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1

Preview Build Discussion / Re: WACUP - First experiences, bugs, wish list

« on: January 30, 2024, 06:49:27 PM »

1) When you say "metadata from the local library" do you mean the "Media library"? I have deactivated it completely and this could explain why it works differently for you, if the changes you made in the next build have nothing to do with it. With Winamp I can load the playlists however I want, they are always loaded correctly.

>> Update <<

Okay, I started all over again with a fresh WACUP full installation. And lo and behold, the playlists are also loading correctly. So I deactivated plug-in after plug-in to see which one was to blame, but it worked all the time. But then I realized the difference: Shuffle! Shuffle is practically always on for me, if I turn it off then I can load all playlists just like in Winamp.





Something seems to work differently with the shuffle in WACUP than in Winamp. Firstly, the loading of the playlist and secondly, WACUP (if you start WACUP with a *.m3u8 file and shuffle is on) always plays song #1, which I assume should not be the case.


2) I've been using Winamp "since forever" but I have no idea what's going on under the hood. And I've only known WACUP for a short time and therefore know much less about WACUP than about Winamp. I am only reporting as a beginner WACUP user what I have noticed. The way it is for me at the moment, setting a search limit is useless for me. Even if the idea is quite clever, I lose the ability to scroll quickly.

I already said in post #1 that it would probably be difficult to change the plug-in so that both are possible. The cursor would have to start on the current song and then distribute the limit up and down. Then even a limit of 100 would certainly be enough. But it's not so tragic. The songs are only on a SATA SSD but the search is still quite fast. But Slower than in Winamp, by the way.

But WACUP isn't finished yet, so I'll just wait for the final release!


3) About performance and timers: Here too, of course I had no idea that there were so many dependencies. My Winamp always runs in "Windowshade Mode" and all animations are always completely deactivated via the skin option, so I only see the effects of the timer in Winamp on the scrolling song ticker and the spectrum analyzer.

Regarding CPU utilization: This varies depending on the CPU, of course. I only have the values of a 24 thread CPU at hand. However, Winamp is also used on an old 4-core with 8 threads, where the difference is much more noticeable. Winamp and WACUP are compared with the original Modern Skin when playing the same song. The animations are deactivated on both and both run in Windowshade mode.

For a better understanding: 100% / 24 threads = 4.16% would be one thread.

@60fps/16.6ms:
Winamp: 0,19% (min) 0,25% (max) WITHOUT Scrolling Song Title.
WACUP: 0,24% (min) 0,29% (max) WITHOUT Scrolling Song Title.

Winamp: 0,21% (min) 0,31% (max) WITH Scrolling Song Title.
WACUP: 0,25% (min) 0,32% (max) WITH Scrolling Song Title.

@30fps/33.3ms:
Winamp: 0,17% (min) 0,22% (max) WITHOUT Scrolling Song Title.
WACUP: 0,22% (min) 0,29% (max) WITHOUT Scrolling Song Title. << Almost the same @60fps ??

Winamp: 0,17% (min) 0,24% (max) WITH Scrolling Song Title.
WACUP: 0,25% (min) 0,32% (max) WITH Scrolling Song Title.

Hidden (ALT+W):
Winamp: 0,09% (min) 0,12% (max)
WACUP: 0,18%  (min) 0,24% (max)

@15fps/66.6ms (my winamp default):
Winamp: 0,09%  (min) 0,12% (max) WITHOUT Scrolling Song.
Winamp: 0,14%  (min) 0,20% (max) WITH Scrolling Song.

Interesting that if you hide the main window and only show the tray icon (ALT+W), WACUP uses twice as much CPU as Winamp. The values seem ridiculous, of course, but this is due to the number of threads. Nevertheless, the utilization is significantly higher than with Winamp. But if the switch to 30fps in WACUP doesn't really help, then a switch to 15fps probably won't either. Apparently WACUP simply works differently than Winamp.


Oh, one more thing: When I unpacked the fresh installation and clicked on the "Disable Local Library plug-in..." the following dialog appeared:



I think there are a few typos in there

2

Preview Build Discussion / Re: WACUP - First experiences, bugs, wish list

« on: January 23, 2024, 04:51:17 PM »

Hi and thank you for answering!

Playlist m3u/m3u8 Loading

I've been trying to replicate all 3 of these but so far haven't. I'm either not following things or there's something else going on that I'm missing which maybe is even down to stripping the install back a lot as you've mentioned in another part or maybe if you've got wacup running in legacy mode.

Okay, I have created three new test playlists and tested everything again. WACUP runs in portable mode (thanks for that by the way!) and also not in legacy mode. And for the following tests I used the Classic base skin. The skin I usually use is called "Winamp Modern" and is installed with WACUP (full install).

In the animation you can see the following: "Metallica - Lux Æterna" is currently playing. Now I load the Lindemann playlist. As you can see, "Lux Æterna" by Metallica is now at position 1 in the playlist. When I play this (by double-clicking), the playlist is updated with the Lindemann song. Next I select "Lindemann - Knebel" and then load the Metallica playlist again. And now "Knebel" by Lindemann is in position 1 and not "72 Seasons" by Metallica as saved in the playlist. This also works with the PLAY button and not just with the EJECT button.



The following happens in the next animation: "Metallica - Lux Æterna" is playing again. I press STOP and clear the current playlist (CTRL+N). Then I load the Lindemann playlist and instead of seeing the Lindemann song at position 1, I see the path of the file. Here as well: only playing the song updates it in the playlist. This also works with PLAY and EJECT.



Regarding the problem with the missing shuffle at the start, I don't know exactly what I should do wrong there. I have a test playlist with 1200 songs. I save this as an m3u8 file. When I quit WACUP and start the playlist, WACUP starts and song 1 is always playing and never another one. The Shuffle Inspector confirms this. By the way, I have deactivated "Preserve shuffle table between sessions". However, activating it does not change the behavior.




Jump to File Box

I can't currently replicate the search field not being focused on initial loading under classic or modern skins & whether it's being skinned or not.

There are new findings regarding the problems with the "Jump to File" box. I was able to narrow down the problem.

First of all, here is an animation of the "Jump to File" box without a limit. I start at song 500 of 1200. Then I open the box and can scroll easily using the arrow keys. That's how it should be.



Here is the animation of what happens when you set a limit (100 in the example). I start again at song 500 of 1200. As you can see, the cursor starts at song 1 and not at song 500 as before.

However, I have just found out that the cursor does start at song 500 if the limit is higher (or equally high) than the song in the playlist. In this example, the limit must be exactly 500. However, I can't scroll any further down because then only songs 1 to 500 are displayed. With a playlist of 20000 songs as an example, I can never know where the song I'm looking for will be, so setting a limit is useless if I don't want to do without fast scrolling, otherwise I risk the song being higher in the playlist than my set limit.



If this option is activated, nothing is displayed at all. However, this could be intentional in this case. Although I would have expected it to start with the current song anyway.




Performance

That's why my handling ended up as just a basic high/low toggle & I always knew that it was never going to be the best fit for some but it's the choice I've made.

And a High/Low/VeryLow (60/30/15fps) Toggle is not an option? Well, as I said, the CPU load is very low, but it is higher than under Winamp. However, I had no idea that there was so much more going on under the hood. I can only really see it in the scrolling song ticker and the spectrum analyzer.

About x64: Okay, I wasn't aware of that, I "just discovered" WACUP you could say. But good to know.

Okay then, thank you for taking the time to answer me 

3

Preview Build Discussion / WACUP - First experiences, bugs, wish list

« on: January 19, 2024, 03:49:49 PM »

Hi, I've been using Winamp practically every day since 1998 and version 5.666 has been running for more than 10 years now, even under Windows 11 there are no problems. Well, none except one, Milkdrop no longer runs under Windows 11, which is why I was looking for a solution and found WACUP! So I tried it out straight away and tested it extensively for two days. The good news is that Milkdrop is running again! But I noticed a few problems and bugs and i have some Questions. I also have one thing for the wish list. So let me get started.

>> The thread "Known Reported Public Preview Build Issues " was last updated in January 2019 and nothing can be found at https://getwacup.com/known_issues.html. So it could be that some/all of this is already known.

Problem #1 - Jump to File Box

1) I deactivated the "Skin the window in the current WACUP skin stlye" option in the plugin. But then the "Jump to File Box" can no longer be used properly because the text "Search for Text" is displayed exactly above the input field. You can type without problems but you can't see what you have written. You can use mouse-over to make the overlay disappear, but only until you press the next letter, then everything is covered again.



2) The "Delay from last typing action before the search is processed" option in the plugin is already applied when opening the "Jump to File Box" and not only when typing. I don't know if this is intentional but it seems to be quite useless when opening the box for the first time.

3) When you open the "Jump to File Box", the cursor is normally on the currently playing song. However, both the "Limit the number of search results to be displayed up to..." option and the "Only show search results when a real search has been entered" option prevent this. It would be nice if the cursor would still be on the current song with both options so that you can continue to scroll quickly through the list using the arrow keys.

This might be difficult with the limit option, if you set the limit to 1001, for example, then the cursor would have to be on the song and 500 songs would be listed up and down. But I see no problem with the "Only show Search..." option. If you deactivate both, the box behaves exactly as in Winamp. But setting a limit speeds up a large playlist with 50000+ songs enormously! It would be a shame if you had to sacrifice these two options in order to continue to benefit from "scroll from current song".

Problem #2 - Global Hotkeys Plugin

I was able to create/change all the hotkeys I need. But it took me several attempts. Because from time to time the following error occurred in connection with CTRL+ALT+Something:



Restarting WACUP solved the problem. For some hotkeys I also needed up to three restarts. No big deal and eventually I was able to create them all but I thought I'd report it.

Problem #3 - Playlist m3u/m3u8 Loading

1) If you load a playlist via Play > File (Key L) or via the EJECT button (Open File(s)), the song that is currently playing is written to position 1 in the playlist instead of the song stored in the *.m3u/m3u8 file. Only playing this song will then show the correct name.

2) If the playlist is completely empty and you press stop and then load a *.m3u/m3u8 via Play > File or the EJECT button or the Play button, position 1 also does not show the name of the song but the full path to the file. Again, the song name is only updated when you play it.

>> I have a playlist in which Song 1 is displayed correctly but I could not find out what makes the difference. Possibly the path of the files which sometimes contains special characters like an "&" sign. I saved all playlists again with WACUP but the generated m3u/m3u8 show the same behavior.

In addition, all playlists are loaded correctly (and song 1 is displayed correctly) if you load them using CTRL+O or via the playlist itself. Manage Playlist > Open Playlist.

3) If WACUP is started via *.m3u/m3u8 then Song 1 in the Playlist is always played even if "Playlist Shuffling" is activated. Winamp already selects a random song at startup. Only if WACUP is already running and you then load a playlist will a random song start.  In WACUP Song 1 is always at #1 in the Shuffle Inspector!

4) If the Playlist is completely empty and you press Stop, Winamp 5.666 Build 3516 is displayed in "Windoshade Mode" instead of WACUP v1.9.20.17040 (x86) as in "Normal Mode". 

Problem #4 - Performance

1) I have disabled the media library, video playback and many plugins and yet WACUP uses slightly more CPU than Winamp (even though the load is ridiculously low). While trying to reduce the CPU load to Winamp level I realized what the problem is. In Winamp I can set the "Timers Resolution" in the Modern Skins menu. In WACUP I can only choose between 60fps and 30fps, i.e. between an update of 16.6ms or 33.3ms. But in Winamp I have set 66.6ms which corresponds to 15fps. If I set Winamp to 16.6ms or 33.3ms then the load is similar to WACUP. So I suggest adding a slider like in Winamp or allowing a user-defined value in addition to the 60fps and 30fps. Possibly also only via INI Edit, would be fine with me.



2) Why is the Public Preview release only available in x86 and not in x64? Is the performance better or even worse with x64?


Okay, here's a small request for the wish list:

Feature Request - Extension of the Global Hotkeys plugin

It would be fantastic if you could define more hotkeys in addition to the ones you can already assign. I'm thinking, for example, of " Show Album Art" or the Waveform Seeker. At the moment you have to click on WACUP before ALT+A or ALT+R will work.

That reminds me, is there a way to open "Album Art" and the "Waveform Seeker" via a button in the skin? By action, rightclickaction, dblclickaction, cfgattrib or something else? I would like to build the buttons for this into my skin.

So that's all I've noticed in the two days of testing WACAP. But as I don't use many of the features, I didn't notice any errors there either. However, I tested the internet radios and everything worked as it should. Milkdrop in desktop mode with WACUP is also finally running again And the Waveform Seeker plugin is brilliant! This is what my WACUP looks like now (my Winamp looks exactly the same):



All right, thanks for the cool project. When will the final version be released? Is there a roadmap somewhere or other ways to view the development? A Github page or something similar?

Thanks @dro for the help with the registration!