Logo display by Artist

Thought about this idea the other day while driving around.

Is there any way possible to associate a logo with an artist (by ID3 tag)? What I think would be cool, is if you could use the Empeg Logoeditor to create logos for artists. Then, these logos would be uploaded to the Empeg, and when you choose the logo visualization, if there is a logo associated with the particular artist that is playing, it will display that logo. Otherwise, it would display the default Empeg logo.

It seems like it would be cool to be able to display a particular band's logo or band name in a format that people instantly recognize.

Is this a feasable project to add to a wishlist?

BleachLPB
____________________

I don't think empeg guys will spend much time on this, but we can already do that ourselves. There is a program somewhere around that replaces Tux logo, right? Now, just store logo files in a known directory under the name same as the name of the artist, and write a small program (even shell script) that runs in the background, reads /proc/empeg_notify (of course, with HiJack installed and notify switched on), detects change of artist and replaces logo as needed.

Feel like trying your hand at it? I believe somebody on the board provides accounts on his server for cross-compiling.

Yes there's a program around, but I think it does a binary hack of the player executable, replacing the part where the image is. I have no idea if it would be feasible/possible to perform the corresponding thing to the player executable loaded in memory... Programs aren't supposed to stomp on each other like that

/Michael

Ah, the bitmap is in the player executable itself, then? I thought it reads it from somewhere from disk when needed... So, we have to convince empeg guys to at least read it from a known place on disk every time it's selected? No, every time the song changes... Ah, forget it! You are right, it's the same as incorporating the whole feature into the player (and it would be quite cool!)

D'oh! I was gonna say that theshell script idea sounded excellent and worth a shot, but having the bitmap be part of the player executable really mucks it up.

Maybe the next beta will locate the bitmap in a known place in the filesystem :-)

Thanks for the insight though!

BleachLPB
___________________

I suspect one of our favourite contributors to this board may well be already moving in this direction, by a "slightly" different route. Patience!

Isn't there a place in the id3 tags for an album cover or something. Can this be used somehow?

There is (in ID3V2), but emplode doesn't like it (it currently chokes on any tag longer that 255 bytes).

That wouldn't be the person who asked whether the database will be rebuilt correctly from 'manually' produced playlist and tag files, would it?

Edit: err, wrong thread. This happens when I answer rigtht after hitting the link from the email allert, not looking at surrounding thread...

Speaking of stomping etc, we *do* have root privileges and could write to physical core through appropriate /dev or /proc file, so changing running program's working set is conceivable, right? I wonder whether this is what Rob S. hinted about...

Duh, totally forgot about the /proc/kcore, /dev/mem etc... Yeah... shouldn't be impossible (not that I've ever programmed at that level...)

/Michael

Did anyone consider looking in the /empeg/lib/visuals directory? There's a bunch of interestingly-named files in there (hint, hint).

Now, I happen to know that these are currently mmap()'ed at startup, so altering them after the fact is going to be more difficult, but, y'know, show some flexibility, dudes.

Heh, will have to do that... haven't had much time at all lately to play with my empeg , just posting here while compiles, queries and runs execute...

/Michael

There is [an artwork field in ID3V2], but emplode doesn't like it (it currently chokes on any tag longer that 255 bytes).

Old emplodes choked on text tags longer than 255 bytes. Current (2.0 beta) emplode should deal with that, but it won't deal with incorrectly-headered ID3V2 album art tags longer than 192Kbytes.

Peter

I'll back this up too.... I have a few mp3's from mp3.com that had cover art in the tags..... I didn't realize it until the "download" feature was available and I downloaded a track from my player and discovered it. I guess I was lucky on the older versions of emplode/empeg.