download it from: (Link police, coming through.)

Hope this helps Gambit!
Gambit?

Well, that's nice and all, but...

That's exactly what I was talking about. I already made those changes, so what sense does it make to do it all again?

If you really wanna help, we have to COORDINATE our work.

Bug, iTunes-encoded files aren't detected!

Man you guys still aren't working together?

Some communication would be nice. This would be an incredibly quickly advancing project if you guys got together and coordinated your efforts, and such. Perhaps a project website, CVS, e-mail, etc.

I'm not trying to tell you guys how to write software, but it would be great to see you apply both of your talents and commitment to a focused, coordinated effort! There is amazing potential here.

It has one merit: we can test/compare both version one against the other, thus can find more rapidly the [potentially] problems that may have appeared during conversion.
I concur, we need better coordination, anyway.

Agree. For simplicity, I'd prefer good-old email communication if Gambit agree on that...

Mr QuestionMan ME 0.7 alpha 0 launched!
(Link removed.)

Changes from Mr QuestionMan ME 0.6.7 SE to Mr QuestionMan ME 0.7 alpha 0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ Unicode support! (on Windows 2000/XP/2003 or newer)
+ Drag & drop support (e.g. Drag a folder from Explorer into Mr QM ME)
! Colour moving column bug fixed (columns are now undraggable)
! Directory scanning is now (a lot) faster
* Changes in About window. No more jokes when pressing Ok!
+ New Menu item: View->Always On Top
+ Load Defaults button in Settings
* Column "Relative path" changed to "Subfolder" for better understanding
! Some other changes I don't remember quite now

TO DO for 0.7 final:
- working on quality rating system (for more accurate results)
- customizable columns
- store settings in registry (because Ini-s have no Unicode support )
- multi-language (?)
- more (?)

Known issues:
- Drag & drop files/dirs with Unicode chars within their names doesn't work yet
- Favorites do not handle properely yet folders with Unicode chars within their
names. That's because they are stored in a .ini file, and loading from/saving
to .ini break Unicode

ooH! 7 alpha 0

the thing is expanding *~

Great work so far Miriam, thanks for the effort.

Edit: do you think you could add a "Read LameTag" option on file right click? Encspot had a similar feature that I found very useful. There is an open source LameTag reader here.

For the quality rating system, what do you plan on implementing to get more accurate results? Hopefully it moves away from the simple bitrate boundaries and takes into consideration vbr presets. Otherwise it's not really useful.

Perhaps there is some way of scanning audio files for particular kinds of glitches or corruption... that would be one way of noticing whether or not the quality isn't up to snuff.

I've been looking for a program to do that for a long time. I might still have some crummy old audio files kicking around from when I used to use the P2P networks, and it'd be nice to test them for such problems.

Does anyone know that error foobar2000 gives when you use it, where it skips and has to resync the MPEG stream, or something like that? There must be a way of programatically detecting that in software such as MQM.

It seems that I may have some legit music of my own that I encoded a very long time ago (with Xing, probably) that exhibits such errors. I'm not sure what these are, but I'm guessing it has something to do with encoding on the fly using AudioCatalyst.

I'm in the process of playing with the new alpha for MQM ME.
I'm really amazed with how fast Miriam gets stuff done... wow. I'd like to employ a guy like that someday. Thanks again Miriam!

I have a bit of a problem with the folder drag and drop... it only works from Windows Explorer, and not my beloved directory opus (And thus, I'm guessing, other programs besides Explorer).

Miriam, do you know offhand why this would be? Is this something that can be fixed without you rewriting the lot of the code that does this?

Oh yay, a triple post! (sorry)
I found a problem (this one more serious than my last one) with this alpha... When I'm scrolling through the folders in the tree view, MQM strangely only shows the album that I'm on once I scroll down to the next one, if I'm using the arrow keys.

Clicking on the folder name with the mouse seems to work fine.

what about my suggestions:

isn't that same issue I described here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=284211

however, this seems to be fixed now...

I have another suggestion: how about an format filter...something like a dropdown menu that allows you to exclude / list certain extensions only. That could be done by a dropdown menu with all the formats supported and in front of that a checkbox that says 'exclude'. If that checkbox is selected every extension but the selected one is displayed, otherwise the selected format only is displayed. In case the user doesn't want to use any filter there should be an option in the dropdown menu that is empty or says 'None'.

Another way of achieving that would be to add that to the options...but I'd prefer the other way...

Another nice feature would be an extra column that displays the format and allows to sort files by extension...

Also, to save some space in the list I'd disable the 'Ratio' column since that's what the bitrate column is for...or maybe let the user select what columns he wants to see.

Yes, it reffers to the option "Enable advanced algorithms in quality estimation (in addition to Bitrate based), see Settings.
Something more a la EncSpot.
Actually, I hope with next versions, the quality estimation to improve constantly, to a level that can match and more, surpase EncSpot's capabilities.


Well, Speed is my second name.
All that "rush" was just because I enjoy very much coding @ Mr QuestionMan ME... I'm enthusiastic, that's all.

Well, I've tested it upon Total Commander and it works good.
So, the problem is most likely from Directory Opus.


Yes, version 0.7 beta/final.

Yes, version 0.7 beta/final.

Not sure if in 0.7 final, we'll see.


I've already had in mind to implement this, actually in a more consistent way.
Think it'll be done in 0.7 final, if not, 0.7.1 etc.


Done already. To sort, clic on "Type" column.


I quote from me (regarding TO DO list for 0.7 final):
"- customizable columns"

Cheers!

For the sake of avoiding registry bloat, maybe you could store the settings in XML...?

Hrm... that's odd. I wonder why it would be borked like that. I've never had any problems dragging and dropping anything drom DOpus.

I'd like to know what the information conveyed in the folder dragging process actually looks like, and how I could debug this. Perhaps I could get to the root of this one. If this is too complicated for someone to explain here, are there any developers who would be able to post a link to a relevant site explaining this?

Good idea, Roberto, I'll stick with XML then.


Actually, if you understand Delphi, you make take a look on the Mr QM ME's source code.
And yes, that's odd. Right now, I'm downloading Directory Opus 8.0... I'll see what can be done about the dragging issue.

Edit: Downloaded. Problem confirmed. I'll investigate more on this later.
PS: Directory Opus lacks Unicode support.

Such a capability is already available for Mr QuestionMan, actually, exactly phwip's implementation. The problem is that a Lame Tag Reader isn't YET implemented in GUI.

Unfortunately, Delphi would be new to me. I guess it never hurts to learn!
As for DOpus's unicode support, I have already e-mailed the authors about that. I wasn't until now aware of such limitations, but that does explain the issues I had with some weird filenames. As a native english speaker in an English country, the significance of unicode support was somewhat beyond me, but I thought that it was pretty much standard for modern programs.

Are you saying that the lack of unicode support is why DOpus won't work with MQM?

No, actually it seems like a problem with the drag'n'drop component I am using (TJvDragDrop from JVCL).

Mr QuestionMan ME 0.7 alpha 1 released

(Link removed.)

Changes from Mr QuestionMan ME 0.7 alpha 0 to Mr QuestionMan ME 0.7 alpha 1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ Display LAME Tag!!! (right-click on a LAME MP3 file->View LAME Tag)
(thanks phwip for the original code)
+ New menu items: Help->Homepage, Help->Donate, Help->Check for a newer version
+ New Settings option: "Always On Top on startup"

what's that all about:



the provided info is indeed false...

Also, is it possible that MQM is not able to read the "RG track peak"? It always says "<not stored>", however I've got a "REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK" tag stored in that file...

The file is encoded wiht version 3.91 of LAME. No version string is reported & I think it should report no lame tag used.

Discussion/yelling about donation/name moved here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=32794

No worries... It might read better if you made the Lame Tag window a little wider so that the text doesn't wrap. It uses up to 60 characters on some lines, whereas the window only displays 46 characters (at least on my PC).


Do you get the same incorrect result with LameTag.exe? If so then the problem is with my code and I will look into it (although maybe not for a few days), would you please email the file to phwip at fish dot co dot uk.


Lame can calculate a replaygain track peak value when encoding which it stores in the lame tag. I don't have a copy of Lame to hand at the moment but I'm pretty sure you have to specify a particular switch for it to do so. This lame tag RG value is nothing to do with the ReplayGain values that other apps (such as MP3Gain and Foobar2000) write and use which are stored in an APEv2 tag. Your file probably has one of these. As far as I know the Lame Tag ReplayGain values are not used by any software at present.


Again if this also happens with LameTag.exe? would you please email the file to phwip at fish dot co dot uk so I can attempt to fix this.

No. It seems clear the MQM ME tries to read a lame header when there is none.

For instance check this file out,

Reported by MQM ME:



Reported by by LAME Tag:

To Miriam,

I would just like to say thanks starting the development of your own version of a audio identifier. With the little time you have invested so far has made a big difference. I hope you continue development & manage to conquer (old but best so far) EncSpot. I also hope you are not so soured from your experience here that you will not continue development. I think I can speak for every one when I say your time & effort is appreciated even though some people may have questioned your ethical decisions.

If you can forget about minority opinions & concentrate on coding you will find you can get valuable feedback & suggestions from the HA community & hopefully by working together we can builder a better audio identifier.

Mr QuestionMan ME has from now a new name: Audio Identifier.

Its new thread is:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=32799

Its new homepage is:

(Not available.)

@westgroveg: Funny, even it seems so, the name of "Audio Identifier" was not inspired by your post (I would just like to say thanks starting the development of your own version of a audio identifier). I've just finished all the renaming stuff, and, now, after all the mess I've come here to read the last posts...
I'll not abandon work on Audio Identifier my friends. It'll beat EncSpot in the future (AI's slogan is "the definitive audio file analyzer" so... )
I'll take a look on the code, though probably the reading problems are, in a way or another, directly related to phwip's code, as this is used without (except Unicode support) any modifications in Audio Identifier.

Cheers!

Ah, this makes sense...

@Miriam: My code handles a file without a lame tag by raising an exception which is trapped in the LameTag.dpr code. When Gambit added the LameTag.exe code into MrQ he modified the BasicLameTagReader.pas and DescriptiveLameTagReader.pas files so that if the file does not have a lame tag there is no exception raised but instead a property LameTagNotFound returns True. This is probably a better coding style but I have not yet modified my code to match. You are using the ReadLameTag procedure from my LameTag.dpr code but the other files with Gambit's modifications - so you will need to add a check for LameTagNotFound and presume that if this is True then all the other values are invalid.

Thank you, fixed. Also, I've made the Tag window bigger, enough to everything to fit just fine.
=> (Link removed because I don't like you.)

Also note that any mp3 file can have a LAME Tag. A tool was recently written that would write LAME Tags to FhG encoded mp3 files.

Gogo 3.x also writes LAME tags.

Oh shit.. Updated, please redownload: (On second thought, please don't.)
Now, the "Display LAME tag" option is displayed whenever clicking on a mp3 file regardless of the encoder used - LAME, FHG, Xing etc.

So - it's also a problem for LameTag as can be seen:
( if FTag.Encoder <> 'LAME' then
raise ELameTagReaderExpected.Create('LAME tag not found.');
)
phwip?

Guys, from now on, please use the new Audio Identifier thread:
(Discussion of illegal software is forbidden.)

Thanks!

Regards.