[Updated! New Version] VisMP3 Media Library / Visualizer

[arpaagent]

Hey Everyone!  This is pretty much my first release of anything PSP, so please do enjoy!

Nickname: arpaagent
Projet name : VisMP3
From : USA
Division : PSP APP
Original enter : YES
Support Motion : NO
In last NEO Compo this project have won in the top 10 : NO

Project description: 
VisMP3 is an alternative to the lackluster built-in music player on the PSP.  Although it only supports decoding of mp3 formatted files at this time, VisMP3 offers some important features that Sony could not fit into flash0, namely a media library that organizes mp3s (regardless of folder setup)as well as playlist functionality.  Also, as indicated by the name, VisMP3 demonstrates several different types of visualizations for a visual as well as audio experience.  The Fireworks visualization is a MUST SEE.

SCREENSHOTS down a few posts.  Check them out.

Features:
 * Developed for 3.x kernel (I am using 3.72), Works for Phat and Slim
 * Automatic detection of MP3 files in a folder and its subfolders (specified in config)
 * Hardware decoding of mp3 files
 * Parsing of ID3v1 and ID3v2 information used to build media library
 * Media Library accessed through Artist, Album, and Genre categories
 * Creation of playlists from media library items, easy to add full albums or single songs
 * Playlists are number 0-98 and can save/load from the program
 * Skinnable (background image and UI colors chosen while running)
 * Supports Sony remote control for playback control
 * Smart Random (no repeats) and Linear playback of playlists
 * Four different visualizers (for now...will be more to come), all with runtime adjustable properties:
      * Spectrum Analyzer
      * "Boom Box" (boxes flying across the screen with visually stimulating "thumps"
      * Fireworks that explode with the beats of the song, with colors correspdonding to frequency ranges
      * Oscilloscope-style view of sample data
 * Allows background visualizations while navigating media library, playlist, etc
 * Font support for loading pgfs (not available to the user yet, but uses system fonts to look nice)
 * Also supports simple bitmap style font for faster rendering

Future Plans
 * Full support for skinning and themes (including rearrangeable UI parts and fonts)
 * Addition of supported formats (audio + video)
 * More, Better, Cooler visualizations
 * Better playlist editing and functionality


Edited:

VisMP3v0.1.2 Released!!
Hey Everyone!  I have still been updating my program and wanted to drop a new release on the Forum.  I know it isn't valid for the contest, but I though some of you might be interested in an updated.  It fixes several bugs and adds a few very useful options (for full changes download and see the readme):

Important Additions
 * .zip includes a theme I made with a background and all settings included.
 * Added control of CPU clock speed.  Music plays down to 19 Mhz!! (for cpu speed, the bus speed goes down to 95, that's the lowest allowed).  Now you can get more out of your PSP's battery!!  If you are using a low clock speed, be sure to use simple fonts with no background or the UI will be slow.
 * Simple text now has larger version to match pgf font (for list Title, etc)
 * Color choice for Fonts now shows a color box instead of changing the item color, which makes it easier to read and also see the color
 * Ability to change the media library directory from within the Library options menu
Important Bugfixes
 * Playlist now advances correctly after text has faded.
 * Playlist control keys no longer affect fade state
 * Fixed some bugs in the playlist advancement algorithm
 * Changing background while drawing background no longer crashes program

A couple shots from the new program

What my theme looks like.


Showing how the clock is set.

Download:

Latest Version!!!
VisMP3v0.1.2

Original Entry (VisMP3v0.1)

ZIP file has been released!  Please everyone try it out and let me know what you think (good OR bad).  Be sure to check out the readme in the zip.

Just extract the VisMP3 file into your ms0:/PSP/GAME directory, put some mp3z (would be good if they have id3 info in them) in ms0:/MUSIC and you should be good to go!!  See the readme for additional info.

[MK2k]

Ok, screenshots please

[Lastad]

sounds pretty impressive and i love that you implemented a shuffle of all songs seing as there is no program that does it.
irshell only does folders .. hopefully it's for real

[arpaagent]

I'll see if I can get a few screenshots up now that I have finally got my submission in!

Here ya go.  Keep in mind that this stuff will look MUCH BETTER when it's in motion on the PSP's slow LCD screen.   So single frames don't really do the fireworks justice especially.


Shot from the Media Library Tab, showing list of artists.



Some fireworks exploding to the sound of music (gotta see them in motion).


   


Oscilloscope view with pretty colors


       
Random Fireworks going off while navigating other menus



Craziness with a background image and a couple visualizers going at once.

   
Examples of some moving "boom boxes" as I like to call them.


   
Spectrum analyzers.

Have fun!!!
 

[nesianstyles]

Looks great
Just an idea, but it would be awesome if you could lower the cpu clock in your program to save battery.

[arpaagent]

Yea, I was planning on it but didn't get around to it for this release.  I'll certainly add that as one of my To-Do's.  I'd probably also have to disable the visualizations whenever the clock is set lower, but I'm sure that would be ok if you are going for max battery life.

[lansingone]

i have used alot of music programs for the PSP. and this is the best one out of all of them, stable, supports sorting of artst and other tags, and has visuals. my feture wish list would include album art support, and support for this touch screen http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8448 . this musc player alone supporting the touch screen would make it a must buy for me.

[arpaagent]

lansingone:

Thanks for the props, I've worked hard on this one to make it useable, and I'm still going to be working on it quite a bit to improve it further.  I can add the album art to my To-Do list, hopefully get it in there sometime.

As far as the touch screen goes, do you have one of these connected up to your PSP?  I am curious about this and had not heard of it actually.  I'm not even sure how it would interface into the PSP hardware...let me know if you have any more info about it.

Thanks!

[lansingone]

i found it on that site recently. i looked for more info on it, and found that it is only a touch screen in the size for a PSP. so it needs a PCB board to take info from the touch screen and translate it to X.Y cordinants for the serial port or USB. then all you would need is to make your program have a invisible mouse, and have the touch screen act as the analog stick. then when you press one spot on the screen it would emulate the analog stick being held long enough to move to that spot and pressing X (or whatever other button used for click)

[arpaagent]

Hey guys.  Just letting everyone that is interested know that I updated VisMP3 to version 0.1.2, fixed a few bugs and added some desired features.

See the original post, which I edited to add details about the new version.  Unfortunately this version won't be used for the contest, but hopefully you guys will make use of it!

I'll still be working on it so if anyone has any more suggestions I'll gladly listen to them.

[cory1492]

I'm technically illiterate where it comes to sound processing (aside from install it and use it hardware wise), but does the PSP have what it would take to add some of the things I've found lacking in other players that in my mind go along with spectrum analysis, things like auto volume leveling (one song louder than the next) or bass/mid/treble style equalization?

The reason I ask is, it looks great and since I've always wondered how a PSP would do as a head replacement in a car system... put the two together and

[arpaagent]

cory:

I agree with you that a PSP would make a great in-car System, especially with such a nice screen.  The auto-volume leveling feature might not be too difficult, but it would require the song to be analyzed prior to being played (which means loading it from memory stick, which means a small delay)...some mp3s may even have the song level encoded into the metadata in one of the song headers.  I'm not sure about that, but if that were the case then it would make it much simpler.  Even if the song had to be analyzed, that information regarding the audio level of the song could be stored after it was analyzed once, so after the first time it was played, there wouldn't be any delays prior to playing (unless the media library needed to be reconstructed for some reason).  A special id3 frame could even be written to the file so it would always be there, but I'm not a big fan of writing into people's mp3s for specific program purposes.

As far as the equalizations go, I am pretty sure that could be done as well.  The PSP can handle playing back tracks with full software decoding with libmad (an mp3 decoding library), and I believe that it has some sort of equalizer support, although I haven't had personal experience with this.  Since the PSP has the hardware facilities that can speed up decoding mp3s, this is the way to go, but the question then would be determining how to apply the equalizer to the music data.  I'm not sure if the mp3 data stream itself can be manipulated to achieve an "equalized" effect, or if it is better to post-process the final samples.  The spectrum analyzer is essentially the frequency representation of the music (using the final samples), but the question would be if the PSP can handle doing that (and then adjust frequency levels, and then converting back to time domain), for every sample that is output...I'd have to think about this and figure out if the numbers add up.

Anyways...an equalizer would be a cool function to have, and I'll consider it for a future release.  Depending on what it involves though, I can't promise it will be anytime soon.

Cheers!

[cory1492]

I figured it would be more complicated than using some hardware API (if it was something that could be done via purpose built hardware they'd have had it in the system menu by now), but thanks for considering the suggestion.

Something a bit more realistic that occurs to me as a suggestion would be some form of time display (time of day), be it a toggle-able digit field or a more ambitious spectrum based on time (time instead of boxes? kinda corny... a very large alpha mask of the time which comes up instead of the display dimming entirely? dunno, it's your app and your ideas so far have trumped most of what I could have come up with)

[surisimi]

Hey Everyone!  This is pretty much my first release of anything PSP, so please do enjoy!

Nickname: arpaagent
Projet name : VisMP3
From : USA
Division : PSP APP
Original enter : YES
Support Motion : NO
In last NEO Compo this project have won in the top 10 : NO

Project description: 
VisMP3 is an alternative to the lackluster built-in music player on the PSP.  Although it only supports decoding of mp3 formatted files at this time, VisMP3 offers some important features that Sony could not fit into flash0, namely a media library that organizes mp3s (regardless of folder setup)as well as playlist functionality.  Also, as indicated by the name, VisMP3 demonstrates several different types of visualizations for a visual as well as audio experience.  The Fireworks visualization is a MUST SEE.

SCREENSHOTS down a few posts.  Check them out.

Features:
 * Developed for 3.x kernel (I am using 3.72), Works for Phat and Slim
 * Automatic detection of MP3 files in a folder and its subfolders (specified in config)
 * Hardware decoding of mp3 files
 * Parsing of ID3v1 and ID3v2 information used to build media library
 * Media Library accessed through Artist, Album, and Genre categories
 * Creation of playlists from media library items, easy to add full albums or single songs
 * Playlists are number 0-98 and can save/load from the program
 * Skinnable (background image and UI colors chosen while running)
 * Supports Sony remote control for playback control
 * Smart Random (no repeats) and Linear playback of playlists
 * Four different visualizers (for now...will be more to come), all with runtime adjustable properties:
      * Spectrum Analyzer
      * "Boom Box" (boxes flying across the screen with visually stimulating "thumps"
      * Fireworks that explode with the beats of the song, with colors correspdonding to frequency ranges
      * Oscilloscope-style view of sample data
 * Allows background visualizations while navigating media library, playlist, etc
 * Font support for loading pgfs (not available to the user yet, but uses system fonts to look nice)
 * Also supports simple bitmap style font for faster rendering

Future Plans
 * Full support for skinning and themes (including rearrangeable UI parts and fonts)
 * Addition of supported formats (audio + video)
 * More, Better, Cooler visualizations
 * Better playlist editing and functionality


Edited:

VisMP3v0.1.2 Released!!
Hey Everyone!  I have still been updating my program and wanted to drop a new release on the Forum.  I know it isn't valid for the contest, but I though some of you might be interested in an updated.  It fixes several bugs and adds a few very useful options (for full changes download and see the readme):

Important Additions
 * .zip includes a theme I made with a background and all settings included.
 * Added control of CPU clock speed.  Music plays down to 19 Mhz!! (for cpu speed, the bus speed goes down to 95, that's the lowest allowed).  Now you can get more out of your PSP's battery!!  If you are using a low clock speed, be sure to use simple fonts with no background or the UI will be slow.
 * Simple text now has larger version to match pgf font (for list Title, etc)
 * Color choice for Fonts now shows a color box instead of changing the item color, which makes it easier to read and also see the color
 * Ability to change the media library directory from within the Library options menu
Important Bugfixes
 * Playlist now advances correctly after text has faded.
 * Playlist control keys no longer affect fade state
 * Fixed some bugs in the playlist advancement algorithm
 * Changing background while drawing background no longer crashes program

A couple shots from the new program

What my theme looks like.


Showing how the clock is set.

Download:

Latest Version!!!
VisMP3v0.1.2

Original Entry (VisMP3v0.1)

ZIP file has been released!  Please everyone try it out and let me know what you think (good OR bad).  Be sure to check out the readme in the zip.

Just extract the VisMP3 file into your ms0:/PSP/GAME directory, put some mp3z (would be good if they have id3 info in them) in ms0:/MUSIC and you should be good to go!!  See the readme for additional info.

Hey there VisMP3 isn't working with my firmware on my PSP, I have the latest firmware version 3.93.  Readme doesn't help me anywhere on that.  Do you think you could possible help me or possible upgrade VisMP3 please.

[arpaagent]

surisimi:

I wasn't aware that it had any problems with 3.9x, but I'll look into it.  I have been developing on some old 3.7x firmware.  In the next day or two I'll take a look at it, upgrade my firmware, and see what the deal is.  Thanks for letting me know.

Cheers.