It has been fifteen years, but I think it is time to finally move away from Songbird.
I needed to get my playlists out.
I had to modify some files, but I managed to get Playlist Export Tool v2 0.9.5 to work. You can see the instructions here. I've attached it below in the unlikely event someone else needs it. Extract the directory into extensions.
I also tried using songbirdDbTools v0.2, but it doesn't like the latest version of my db. It likes the previous dbs left behind from updates.
There were no more community updates and nightly versions since more than a year.
Despite offering some nice new features, version 1.12.2 (or 1.13?) never got released.
Is Nightingale dead?
I'm curious if there's a way to change bit depth and sample frequency. Most of the files in my library are hifi and my hardware is set up for it, so I always use 24b x 88.2kHz for playback, but Nightingale doesn't seem to have an option to change anything. Didn't see any add-ons for it either. Is there anything in preference/config files I can edit?
What's it doing by default?
move the Nightingale Database to a different partition or better yet
create a new database on the partition of my chosing (not C)?
Removing all files from within Nightingale and then re-importing them is no problem.
Background: I play mainly from an "intelligent album" with many criteria, among them a criteria to play only sounds i haven't heard before. I have around 70.000 songs and for every database operation Nightingale is blocked for around 40 seconds. This means, whenever it changes to a new song it is blocked for 40 seconds and also when i edit metadata (which i do frequently). The music continues playing smoothly, but you cannot for instance stop this music or do anything else.
I just installed Nightingale on a brandnew fast desktop computer with conventional HDDs and it proved almost as slow as before on a 6 years old desktop computer (and on various other new laptops in between).
Now on that brandnew computer i have a partition G that's a SSD. I already uninstalled Nightingale from C and re-installed on the SSD partition G, hoping for more speed. But after re-installing, Nightingale seemed to keep it's old database and profile, because everything was there instantly - i had hoped to re-import everything and get a database on the software's drive, i.e. on G (the SSD). Nightingale doesn't seem much faster now that it is on the SSD drive, but the database still on C.
That's why i want to try having the database itself on the SSD.
I am not a geek, but am aware of a prefs.js and i see i can open+edit it with the Editor. I see these entries there:
I also see the database "main@library.songbirdnest.com" itself on the C drive, while the software is now on the G drive.
Again, i'll happily build up a completely new database and delete the old one, no problem. If you could tell me if/how i could have a database on drive G, that would be great.
I notice in the IRC chat lately that the path forward for Nightingale is unclear due to XUL/XPCOM being deprecated by Mozilla. It makes me wonder what other XULRunner-based projects are planning to do?
Not sure if anyone here is familiar with Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/), but I wonder if Nightingale could look to them for inspiration on transitioning away from XUL/XPCOM, if that's what's decided is the best path forward rather than upgrading to the latest XULRunner.
Zotero is an open-source XULRunner-based app that is basically a library/manager for PDFs, documents, media and other items. It has a database of metadata for each item, and you can organize items into "collections" (basically playlists), so it reminds me a bit of Nightingale in that way.
I don't think they've actually decided on how to move forward with XUL/XPCOM being deprecated, but it sounds like they'll replace them somehow (at least according to one developer: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/zotero-d...WTBrQSEwAJ).
Anyway, I just thought I would mention Zotero, since it reminds me more of Nightingale than any other XULRunner-based program I'm aware of, and it is definitely under more active development (they have some funding as well). It might be helpful to keep an eye on their developer mailing list (https://groups.google.com/group/zotero-dev) to see what they decide to do.
Running Nightingale Version 1.12.1, Build 2454 (20140112193356) on Mac OS X El Capitan.
My issue is that Nightingale doesn't seem to read some tags.
I have music in both .mp3 & .ogg format. Format doesn't seem to matter.
There is nothing wrong with these tags, because they are read just fine in other music players, like Tomahawk or VLC. Tag editing programs also see the tags just fine.
There's now a bunch of music that doesn't show in my Library.
If I use a tag editor to make a small change, it does seem to take care of the problem, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a setting someplace in Nightingale that will allow it to read all tags. I have well over 1,000 albums in my collection, so I don't want to go through every one, one by one, to fix the tags.
I really enjoy this program. It's the most beautiful and features rich player in Linux. I am going through the threads and can't find if the project is still going. That will be a shame to let it go.