MortPlayer

Just to let you know, there's a beta of MortPlayer in the Android Market ("MortPlayer Music (beta)").

Don't expect it to be the 50" thick swiss army knife MortPlayer for WM became.
Some features still need to be added (sleep timer, caching database, ...), but mostly I want to keep it simple to use.
So, what you get with "MortPlayer Music" is a simple, folder based player. No "favorites", just a selectable main folder. No playlist support, because that just caused confusion about the current mode and when to save. (However, there might come support for existing playlist files that determine the order of files in the same folder.) No special audio book support - but I plan to offer a separate "MortPlayer Audio Books", which of course will have it's own main directory.

What it does offer so far:
- Simple folder based navigation with folder skip buttons and hierarchical selection (tap cover)
- Selection of current track (tap track information, you can switch folder from there as well)
- Supports all common album art storages: ID3 (currently buggy), cover.jpg, folder.jpg, AlbumArt.jpg
- Shuffle and repeat modes as known from WM version
- Restores previously selected track
- Widgets (Cover = play/pause, track information = "remote control" popup)

What's planned:
- Cache directory structure and tag data in database (except covers, don't want to clutter the device storage...)
- Show tag data in track list
- Some eye candy (e.g. animations, background images)
- "As next track" option in track list
- Sleep timer, maybe alarm clock
- Audio book version (separate app)
- Version history dialog
- PayPal button in Help/About
- Different main screens (selection or skinning, let's see what's possible...)

What won't be implemented (soon):
- Equalizer, effects, other formats. I use Android's playback methods, and Android doesn't offer them...
- Streaming. Maybe some time as separate app, but I think there are already better solutions for that.

Maybe, some day:
- Playlist support (read only, only for files in same folder)
- Temporary folder selection (play some folder(s) not in main directory, don't save/cache anything for it)
- Tag based navigation
- Search function
- Playlist version (similar to MortPlayer for WM in playlist mode)

ssbfalcon said:

Question though... does it support crossfading or gapless audio?

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No, afaik the SDK doesn't allow that (at least didn't find something). (OK, maybe I could start a 2nd MediaPlayer instance shortly before track ends... but I think that'd be pretty hard to time correctly...)
But the gaps are pretty small, at least on my Milestone. I had some intro / song follow-ups where I barely noticed the track change.

discine said:

Its a very good idea, to make a good player for android with a good features list.

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I try to focus a bit more on usability than on features for this one. The WM version became "a bit" bloated and complicated over time...

the_fish said:

however what i (and i guess a big part of the community) prefers is a player with a library like the default android player.

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Sorry, don't think this will be anytime soon. IMHO there are enough alternatives for that, even the new one from Androi 2.1 probably would too soon become a reasonable alternative.

- Nice library with SIMPLE listview, not extended listview as in default music player

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What's wrong with extended listviews? It's not harder to select an item and saves space. I was thinking about it myself.

- Tabs instead of those buttons for Artist, Album, etc.

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If I add tags browsing, of course this will be the case.

- Backgroundservice that prohibits the player from being crashed when running in the background

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If the player window isn't visible, only the background service is running. If Android decides to kill the service, there's not much to stop it from doing so - with all bad side effects. All I can do is restart the service when it's required...

- Theme Support(?)

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Pretty hard to do while maintaining flexible adjustment to different screen sizes. I was thinking about some selectable themes (i.e. colors, button styles, etc.) and layouts (i.e. where is what) and selectable background images in a later version, but of course that's not even close to skinning...

Widget / maybe even LockScreen plugin? (dunno if that is doable)

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Widget's there. I think there's some tool to add a Widget to the LockScreen, but I don't think that's a good idea anyway. Just imagine you start the player accidentally in office...

P.S.: Shouldn't be too hard as Android has a MediaService that recognizes and puts the whole Music in a library, so all you would have to do is an interface for that service.

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Yeah, I know that service. It sucks (imho). It seems pure luck when it detects new files, has several bugs in tag reading (some of my files were shown with weird chinese texts), doesn't offer a quick and easy way to get the tags to a given file, ... That's why I use own ID3 and database routines.

sthoeft said:

Please do also a decent Audiobookplayer because the players availible aren't even worth to mention.

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As told, it's planned. However, I can only support encodings Android supports, so no Audible and the like...

Branwen said:

Would like it to maintain functionality first- coverflow etc. will be nice, but keep it usable first

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Think so myself.

archboy69 said:

It shows that you can make app easy to use and still pretty to look at!

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I guess nobody would've said that about the WM version...
Well, it's a better system and learned from some errors in the past...


Attached is a preview of the next update. It contains quite some changes (database, sleep timer, headset support, some bugfixes, ...), so it'd be nice if it's a bit tested before I upload a worse than current version to Market...

Next try... I think this one should be stable and fast enough to publish it in Market. But better safe than lots of 1 star ratings...

Bugfix, now folder navigation should work again.

rickylcp said:

Little suggestion, are A2DP and AVRCP possible in ur masterpiece?

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Of course. A2DP is done by Android anyway, and AVRCP handling is quite easy (once you discovered MEDIA_BUTTON means all media related buttons...). I wish it was half as easy and stable with WM...
However, on HTC hero you need "headset button enabler" (in Market) because it doesn't send the correct "intents".

Update: New update available in Market.

alapapa said:

EDIT: I found what seems to me like a bug (or at least an unexpected feature...). If I touch the widget it brings up the remote control pane and functions properly on my G1 (cm4.2.13). If i touch "Show main player" it does. From here, if I hit the home button, the next time I touch the widget, I get the Main intent instead of the remote. If I hit the "back" button from the Main player, the widget again shows the remote control pane as expected.

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I know, but I didn't find any workaround to this weird Android behaviour.
Main trouble is Android's Activity handling. An "Activity" is similar to what you'd call window or dialog in Windows. In Android, only one activity is running per app, i.e. if you move from main screen to folder selection, the main screen activity is stopped, and then restarted when you return. Exactly the same happens when you move to the home screen, get a call, open a notification, etc. Only exception is the back button, where the activity is "finalized" (similar to a "real close", but still cached for reuse).
It seems Android doesn't like to start a new activity (the remote screen) when another one of the same app is still running.
I could "finalize" the player at other events as well, but the only ones invoked when pressing the Home button are the same as when you enter e.g. folder selection. So if I'd finalize the main view there, returning from folder selection would return to a no more existing activity, i.e. the app isn't visible anymore. Not exactly what you'd want...

Sorry for the long technical explanation, but I it's a bit hard to put Android's handling in better words...