27th May 2006

Contents

  1. Latest Updates
  2. Modes
  3. Style Changes
  4. Playlist Switcher
  5. Layout
  6. Buttons
  7. Tags
  8. More titleformatting strings
  9. Misc. Notes

Latest Updates

Things that need to be done

Modes

Setting the display mode
There are two display modes for your new columns setup. They are Albums Mode and Singles Mode.
All of your playlists are shown in Albums Mode by default. The Singles mode is activated per-playlist, by putting an "-s-" in the name of the playlist.

Albums Mode Example
Singles Mode Example

The playlist switcher titleformatting will hide the -s- in any name of a playlist, so don't freak out if you can't see a difference.
For example, if you have a "Old Songs -s-" playlist, it will display in Singles Mode, but the title of the playlist in the playlist switcher will only be "Old Songs".

Colour Schemes
To change the colour scheme:

  1. Click on preferences button (if you are using my buttons - if not, click on File > Preferences)
  2. Click on 'Playlist View' under Display > Columns UI
  3. Click on the Globals tab
  4. You should see the following:
// --- CONFIGURATION BEGIN ---
//
//
// Choose colour scheme:
// 1 - Blue
// 2 - Brown
// 3 - Green
// 4 - Black
// 5 - Dark Blue
$puts(scheme,1)

Simply change the number in the $puts(scheme,1) line. The numbers and what colour schemes they relate to can be seen above that line.
so $puts(scheme,1) is the default Blue, $puts(scheme,2) is brown.
If you are using my whole suite (playlist switcher and buttons), then these alternate colour schemes probably won't look as good.

Alternate Colour Scheme Previews
Brown Green Black Dark Blue

Using the "Bottom Border for Last Track" feature
My FCS will make a bottom border for the last track, as long as the tracks you are using has a %totaltracks% tag.
If you don't currently use the totaltracks tag, fret not, in Foobar2000 0.9 %totaltracks% is a standard tag, and you can automatically add it to each of you albums by simply selecting all the tracks in the album and right clicking and selecting Tagging > Edit Tags.
Here you will see the masstagger screen.
Remove whatever is under "Actions to Perform" and click Add. Select Auto Track Number from the drop-down list.
You may want to save this as a quick script so you can quickly access it from your context menu (right-click menu). Type in something like "AutoTrack" in the box under "scripts" (below the "actions to perform" box) and click Save.
Click "Run" and it will automatically tracknumber the tracks you have selected and calculate how many tracks you have selected and add that as a "TotalTracks" tag in each of the files.
If you saved the script, you can quickly do it again to your next album by selecting it, right clicking, and go to Tagging > Scripts > [whatever you called it, eg. "Auto Track"]

Now foobar will run the script automatically, much quicker and easier if you are auto-track-numbering a lot of albums.

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Style Changes

Here are some things you may want to play around with.

Old Elapsed/Time style
If you prefered the original elapsed time column (as seen in the preview images) you can enable it like so:
Open up your preferences and go to Display > Columns UI > Playlist View > Columns.
Click on "Time" on the left. Tick the "Show Column" box. Do the same for "Time (-s-)".
Now you should have two columns, the old time style and the new time style, next to each other for both normal playlists and -s- modified playlists.
To get rid of the newer style, untick "show column" for both "Time ALT" and "Time ALT (-s-)".

Enabling "top-border-for-first-tracks"
"Top-border-for-first-tracks" means pretty much that. The first track of every album (or CD - any track where %tracknumber% = 1) will have a border across the top. By default, the last track will have border across the bottom (as long as you use Foobar's AutoTrackNumber masstag or use a TOTALTRACKS tag, more about that here)
This might not look good together, however, if you don't use the TOTALTRACKS tag, you may want to seperate the albums with this instead. To enable it, you'll need to do some minor editing to the code, but it's cool, I'll walk you through it.
Go to your Preferences and navigate to the columns setup (Display > Columns UI > Playlist View > Columns).
For several columns, you'll need to uncomment the second line of this part of code:

// Only putting top border for track #1 - Uncomment to enable
//$select($min(%tracknumber%,2),%_bline%,)
To uncomment something, simply delete the two bars "//", so it should read:
// Only putting top border for track #1 - Uncomment to enable
$select($min(%tracknumber%,2),%_bline%,)
You'll need to do this to "|>", "Tracknumber", "Title", and either "Time" or "Time ALT" (depending on which one you use - see first paragraph of this section for more info)
With the "Album" column, you'll need to something slightly different. Look for the following bit of code:
// --- 01 ---
%_main%|%_main%|%_albuminfo%|%_albuminfos%|||
// Uncomment below line to enable "top border for first track"
//%_bline%
|%_bline%,
// --- 02 ---
You will need to uncomment the third commented line, so it looks like this:
// --- 01 ---
%_main%|%_main%|%_albuminfo%|%_albuminfos%|||
// Uncomment below line to enable "top border for first track"
%_bline%
|%_bline%,
// --- 02 ---

Hidden Columns
The following are hidden by default, but can be shown by enabling the column in preferences (see either of the above paragraphs).

If you have any requests for columns you want included in my FCS, feel free to contact me (see bottom of page) and tell me, I'll be happy to make my FCS better for you :)

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Playlist Switcher

Titleformatting for the Playlist Switcher
Put this code in to the titleformatting box in the general tab in the Playlist Switcher config under "Display > Columns UI" in your preferences. [ screenshot ]

// If contains >> set as header
$if(
$strchr(%title%,>>),
$replace(
// Header formatting
$upper(
$tab()
$rgb(0,0,0)
%title%
$tab(4)
)
,>>,),

// If Is Playing...
$if(%is_playing%,
? $replace(%title%,-s-,),
? $replace(%title%,-s-,)
)

// Show length
$tab()
$rgb(128,144,159)
%length%
'('%size% tracks')'
$rgb()

)

Creating "Headers"
To create a header playlist (a bold, slightly offset playlist title) simply create a new playlist and name it ">>Test". This should produce this:

Misc.
Turn on "Allow playlist rearrangement by dragging" under the "general" tab, the same tab used to imput the titleformatting code above.
This will make re-arranging and categorizing your playlists much easier.

The above code also supports hiding "singles playlist modifiers".
The singles playlist modifier is "-s-", see the modes section for more information.
In preview images and the examples in the modes section, you'll notice that the headers have an extra large gap at the top. This is simply a blank no-name playlist above the header playlist.

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Layout

The layout as seen in my example images is:

My example images can be seen in the modes section

I use two other alternate layouts, and switch between them using buttons (set to view > layout > [name of layout])
For example, I have a button set to use the layout above, which I named "dBaines", it reads as: [main menu item] View/Layout/dBaines
The other two layouts I have are "MiniTall" and "AceDriver". The latter of which was inspired by a layout by AceDriver of the HydrogenAudio forum.

MiniTall: (preview)

Ace: (preview)

Note: If foobar wont let you have more than one Layout, or doesn't have the View > Layout option, you need to update your columns_ui component. Link at the bottom of the page.

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Buttons

To make sure you have the latest version of my buttons, check this post.
That post will have the original set of buttons for download, as well as links to the various updates.

If you are having trouble seeing the buttons, read this.
If that doesn't work, then it might be an issue I've run it to a few times. Sometimes if you have buttons of varying sizes, some buttons might not display. To see if this is the case, either remove the buttons that are different sizes or convert all the buttons to my set.

Included in the "buttons" folder of this package, you can find a .fcb. This can be used to quickly update your buttons to my set.
You can import them by right-clicking on your button set and clicking on customise, then at the bottom of the new window, click on the tools button and then on "load from file".
Then simply remove the buttons you don't use/need or modify the order to your preference.

I have included a button for editting tags, however context menu buttons don't seem to work.
So until this issue is fixed or if you want to use the button for something else, just ignore or remove the little tag.

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Tags

Album Artist
If your album is a Various Artists album, or a mixed album, you can add an Album Artist tag to the album.
If there is an Album Artist track present for the album, the Artist will now use that tag, and the artist will be moved along side the title of the track.
Here is an example:

Before

After

It will automatically go in to Album Artist mode if you have any music in a folder that begins with "VA - ".
So for instance, if you have "VA - Ministry of Sound - Clubbers Guide 2006", it will automatically show the Album Artist as VA.
Here is another example of Album Artist albums.

Creating an "Album Artist" tag If you aren't sure how to go about creating an Album Artist tag, follow these steps:

Various
I've added support for discnumber, genre and year tags. They all appear under the name of the album.
They are displayed like this; "Genre" " • Year" " • Discnumber". If there is no Genre, then the genre is displayed as "Unknown Genre".
This way, there is always a genre tag visible, so if there is a year or discnumber tag, there won't be a weird dot before nothing.
However, it will display badly if you have a blank Genre tag defined (eg. Genre="").

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More titleformatting strings

These are the formatting strings I use, which you can see in action in my example images.

Main Window Title/Notifiction area Tooltip
// If Album Artist Exists...
$if($meta(album artist),%album artist% - %album%[' CD'%disc%]
[' ('%date%')'] - %tracknumber% - %artist% - %title%,

// If Album...
$if(%album%,
%artist% - %album% ['('%date%')'] - %tracknumber% - %title%,

// No Album...
$if2(%artist%,Unknown Artist) - $if2(%title%,Unknown Track)
)
)
Status Bar (Almost unchanged from Mixcherry's)
//
// --- CONFIGURATION BEGIN ---
//
$puts(xdimmed,[o]8C8C8C[o])
//
// --- CONFIGURATION END ---
//

$get(xdimmed)'[' [o][o]
$if($stricmp($left(%_path_raw%,7),'file://'),$upper($ext(%_path%)),
$if($stricmp($left(%_path_raw%,7),'cdda://'),CD Audio,
$if($stricmp($left(%_path_raw%,7),'http://'),HTTP '('$codec()')')))
$get(xdimmed) | [o][o]
$if($or(
$stricmp($codec(),FLAC),
$stricmp($codec(),Monkey''s Audio),
$stricmp($codec(),OptimFROG),
$stricmp($codec(),WavPack),
$stricmp($codec(),Windows Media Audio V9 '('Lossless Mode')'),
$stricmp($codec(),Shorten)),
$muldiv(%__bitrate%,100,1411%)'%',
$if($stricmp($codec(),True Audio),'('$right(%__compression%,2)'%',
$if($stricmp($codec(),MP3),$if(%__extrainfo%,'~'))
$if2(%__bitrate_dynamic%,%__bitrate%) kbps))
$if($stricmp($codec(),Monkey''s Audio), %__compression%)
$get(xdimmed) |
[o][o]$select($min(%__channels%,3),Mono,$if(%__mp3_stereo_mode%,$caps(%__mp3_stereo_mode%),Stereo),%__channels% Channels)

$if(%__replaygain_track_gain%,$get(xdimmed) | TG: [o][o]$cut(%__replaygain_track_gain%,5) dB)
$get(xdimmed) ']'[o][o]

// Progress
$tab()
%_time_elapsed% / %length%
$if($stricmp($left(%_path_raw%,7),'http://'),'[' %_time_elapsed% ']',
'['$progress2(%_time_elapsed_seconds%,%_time_total_seconds%,25,|,$get(xdimmed)|[o][o]) $muldiv(%_time_elapsed_seconds%,100,%_time_total_seconds%)'%]')
TrackInfo Panel from "Ace" layout preview
$if(%_trackinfo_notrack%, // If nothing is playing, display: $upper( $tab()Nothing[o]FDD99D[o]Playing$tab() $char(10) $tab()Foobar[o]FDD99D[o]2000$tab() ) , // Display Trackinfo: $upper( %artist% [o]FDD99D[o]%title% ) $tab() Progress: [o]FDD99D[o] $if($stricmp($left(%_path_raw%,7),'http://'),'[' %_time_elapsed% ']', '['$progress2(%_time_elapsed_seconds%,%_time_total_seconds%,25,|,[o]A97756[o]|) [o]FDD99D[o] $muldiv(%_time_elapsed_seconds%,100,%_time_total_seconds%)'%]') $char(10) $upper( [%album%] ['('%date%') '] [o]FDD99D[o][track %tracknumber%] ) $tab() [o]FDD99D[o]%_time_elapsed%/%length% )
Note: For some reason the little box symbols that signify colour change in the titleformatting strings don't print properly in HTML.
So everywhere I've put [o] you need to replace it with the little box symbol.
You can quickly grab this character using the trackinfo panel component (linked at bottom).
Right click on any trackinfo panel and click on settings.
At the bottom of the window, there will be a "color code:" box. In it, you will see two box symbols encasing a Hex value.
Copy one of these box symbols and replace every instance of [o] with it.
If you import the titleformatting strings when importing the FCS, you won't need to worry about doing this for anything other than the Trackinfo string.

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Misc. Notes

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