CEPlaylist Version 1.95 March 20th, 2005 CEPlaylist is an application that is designed to help manage song files and playlists on a PocketPC device. When the application is started, it searches the device for all Ogg, Windows Media or MP3 files and builds a library containing Genre, Artist, Album and Title for each song it finds. It also searches and catalogs any existing playlists on the device. CEPlaylist is shareware, and will run for up to 14 days after installation. To receive a registration code, purchase CEPlaylist at http://www.pocketgear.com. The registration code is keyed to the owner name in the PocketPC device, and if this is changed a new code will be required. Send an email to support@ceng.com for more information. Installation: ============= Run the program CEPlaylist195.exe to install the application on your PocketPC. It will also place a CEPlaylist shortcut in the Programs folder on the Start menu. To uninstall, use the 'Add/Remove Programs' option on the Tools menu in the Microsoft ActiveSync program. In order for CEPlaylist to play music files, withMP3, PocketMVP, PocketMusic, GSPlayer, WinamPAQ or Windows Media Player version 7.1 or higher is needed. CEPlaylist can also create and manage playlists for other players that use the M3U format, but these programs may or may not support autoplay of playlists directly from CEPlaylist. The default setting is for Windows Media Player ver 9 and below, and can be changed by selecting 'Player' on the 'File' menu. If you are using Windows Media Player 10, be sure to set CEPlaylist to this choice in the 'Player' option, as playlist formats changed a little for WMP version 10. If you are using PocketMVP or PocketDivx as the media player, you have to associate .pdl files with the PocketDivx program. There is an option to do this when PocketMVP is installed. If PocketMVP does not start playing the playlist when Play is selected in CEPlaylist, try reinstalling PocketMVP and selecting that option. The Help Files are in HTML format and can be viewed on the desktop PC or copied to the PocketPC for direct access from the CEPlaylist application. To install the help files, run the CEPlaylistHelp.exe file from the desktop. To uninstall, use the 'Add/Remove Programs' option on the Tools menu in the Microsoft ActiveSync program. If you install them in a different place than the default, be sure to update the 'Default Help File' preference setting in CEPlaylist. Installation Files: ============================== CEPlaylist.exe - This is the application, and it is installed in \Program Files\CEPlaylist, but can be moved elsewhere. Help - If you installed the help files using CEPlaylistHelp.exe, they are installed in \Program Files\CEPlaylist\Help on the PocketPC , but can be stored anywhere as long as the 'Default Help File' preference in CEPlaylist is set to the proper location. Version History: ================ 1.95 - Added support for Windows Media Player 10 on the PocketPC. - Reset the demo timer so that anyone loading this version over an expired demo has another 14 days to try it. 1.94 - Added support for Windows Media Player 9 playlists (.wpl) - Added code to fix a bug in the PC version of Windows Media Player that causes PC music filenames that start with a track number to be copied over to the PocketPC without the number, even though the WMP Playlist on the PC still has the filename with the track number. CEPlaylist will now make the adjustment to the playlist when it is opened on the PocketPC. 1.93 - Fixed bugs with WithamPAQ startup from the Playlist and Song List tabs. - Hid default playlists for M3u and LST files in the Playlist tab. - Reset the demo timer so that anyone loading this version over an expired demo has another 14 days to try it. 1.92 - Added left and right action hardware keys to collapse and expand tree items in the Song Library - Changed the way that WinamPAQ is started and added it to the 'Advanced Preferences' screen - Changed the Song Library to automatically select the first item in the list if none is selected when a hardware key is used. 1.91 - Fixed bug with use of the up, down, and action hardware keys on the Song Library window. 1.9 - Added support for WinamPAQ and GSPlayer music players - Added 'Advanced Preferences' to allow the names for the My Documents, Program Files, withMP3 executable, and GSPlayer executable to be changed. This is available by clicking on CEPlaylist icon in the Preferences dialog. If these items are named differently, (ie. Programme instead of Program Files), these entries can be changed to allow CEPlaylist to function properly. - Changed location of shortcut created during installation from the Start menu to the Programs menu. Previous Releases ----------------- 1.85 - Added support for OggVorbis formatted files(*.ogg) - Added ability to edit Ogg file tags - Added support for PocketMVP player - Added support for PocketMusic player - Changed the Repeat option so that it will work with any player. Repeat now causes the songs to be duplicated in the playlist file a preset amount of times. - Changed the Shuffle option so that it will work with any player. Shuffle now changes the order that the songs are written to the playlist based on random numbers. If the Repeat Option is also set, the order will change for every iteration of the song list. - Enabled 'New Playlist' and 'Open Playlist' on Song Library and Playlist tabs. When selected, they will switch to the Song List tab and perform their function. - Added 'Save Selected to Playlist' menu option on Song Library tab. This option causes whatever is selected (Genre, Album, Artist, Song) to be saved to a playlist directly, without having to copy the songs to the Song List first. - Fixed problem with PocketMVP redrawing lower portion of screen when changing songs in the background. - Fixed Library read bug that cause the library file to appear corrupt in certain cases. - Added work around for PocketMVP bug that causes it to not recognize a playlist file with only one song in it. The workaround creates a dummy ogg file with no sound or duration, and adds it into a 1 song playlist for PocketMVP. PocketMVP will then open this playlist properly, and only play the one song. - Filter out files that begin with "._" and end with ".mp3", "*.ogg" or ".wma" for Unix based systems - Changed wording of Delete File dialog from "Selected" to "Checked" - Added "Copy All Songs to Song List" menu option to File Menu on Song Library Tab. - Changed to new registration method (requires new registration code) 1.73 ... Updates: - Added option to use the Action Button to play selections from the Library tab. This option is set in Preferences. - Added option to automatically return to CEPlaylist from the player 10 seconds after a selection is sent to it from the Library tab. This option is set in Preferences. - Changed File Open/Create method for playlists and library files - Fixed bug with Reload Library where data arrays were not properly cleared - Added Build Time to About screen - Fixed bug in calculating the number of albums for the statistics screen. 1.72 ... Updates: - Fixed bug in registry entries for playlist, library, help, and source file locations. The path locations are read from the registry in the following order: library, help, source, and playlist. Previously if a path was longer than the one read before it, it would be truncated, causing invalid file searches. This has been fixed. - Reset the demo timer so that anyone loading this version over an expired demo has another 14 days to try it. 1.71 ... Updates: - Changed memory reallocation routines to better accomodate fragmented memory situations - Fixed bug in autostart of withMP3 - Added new dialog to allow the Rebuild Library warning message to be skipped. - Modified dialog that allowed the Help File warning message to be skipped. 1.7 ... Updates: - Added ability to use playlists created on the PC with Windows Media Player, Music Match, and WinAmp and copied to the PocketPC. CEPlaylist checks each path in a playlist, and if it does not match the actual location of the song file on the PocketPC, updates the path to the first matching filename in the Song Library. File structures can be completely different on the PC and the PocketPC, and CEPlaylist will make the appropriate adjustments. If the file in the playlist is not in the Song Library, a dialog allows the user to skip the file or cancel the playlist modification. - Added Artist Only view in Song Library. - Fixed problem with path names greater than 256 characters. - Fixed problems with WMA and MP3 files with very large tags. - Added support for Unicode MP3 tags. - Removed limit on the size of WMA and MP3 tags that can be edited. - Removed 'Edit Tags by Album' feature - tags can be edited at the song level only. - Added Progress Display to Updating Song Tag dialog. - Cleaned up some of the file handling user interface when converting from one playlist type to another. - Added logic to match songs from the same artist or album with different versions of MP3 tags and trailing spaces - Changed the format of the Library file from XML to Tab Separated Values. Added logic to convert existing Library files from old to new format and delete the old files. 1.6 .. In addition to Windows Media Player, added support for PocketDivx, withMP3, and any other PocketPC Player that supports one of the following playlist formats: .plt .pdl .m3u .asx 1.5 .. Increased file buffer sizes to read in large song tags, such as those that contain image info for MusicMatch encoded files. 1.4 ... Updates: - Added the following library views accessable by clicking the 'tree' icon on the menu bar Genre/Artist/Album Genre/Album/Artist Artist/Album Album/Artist Album Title Directory/Filename - Added support for non-standard genre names, limited only by the memory on the PocketPC - Added ability to sort by track number, song name, file timestamp, or file path name - Added ability to edit song file Track tag - Allow 'Copy by Genre' and 'Play by Genre' on the Library Tab - Supports reading WMA and MP3 Song File Tags created with MusicMatch (NOTE - Does not support Song File Tag editing of WMA files created by MusicMatch.) - Added Repeat/Shuffle to Library and Playlist views - used with temporary playlist files generated by using the Play button. Selections saved as preferences. Repeat/Shuffle in the Song List view is controlled separately by the saved playlist. - Added support for Gigabar/GigaTask close button - Added ability to copy search results to Song List view - Rewrote and enhanced the Search routines 1.3 .... Major Update: - Added preference to sort songs by their file date or alphabetically. This allows songs to play in the order that they were originally ripped, which also is the order on the CD in most cases. - Added the ability to select multiple songs for movement within the playlist editor. - Added significant network enhancements for wireless and wired networks, including the ability to map network drives. - Added ability to stop the initial Library build operation so that preferences can be changed at program startup. - Added Artist and Album info to the Search results data. - Rewrote entire section that allowed changing song tags by album. Now possible to stop in the middle of lengthly updates and restart later. - Made error processing and exception handling much more robust. Allow 'retries' when file access errors occur. - Cleaned up many user notification dialogs . - Reset Demo Timer so that users that tried it before can retry the newer version. 1.24 ... Added Repeat and Shuffle settings for playlist files. Changed the installation programs for ease of use and smaller download. 1.23 ... Added ability to easily move a song's position in a playlist up or down from the Song List view. 1.22 ... Removed Wait cursor from messages. Added support for PocketPC devices. 1.21 ... Added 'Rename Album' feature to song tag editing. Fixed bug in Update Song Tags by Album which sometimes updated only the first song in the album. Also fixed a bug in updating WMA tags which caused the header to become corrupted under certain circumstances when the Genre was being changed to a longer description and the buffer had to be expanded. 1.2 .... Major Update - Added support for ID3v2.2 and ID3v2.3 MP3 file tags. Fixed problem in Genre table that caused some genres to be misreported. Fixed problem reading some WMA files with very long tags. Reset Demo Timer so that users that tried it before can retry the newer version. 1.12 ... Fixed and enabled WMA Tag editing for most versions of WMA files. 1.11 ... Fixed WMA Tag reading so that it should work for most versions of WMA files. 1.1 .... Fixed bug which caused the application to crash when reading WMA files created using an older version of Windows Media Player or some other program. The application should not crash anymore, but the song tags still may not be read properly. Also added preferences to allow a starting point for song and playlist file searches to begin. 1.0 .... Initial Release Issues: ============================== - WinamPAQ does not provide a way for it to start up playling a playlist. CEPlaylist can create playlist files for it, and supports the 'play' function by creating a temporary playlist and starting up WinamPAQ with the playlist loaded. The play button in WinamPAQ must still be clicked before the songs will start playing. All other supported players will automatically start playing the loaded playlist. Hopefully this will be addressed in a future release of WinamPAQ. - I have noticed that WinamPAQ has problems with playlists that have long pathnames for the song files. This primarily happens when files over a network are being played. Some playlists will cause WinamPAQ to start and immediately quit. If the playlist is the default.lst playlist that WinamPAQ automatically loads, WinamPAQ won't even start up on it's own. To get around this, either delete the default.lst file or select a single song in CEPlaylist's Song Library tab and play it. This problem can occur with playlists created by WinamPAQ as well as those created by CEPlaylist. - Help File Links - Same page links do not always work on PocketPC's Internet Explorer. They work fine on PocketPC2002's and desktop Internet Explorer. - If you use Windows Media Player on the PC to copy files to your PocketPC, WMP will rename them according to the song tag of the file, not the original filename. In some cases this will not be the same, and if you then copy a playlist created on the PC with WMP over to the PocketPC, it may not have the same file names and CEPlaylist will not be able to find them to convert the playlist. One other situation occurs when the song tags are changed using CEPlaylist or Windows Media Player and the songs are copied back to the PC. The next time they are copied back to the Pocket PC, existing playlists may not be able to find the files. This is a Windows Media Player problem and usually only affects a few files. The way to get around it is to use ActiveSync Explorer to copy any files whose names are different than their song title tags to the PocketPC, not WMP. - "Library Database is corrupt or does not exist and will be rebuilt" message. This is normal the first time you turn off the "Rebuild Library on Statup" preference as a library is not built until this option is selected. If you had a library before version 1.85, then it would appear as corrupt to the beta because it does not contain the ogg variables. This should only happen the first time the new CEPlaylist tries to read the old CEPlaylist's library. - Single song playlist files cause an error in PocketMVP. This is actually a bug with PocketMVP. If you use their own playlist editor and create a playlist with 1 song, you get the same error. The older version (PocketDivx) did not have this problem and the playlist format has not changed. CEPlaylist contains a work-around, but this is kind of clumsy, and hopefully PocketMVP will fix this. - PocketMVP does not seem to recognize the 'Repeat' menu setting, as it repeats all songs in the playlist whether the Repeat menu item is selected or not. - On rare occassions, PocketMVP doesn't always close completely and this can cause problems for both CEPlaylist and PocketMVP. When this happens, PocketMVP will not start again, and the last song file it was playing remains 'locked'. CEPlaylist will not be able to update song files in this state, and will sometimes get stuck trying to start PocketMVP. CEPlaylist can be stopped by using the Running Programs tab in the Memory control panel. To get PocketMVP to come back, a soft-reset is required. - When updating song file tags, be sure that the PocketPC will stay awake during the entire save. If it powers off while saving a changed song file, the song file will probably be corrupted. For any questions, comments, or bugs please send an email to support@ceng.com. Thank you for trying CEPlaylist. Jack Psiris Creative Engineering.