Another asx file generator

[Guest akarno]

There was a posting recently on MoDaCo SmartPhone by Chris Benjaminsen. This explained that you could use asx files as a type of playlist. He explains

how to create an asx file. Shuflie suggested that the asx files could be placed on the start menu.

This got me thinking. All this is a solution for playlists but is a bit fiddly. What we need is some software that can control all this. Generate the asx file and copy the media to the phone in one go. The nice thing is that this software can sit on the PC and therefore does not need to be signed by Orange.

This is what I have done. I have written a working prototype that I would like to share with you all. It is a bit limited in functionality and does not have much error checking. But it works, at least on my machine.

I would like people to try it out and let me know what they think. This is my thought process. What I have written will do me for now. I know its limitations (more on this below). How useful will this be to other people? Is it worth me spending a while turning this into a product. I am sure everyone would love this as a bit of shareware, but I am a bit mercenary (well I am a freelance computer consultant). Would people be willing to pay a small fee (less then £5) for a polished version of this? It does not do anything revolutionary but it will make maintaining your audio files easier until Microsoft come up with a built in solution (don't except it in the first batch of fixes). Maybe I could sell it to Orange or Microsoft and they could bundle it with the phone until a new media player is ready (anyone at Microsoft Orange interested?).

I will explain first what it does, then what it doesn't do yet.

You navigate your directory structure on you PC until you come to a directory with an album in it. A box then displays all your wma / mp3 files

in that directory. You then optionally set the name of an area you want that album filed under (allows you to group albums by artist or anything else). You can also set the folder name in your start menu and your root directory for media on your storage card. You then press copy and the program does everything else. It creates the directories and an asx file on the phone and copies the album to your media card. Simply select you media folder (default name Media Playlists) and the album you want and away you go.

I have not extensively tested the installation program. It is build with the set-up wizard supplied with VB5. This is notoriously unreliable so I do not know if it will install on all machines yet.

This working prototype has several limitations. I will list the main ones

here:

1.. No way to view or delete from the phone, you must do this manually.

2.. Limited error trapping, it sulks if you run it before connecting your

phone.

3.. You cannot navigate the structures on the phone you must enter them in full.

4.. Probably buggy.

5.. You must be careful to enter valid values in the entry boxes and

validation is limited.

6.. It seems to copy a little slow.

7.. Does not look very professional.

8.. No way to copy multiple albums in one go.

9.. Album name is always assumed to be directory name.

10.. You cannot select which tracks to copy and in what order they play, it is always alphabetical which is more than the phone currently does. All the above, and others (any ideas?) can be addressed if I do a final version.

11.. Does not split large video files to allow seek, but I am working on this and that should be available in a few days.

Final points. This code is given here "as is" no responsibility if it damages you PC or phone. All I can say is that it works fine on mine. All

code is copyright Oakleaf Technology Limited. You are free to re-distribute under the same terms as above.

You can download the installation from

http://www.lars.org.uk/SPV/PlaylistBuilder.zip

A big thanks to John Theodorson for agreeing to host this for me.

Andrew Karno

Oakleaf Technology Limited

[Guest sbsdegb1]

You still using VB5....

You wern't joking when you said it was crude.

People might be willing to pay a fiver for it but I would rather write my own. Using VB6 at least.

[Guest akarno]

If I were to do a full version it would be written in VB6 or VB .NET

[Guest sbsdegb1]

Good lad.

Thats what I like to hear....

But I think you may be pushed to get people to pay for it... but who knows if you have something people want then ??????

But wouldn't you get more satisfaction of doing it for the SPV community that lives and breeds on this board.. Would your name in lights not be reward enough.

In my past experience if you give a little for free and let people taste your wares then people would be more willing to fork out for other interesting apps you write, once they know what you can do for them.

I too work as both a fully paid developer and freelance developer. These sort of little apps I write for fun and not for profit.

Just my 2 pennies worth....

[Guest madu]

I second that. And it is not too hard to write a very basic code to do the job (as i did in excel vba). So it might not be something ppl would buy, because very soon there will be dozens of these little spv apps, all starting to come out....

But i personally don't like to setup.exe little apps like this, so would prob. look for an alternative that needs no setup... I don't like having those little apps registered on my system.. 1 is ok, but when you have dozens of them - makes things complicated. No offense meant!!!

So it's your shout.

PS: Could not run at work pc (and yes, it is a prehistoric network booted piece of *). It couldn't find CTU...DLL - guess that's VB5 runtime file....

[Guest akarno]

:D Thanks for the feedback guys. I will wait for some more feedback but will probably not work on making the code "production strength" (sorry that probably means I will stick to VB5 as I already have that). Having said that, I will make some additions to the code which I will make available to the group. Top of my list at the moment is splitting video files as per some of the other tools. The main difference is that it will doing all the copying for you like the current tool.

The missing file you mentioned, was it ceutil.dll. If so this is included in the ActiveSync set-up. You need to have ActiveSync installed to run the application.

[Guest Shire29]

Nice one akarno.

I'm no programmer so producing even simple .asx files was gonna be difficult :lol: however.....

This programme was simple to use. I created a folder on my pc first for my playlist, just made it easier to do. It took a while to copy the files across ? Once I located the asx file and ran it there were all the files in my playlist. From there i could select repeat and random for the files in me playlist :D

Thankyou. :( :( :P :lol: :lol:

I have to be honest, I appreciate this tool, however I would not wish to pay for it :oops: , I feel this should be part of any half decent media player.

But well done, a great tool, which if you have no objections i will continue to use, please....... :wink:

Cheers, Shire

[Guest sbsdegb1]

There you go akarno praise already...

Now isn't that a much better feeling than a crisp new fiver. :D

[Guest akarno]

Hi all,

I have been busy adding a new function to the app. I like the idea of splitting videos so you can skip to the point you want. Therefore I have adding a new function, which works in a similar way to the playlist function.

You select a video file and how long each block is going to be. The video file will then be copied to your storage card and an ASX file (with skip points) to your media playlists in your start menu.

Before I put it up for everyone to download, I would like a couple of volunteers to try it out. There is one function that I would like to test on other peoples machine. When you select the video file, the application will try to use your Media Player to work out the length of the file. It does this by calling routines in wpm.dll. I think it should work with Media Player 9, but I am not sure about 7 or 8.

If you have one of these 3 media players, have already loaded the original version of the app and are willing to test it out for me, could you please e-mail me at [email protected]. I will mail you a new exe file (71KB).

What should happen, is if you have a compatible media player, the video length will automatically be displayed. Otherwise you will be prompted to enter the video length manually.

BTW, the video copy utility will also work with large mp3 and wma files.

Conditions as before:

This code is given here "as is" no responsibility if it damages you PC or phone. All I can say is that it works fine on mine. All code is copyright Oakleaf Technology Limited. You are free to re-distribute under the same terms as above.

Andrew

[Guest amshowman]

I've not had time to try it yet - but if it does what you say and I'm sure it does, then I would definitely pay a fiver for it.

Andrew