Here you will find the latest version of this plugin:
http://chron.visiondesigns.de/foobar2000/f...flow_v0.3.0.zip

I am starting this topic because the messy topic was closed but we still do not have a new topic.

I recognized something strange: I am using the chronflow panel in a cui with panel splitter layout. I don't know it the splitter is causing this or chronflow itself.
Sometimes when I maximize the minimized Foobar all covers have been gone.
When I exit foobar I get a pure virtual function call.

Has someone else experienced something similar?

Uhm how helpful is it if you open this thread? One of the main points of the mods to close Chronial's thread was that he was supposed to set up a proper first post that he could update whenever necessary.

So this thread will probably end the same way as the last one

I see your point(I knew that before). But where should I post my bug report then? To have severeal topics about one plugin is also unecessary. I wrote a pm to chronial. If there is a new topic by chronial this topic can be closed and deleted.
@ mods if you want you can rename this topic.
All I want is to know if this is a bug from foo_chronflow and if someone can recognize something similar...

That's pretty much not helping me here. What does "all covers have been gone" mean? Is the panel black, are the covers white, do you still see the album title... What does the panel look like?
Also what's a "panel splitter layout"?

Sorry nativ german here The panel is totally black.No covers nor the the name is available.

A layout created with this plugin here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=62114

I don't knowif it depends on this. The bug is repeated from time to time. I try to find the circumstances when it appears but still itis quite mysterious.

90% caused by foo_uie_panel_splitter. The Introduction says it all: "It is a bit like panel ui".
This component is very demanding for the hosting plugin to be written absolute correctly. This is uncomparable to quite anything out there, since I'm using OpenGL in my panel.

Short: Don't use stuff like panels_ui. There is a very good reason the foobar developers did not like it. The concept itself is bad. So quite likely anyone who will implement such a concept will also not do it right.

What concept would that be? An advanced UI with arbitrary user chosen placement of content panels?
It's easy to pinpoint various flaws in PUI's implementation, but the idea looks good enough to me.

This has been discussed enough in the past, but well: here we go again:
1. The foobar titleformatting language is meant to format strings from thousands of datasets as fast as possible. This string formatting language/compiler/parser is misused as a programming language.
2. Hoping that people not interested in programming could be able to do it. The concept is not "arbitrary user chosen placement of content panels", but a programming language is given to the user that allows him to write extremely complicated scripts without having serious understanding of programming.

The result: at least 90% of the users are messing with something they don't understand.
You might say "but it works and looks nice" - while this might be correct, this is something a serious coder can not accept. Things don't just have to seem to work, but it has to be done right.

Hi, need some help here =)

What I have now:



My config:



Could somebody please tell me what I need to change in conf, so that coverart in chronflow and in playlist where in the same order?

Sorting in Playlist is done by %path_sort%

Chronial, do you have any plans to make coverflow as an element for default ui...? It could be a dream...

That is not possible.

do you mean ever or until sdk is released?... im kinda hopin that after sdk is released i would be able to use your component in dui

Not sure if this is the thread to ask, but does anyone know if there's a way to get foo_chronflow to source the id3 album art tags, like foo_uie_albumart does, instead of looking for an image file in the directory? The component is seamless otherwise. Thanks in advance!

Hi Chronial

Could you add an option to always use a specific playlist? I love your component but don't like how it messes up my playlists

Hi, maybe a bug report here on latest Chronflow version.

Sometimes (rarely but from time to time) the displayed "Album title" information doesn't match the preview !

Here's a self-explanatory image. Look how the two generated strings are different :



FYI the correct string is the upper one, so the green string is incorrect.

But that's not all ! I'm using exactly the same titleformat string for "Album source > Sources" and "Display > Album title" (for testing purposes). That means the green (incorrect) string is also the path where Coverflow is trying to find the current cover. So Coverflow just can't find the cover (as you can see in the pic), even if the path (preview string) appears to be correct.

Reloading sources won't work. Sometimes a foobar restart will solve the problem... and sometimes not.

At first look the problem seems to come from Coverflow, and it seems to affect both the "Album title" displayed string and the "Sources" handling for cover finding. Chronial, what do you think ?
(I can provide the used titleformat string, but I don't think it will change anything)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT - maybe a hint for Chronial : I'm not sure, but the problem seems to come when the same artwork exists at two different paths (at least it was the case for all three problematic artwork I've checked). Maybe it causes Chronflow to mess around with paths ?
Deleting one of the two artwork solves the problem sometimes (and sometimes not). But it's not a valid solution for me, since I sometimes need to have the same artwork at several paths (e.g. an album at a path beginning with "LOSSLESS" and some rare bonus tracks of the same album at a path beginning with "LOSSY").

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT2 : and a small feature request : could Chronflow generate a text report of all missing artwork ?
Preferably with all the Source Paths where Chronflow expected to find artwork but didn't.
e.g. :
Artist 1 - Album 1 : Source Path 1
Artist 2 - Album 2 : Source Path 2
Artist 3 - Album 3 : Source Path 3
Etc.
Thanks in advance.

From my experience I'd say the error is on your side. That kind of bug can't just be caused only on one PC.

The preview is generated from a random Track - it is not supposed to macht the "green string".

And as said above I'm pretty sure the second problem is also caused by a mistake on your side. You should realise that the Album Title string is generated again instantly, but the Cover Source only gets refreshed when you press "Reload Sources".


Only one (random) Track per Album is used to generate the cover image path. I guess your problem is that you combine tracks to albums that result in different cover paths.

Thanks Chronial. I think I understand what's happening now. And in that case, I'd say that my problem (if we don't want to call it a bug) may simply come from the way Chronflow handles covers (so there would be no error on my side either).

Why ? Because you've just said it : only one (random) track per album is used. So why a random track ? Couldn't it be simply the "now playing" track for instance ? (when there is one of course). And random ONLY if there is no "now playing" track.

I'm pretty sure that is what's happening in my case : I am playing track A on album A, but Chronflow tries to find cover for (random) track B on album A, while track B is stored elsewhere on my HD (because track A might be lossless and track B might be lossy for instance) and track B doesn't have a cover (or has a different cover) while track A has a cover.

So I don't know if we can call it a bug or not... but maybe there's some room for improvement in a future Chronflow version.

Thanks again for this beautiful component.

PS : what do you think of my feature request ? That text log would definitely help me a lot.

Wouldn't that lead to having to reload every cover every time you changed track?

I guess only Chronial can tell : he's the only one to know how Chronflow works.

I'm just pointing out what we could maybe call a limitation of current (and already excellent of course) Chronflow version :

- for example if we have a compilation of greatest hits, but we decide that instead of displaying ONE cover for the whole album (compilation covers are often ugly) we want to display one different cover per album track (the CDS covers for instance).

- or if we have a "logical" album whose tracks are "physically" distributed in several places on a HD (e.g. an album mixing lossless tracks and lossy tracks, if we have decided to have a "lossless" directory for all lossless tracks and a separate "lossy" directory for all lossy tracks), and if we want covers to be different for the lossless part and the lossy part (for whatever reason - e.g. to emphasize the fact that a given track is lossy).

Maybe Chronial can find a way that doesn't need to reload every cover ?

Just my two cents.

Hi Chronial,

could we expect an update of Chronflow that allow (option?) to bind the flow with a specific playlist or the active playlist ?

i always miss a simple 'Play' action for double-click on a cover.

Thanx for giving us news about planned releases if some (i hope so )

I second this. This is the only feature that i feel is missing from chronflow.
Any news on updates would be great.

Exactly. That's the technical side of the reason why it's not gonna happen

So here is the conceptual side of the reason why it's not gonna happen: That just doesn't make any sense. One Album -> one cover. It's just that simple. A cover display plugin should not offer any means to fix ugly covers.

You will have to think about a cover storage method that fixes this (e.g. storing covers in c:\music\albumcovers\%album artist% - %album%.jpg).

See above

That just doesn't fit with foobar's concept: foobar is a playlist-bound player. There is no way (in concept, technically there is one) to play songs that are not part of a playlist. Live with it or switch to another player.
You can use "replace playlist" or "add to new playlist" to have the album playing instantly.

Yes, you can, but not in the near future.

thanx for anwser, but no good news ... what a shame.

Thanks chronial. I understand your choices and the subsequent limitations (even if I would have done things differently, but that's easy to say afterwards). No problem.

What about the following option ? "Single-click on the highlighted cover --> Shows the cover in full resolution inside a separate window" (whose max height and screen position would be user-definable via the prefs). That would make Chronflow the best artwork-browsing component ever ! (for me of course)

And please try to think about the "covers not found" text log (you haven't replied about it yet so I don't know if you plan on implementing it).

Thanks again for making Chronflow such an enjoyable experience.

Hello ! Is it possible to configure foo_chronflow to look like Graphical Browser (foo_uie_graphical_browser.dll)?

When I try to set either left or middle-click to "Add to playlist," I get no response.

Meaning that once I set the chronflow preference for middle-click (or left-click, or enter) to "Add to playlist" or "Add to playback queue," nothing happens when I middle-click (or left-click, or push enter) on an album cover in chronflow. I can, however, set it to "Replace playlist" and it works flawlessly. Do you have any idea why this is or how I could fix it?

Wouldn't it be possible to add this 'Play' function, when you updated chronflow with the feature to bind it to a specific playlist? Then it would be excactly the way you described how foobar2k's concept works (that is playlist-bound), isn't it?

Request, stroke for text.
I enjoy having black text, but its hard to see it when theres a dark image if the text is black. If you could add an option to allow the letters to be stroked, then the text would be a lot more visible.

I don't believe this is possible . This must be caused by some other component.

That's correct - you understood the concept of foobar. This feature is already implemented in my development build, but this won't be released for some time.

sorry - not gonna happen. My Graphics library (GDI+) does not support stroked text.

Is there a way to make Chronflow display the first cover when it starts rather than the last one it was displaying when you closed Foobar?

are you sure?
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/05/05/gdiplus.html
http://www.bobpowell.net/texteffects.htm
http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Develo...04-10/0267.html
http://www.dotnet-guide.com/graphic-device...erface-gdi.html

no.

no . Added to todo list .

Could there be?

It would be nice to choose that it either remembers the last cover it displayed, OR it starts from the beginning again

Could you add it to your TO DO list too please?

Won't do this for 2 reasons:
1. I don't see any serious use for this
2. chronflow does not define a "beginning" - your collection is a circle with no beginning or end.

If you want to jump to whatever you think is the beginning you can just use Find As You Type for that.

Yes, I hear what you are saying but I'm using Br3tt's Ibiza config and both of the playlists and album lists re-set to the first alphabetical cover when Foobar is started which makes Chronflow look out of sync. I just thought it would be nice to have the option to re-set Chronflow too so it matched

Thinking about this, could a command be sent on start-up that puts Chronflow back to the alphabetical beginning every time Foobar is opened? Maybe this is a question for Br3tt...

Ok I've been trying to get chronflow started since I've been trying to configure Ibiza by Br3tt. Whenever I try to start chronflow though (even in a dockable panel) I get an error message. The message reads 'Textloader: Can't set Pixelformat.' And after hitting Ok it says 'Img Texture Leak: <number that keeps rising with every try till restarting foobar>.

Any ideas what the problem might be?

Edit: Nevermind the problem seems to be obsolete gfx drivers for my x700 Mobility. Thx Asus for nothing

The problem is your graphics card or its drivers. Update your drivers - if that doesn't work, your out of luck.

Thanks. I found a way to modify the regular Catalyst 8.6 driver and abandon this 3 year old legacy driver crap. Works like a charm now

Hi. Almost same here. When I start foobar a window appear saying: "foo_chronflow error: couldn't get a hardware accelerated PixelFormat. My graphic card is up to date. Any suggestion Chronial? Thanks.

I think I've encountered one nasty bug last week or so.

After some heavy usage over span of several hours (don't ask) Chronflow runs out of video memory (I guess) and starts showing blank grey covers, then crashes after a little while.
The first time I've encountered this behavior, it just crashed with error message with something about bad allocation, without any crash logs.
The second time I tried to shut foobar down manually, as soon as grey covers appeared. No such luck: http://bayimg.com/NaJahAabP
After restart, all playlists disappeared (playback stats were saved, though). Haven't used CF since.

GPU is Radeon HD 3850.
Performance settings: 4 passes Supersampling, cache size 100, max tex size 512, priority below normal, texture compression and empty cache when minimized are enabled, VSync + try to hit VBlank.

This EXACT same thing happened to me. I didn't get any errors, and didn't think it was Chronflow related, but now that you mention it, I had just incorporated it into my layout view so it was visible 100% of the time (instead of switching to it). My computer just started to buzz up really fast (as if the CPU was being eaten). Then when switching to another song itself once the previous one was over, everything on screen froze up (the song remained playing) and my entire computer shut itself down.

All my playlists, and recent ratings / playcounts / layout mods were all lost. I was quite mad, but it hasn't happened since (after all, one of the changes I made to my layout was adding chronflow to it, and that change had been erased).

I wonder if Chronflow was my culprit also ? I was just browsing the net playing games and on forums and stuff when it happened.

wtf? oO
That's nasty. I have no idea what could actually be causing this, since I'm not actually doing anything that might be causing this.

Could I have some more details about your setup (both of you)? CPU, OS, GPU.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Windows XP SP2
HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ 3 TurboX with ATI Catalyst 8.6

Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz
Windows XP Home SP2 - Direct X 9.0c
1 GB of RAM
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200

Thank you for a great plugin! It works perfect... almost

The case is that I get some strange multicolour lines while browsing through my albums:
http://i36.tinypic.com/1fzn7b.jpg

It does not depend on the cover that is chosen:
http://i34.tinypic.com/2s0xr89.jpg

The bug is also present on the fullscreen:
http://i38.tinypic.com/1z66rd0.jpg

However, it disappears when the screen is splitted into two parts:
http://i33.tinypic.com/10xcy6q.jpg

When moving from album to album, the lines are dancing on the whole panel area that is a little bit annoying after a while. What is interesting, thay'll never get in the same position, again
They move also after every mouse click.

Furthermore, the problem is visible only on Albumart, Default and Vinyl presets. On the rest it disappear.

Where is the probable problem? May it be the fault of the graphic card? Or maybe it might be solved by the software modification? I haven't seen it in any screens provided here nor at the Polish support of foobar2000 :|

Btw, does anyone know how to get rid of this rectangles at the end of each song title? I guess it is font connected but I may be wrong...

About the nasty bug: I can't find what might be causing this atm. But if you encounter this bug again, you should kill foobar via taskmanager - that should save your playlists.

@Amfidiusz
This is definitely not a chronflow bug. This is either caused by your hosting component or more likely by your graphics card. Try updating your drivers.

Hi I'm getting these two errors from foo_chronflow when I tried importing IBIZA by Br3tt:

TexLoader: Couldn't share Display Lists
ImgTexture leak: 2

And foobar2000 crashes. I've subsequently discarded IBIZA and tried using chronflow stand alone but I get similar errors.

Here are some of my specifications:

Intel Core2 Duo CPU T8300
Vista Home Premium 32 bit
Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family

I updated the drivers for the video card, but to no avail.

edit: I reinstalled foobar2k and loaded columns_ui and chronflow only. The error I get when I select chronflow panel on live edit is:

TexLoader: Couldn't share Display Lists
ImgTexture leak: 2/4/6/8/10...ad infinitum the more I select chronflow panel

It's also doing this now when I boot up foobar2k.

Can Chronflow update album covers without having to click on Reload Sources all the time?

@Equiether
I'm sorry, but I guess I can't help you - your GPU does not support chronflow.

@lewis22
No, not automatically (it is planned). But there is a hotkey - you can press F5 when you have added new files (click into the chronflow window, press F5).