Freebe 4 - Music Player

About:

This program got started because I got tired of trying to navigate through a number of CDs full of MP3 files that I could not identify.

They had been burned with Windows long file names, and very, very few ID tags, and I was starting to lose patience with selecting stuff to play and not knowing what I was actually going to listen to.

I don't do Windows 9x and above, and I had CDs full of THEBI~27...99.MP3 sort of files, which don't mean a lot to me.

It also made finding favourites a very hit and miss affair. And there were/are an awful lot of favourites among them - thanks Ken !

I figured it should be possible to write a file-finder with the ability to call an external player to deal with MP3 files, and using one of Odi's LFN utilities to list the long file names in parallel with DOS' "DIR" output.

This is the result. Current version 1.40 as at 25th October 2002.

Mouse AND keyboard control.

Click on the screen shot (below) to download the F4.ZIP file (about 620,000 bytes).

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone and just stick to MP3 files. So this package will "play" MIDI, MOD, MP3 and OGG files, as well as display (and print) ASCII text files. I may add other sound formats in due course, or even program-in a CD player.

Later: I have added the Audio CD player, thanks to Johan Mattson, now living in Australia.

I know this runs under MS-DOS 6.20 on my machine. You will need enough grunt to run the players, so anything about 100 MHz or less is going to be marginal.

This GUI front-end will run under Win3.1, but it will crash as soon as one of the players is called, so don't bother trying.

Don't know about Windows9x. Don't much care, either !

Copyrighted freeware
email: Ron Clarke
Tadpole Tunes - the website

Screen Shot

Click on the Screen Shot to download the F4.ZIP file (570 kb).

HOT KEYS

All screens:
	F1	Context-related Help panel.
	F4	Configuration menu
	PgUp/PgDn	Move up/down one screen
File Index:		(Note: DOS short file names on the left in pale blue, and long file names in yellow on the right)
	ENTER on a file: on \directory: on .. :	Play the sound file, or view the text file. go to that directory go up a directory (unless already at root)
	D	Choose a (different) drive - goes to root directory
	Up/Down arrows	Move the highlight bar up or down one line
	Home	Move to the top of the current screen
	End	Move to the bottom of the current screen
	Alt+Home	Move to the very top of the file index
	Alt+End	Move to the very bottom of the file index
	V	Invoke the pop-up Volume Controller
	F3	Refresh the file index (e.g. if you have changed the CD)
	ESC	Exit the program
Text File Display Screen:
	PgUp/PgDn	Scroll up or down one screen
	Space bar	Scroll down one screen
	Home	Go to the top of the file
	End	Go to the bottom of the file
	F2	Invoke the "Print file" dialogue
	ESC	Return to the File Index

Configuration Options

Pressing F4 at any time will bring up the main configuration menu.
You may:

Change the text-file display colours
Change the number of lines per screen for the (internal) text-file viewer
Turn the "sound effects" on or off - this can be annoying if you make a lot of wrong/ineffective key presses or mouse clicks.
Toggle the file players/viewers from the default/internal settings to those called by batch files.

Note: You will need to edit those batch files yourself, so that they will call the players you already have.
Read the notes (rem'd) inside the batch files for a little guidance there.
Some of the examples may work for you (they work for me), but you will still need to set the paths to suit your own machine.
It is unlikely that any of the batch files will work "out of the box".

Utilities and Players

All of the utilities and players bundled with this package (except for the internal text-file viewer) are written by other, more talented programmers, who have kindly made them available as freeware.
They are:

LDIR.EXE	One of a suite of long file name utilities from .... Odi's DOS Tools for Long File Names email: odi at odi dot ch website: http://www.odi.ch/ See: LFN.TXT
MSP.EXE	Miscellaneous Sound Player by ........ Sevy & Marp email: Sevy at steveef@hotmail.com See: MSP.TXT
SVC.COM	Pop-up volume control program from .... Andrés C. Mazzocchi See: SVC.TXT
CDP.EXE	FreeCDP player from Florian Xaver See: CDP.TXT

I am grateful to:
Florian Xaver for kind permission to include CDP.EXE.
Ortwin Glueck (Odi) for kind permission to include LDIR.EXE.
Stephen Fancsali (Sevy) - co-author of MSP.EXE.

I thank the other authors, in anticipation of getting permission to use their excellent programs with this "player", although my emails have gone un- answered so far.

And I am grateful to my good friend Ken Copeland, formerly of Jo'burg and now living near Calgary, Canada, for so generously sharing his MP3s and sending me the CDs that started it all.

Known bugs

1. I haven't yet learned how to handle long directory names with a " . " in them.
2. I haven't yet found a way to deal with adjacent directories with the first four letters identical i.e. \celtic and \celtic3 will have different DOS short-named files inside them, but the long file names will always appear to be those of the first directory - but the players work off the DOS short file names, so you can still play them even though the long file name display will be wrong.
3. The default player (MSP), and the volume controller (SVC), are expecting to be dealing with a Creative Labs SoundBlaster card (or compatible), with the BLASTER parameters correctly set. The results with any other soundcard may be anything from "just fine" to totally disastrous.

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK !