Messages

1

Support and Feedback / Re: No properly working "Length" column for audio/video files

« on: November 15, 2019, 21:00:31 »

(...)
1. No that will not work since it is not really dead code.. it is just unused code. It will not be able to removed it.
2. But as I said. Windows is able to get that information. And I think it will be possible to ask windows about it. However it does not support as much as that MediaInfo.
3. Maybe later a option downloadable plugin to MC can be added that exposes all properties in MediaInfo to MC. BUT it will be optional and installed separately

Hi Mathias,

Thank you for your quick & helpful answer

1. Wrt DCE, I know what you call "bloat" in MediaInfo is not dead code in absolute terms, it's just unused code (from the point of view of MC). I was just suggesting that you use DCE techniques which would work in this case (because MC would call into the MediaInfo code only the "length" routine (and maybe a few other ones) and all the MediaInfo code that is not used by the "length" routine would be left unused by MC and hence can be viewed as technically dead from the point of view of MC).

2. You could probably use Windows API/libs indeed as it seems MS Explorer provide the multimedia file length info in most case (although on my Windows 7, around 10% of multimedia files do not show a length in MS Explorer (and neither in some other 3rd party file managers that also probably use Windows API/libs)). Using Windows API/libs would not be perfect for that purpose but that would definitely be an improvement.

3. Providing a separately downloadable plugin to MC that could expose all properties in MediaInfo to MC would be simply amazing
As previously mentioned, in addition to exhaustively providing the time length of almost all possible multimedia files, it could also provide information about file codecs for example, which is extremely useful for anybody trying to play multimedia files on various devices
This would definitely give MC a big advantage over all existing file explorers that I know
You could then maybe even ask the MediaInfo team to kindly put a link from their website to your website which I am sure would bring in quite a few new MC users for you as well
Fingers crossed, you'll be able to implement that soon, that would be so useful & mind-blowing

Thank you again Mathias and have a nice week-end

2

Support and Feedback / Re: No properly working "Length" column for audio/video files

« on: November 15, 2019, 01:03:12 »

(...)
The dll is around 6MB for 64bit version , it would be smaller if build in using static lib.. Fast hmm Well it might be okey. But since everything is string based, it could have been faster. But I don't think that would be a problem, But It is bloated in the way that it support so much more then I need, 80% of everything in the DLL I do not need.
But there might be way to get Media Length and some other properties from Windows.

Maybe you could use various (automatic or manual, binary or source-based) dead code elimination (DCE) techniques to remove all/most of MediaInfo code not referenced/called/used by MC. Or if you don't want to do it completely by yourself, you could ask the MediaInfo dev team if they would do that for you or maybe help you on how to do this (you have nothing to lose to ask them!)

3

Support and Feedback / Re: No properly working "Length" column for audio/video files

« on: November 13, 2019, 20:34:41 »

You should use the MediaInfo.dll
It is open source och fungerar jätte bra. The documentation is rather inadequate and the frontend gui is awful, but for MC only the .dll is needed.
It will extremely fast rip the data even from almost any obscure file extension.
(...)

I had a look at it: the API is horrible and bloated. Not sure I want to increase the size of MC with 80% just to get some minor data about video files.
There must be something better.

One thing to note about using MediaInfo dll (not sure if other 3rd party libs would also provide this possibility):
It would allow you to provide in MC columns like:
"Video format", "Video codec id", "Audio format", "Audio codec id"
These columns would be very useful because the file name extension of a multimedia file only gives an indication about the multimedia container type and not about the video and audio formats/codecs actually being used by that file.
The video/audio format/codec information is very useful for example when you want to use a USB stick to play a video/audio file on TV: TV multimedia players often have limitations on the codecs they support so having the video/audio format/codec information of multimedia files being displayed directly in MC columns (instead of the MediaInfo GUI) would be very useful for this purpose for example.

4

Support and Feedback / Re: No properly working "Length" column for audio/video files

« on: November 12, 2019, 23:24:30 »

Hi Mathias, FredeF,

Thank you both for your answers
Hopefully Mathias you will be able to solve this (maybe using the MediaInfo .dll as kindly suggested by FredeF).


Optional reading:
FYI I will quickly tell you why not having all the audio/video lengths makes MC unusable for one of my own main use cases:
* Basically I like browsing various news web sites, forums, etc...
* On some of the pages of these web sites, sometimes there are videos or audios
* I really don't like watching/listening to these embedded videos/audios using my web browser (because it's often very frustratingly buggy, slow, not many settings/options (specially the playing speed fine-tuning), etc...)
* So I use a software utility to download some potentially interesting embedded videos/audios in one big directory on my computer to watch them with a good offline video/audio player either on the spot or later when I have more time (the amount of audios/videos tend to grow in this directory, you know how it is: too little time / information overload etc... )
* I like using a sleek file explorer to list all these video/audio files in this big directory
* I need to be able to check the length of ALL these video/audio files so that it helps me choosing which video/audio files to watch/listen to depending on the time I have in front of me.
* If some time lengths are missing in MC file listing then it makes MC pretty much unusable for this use case and hence I have to use other file explorers which do not have that problem for this use case
QED

Hopefully you can do something about it quickly,
many thanks in advance

5

Support and Feedback / Re: Sorting files with column "Date Created" does not work properly

« on: November 12, 2019, 22:32:13 »

Hi Mathias,

Thank you for your answer, I've just retested with both versions and can confirm:
9.1 build 2554: bug is there
9.2 build 2555: bug is not there
so you had the magic touch on this one
Whatever you did, well done and thank you for this rapid & effective bug fix

6

Support and Feedback / No properly working "Length" column for audio/video files

« on: November 12, 2019, 04:48:53 »

Hello,

I've tried to find a column "Length" in MC that consistently displays the time length of audio and video file of any type (as MS Explorer and some other 3rd party file explorers do). The one that seems to be the most reliable I've found is "Audio - Length Total", nonetheless this column does not display anything for some multimedia file types like ".webm" and ".mkv" for example.

Would it be possible to have a column "Length" that reliably works (like in MS Explorer and some other 3rd party file explorers) for any type of audios and videos?

This is really important for me as this is one of these annoying "details" that end up making me return to use other file explorers than MC.

Many thanks in advance!

7

Support and Feedback / Re: Sorting files with column "Date Created" does not work properly

« on: November 11, 2019, 13:56:35 »

It looks this bug has been solved in v9.2 build 2555, thank you so much Mathias 

It was the last bug fix / improvement that needed to be done
for MultiCommander to be finally usable for one of my own main use cases,
so I'm really looking forward to using MC much more now,
thank you so much again for this very helpful & rapid bug fix

8

Support and Feedback / Re: Sorting files with column "Date Created" does not work properly

« on: October 30, 2019, 01:54:45 »

Just to add up on that bug:

It seems also the columns "Date Last Modified" and "Date Last Accessed" have the same bug with sorting.

So it seems like only the sorting on the column "Date" works but the sorting of any other column with a date type is buggy.

Can you please confirm and correct this bug, many thanks in advance!

9

Support and Feedback / Sorting files with column "Date Created" does not work properly

« on: October 30, 2019, 01:37:25 »

Hello,

If I add the column "Date Created" and try to sort files using that column (by clicking on the column header),
the files are not properly sorted by "Date Created" (there are anomalies/errors in the ordering of files).

If I try the same thing with the column "Date" (instead of the column "Date Created") then the sorting (by "Date")
seems to work OK.

So it seems there is a specific problem with the sorting of the column "Date Created".

Mathias, are you able to reproduce this bug please?
And if yes, could you please solve it as this bug is quite annoying/frustrating, thank you so much in advance!

I'm using version 9.1 build 2554 (I think is bug is present also in all previous versions)

10

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: V9.0 IS FINALLY OUT

« on: October 30, 2019, 00:49:20 »

(...)
already added. There is already an option for that if you check the Beta/RC release

Hi Mathias,

Thanks a lot for that, now using this new option which seems to work perfectly,
this is really a huge usability improvement (at least imho!), you are a star,
thank you so much

PS: I'll quickly tell my little (success) story on how I was able to find and enable that option,
maybe it will help other users:
* I was using version 9.0.0 build 2532 which is found on the download page (at time of writing).
* I couldn't find that new option in this version so I started to look around for a newer version.
* I stumbled upon this post in the "Beta Releases" forum: How to get beta releases
* For users following these steps, keep in mind Mathias'warning:
"Beta release are to be considered unsafe. They contain feature and fixes that are not yet fully tested. So test them at your own risk"
* Then I launched "MultiUpdate.exe" (located in the Multi Commander directory).
* In the MultiUpdate app, I checked the following options "Show detailed information", "Download beta if exi(s)ts",
"Backup existing version before updating" and I unchecked all other options.
* I hit the "Start" button (on the MultiUpdate GUI).
* After configuring my firewall to allow MultiUpdate to do its magic, MultiUpdate successfully upgraded Multi Commander
to version 9.1 build 2554 (at time of writing).
* In the new Multi Commander version I found and checked the new option "Show files above folder" (In menu "Configuration"
-> "Explorer Panel settings..." -> tab "Display" -> section "Sorting and Columns")

Many thanks again Mathias

11

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: V9.0 IS FINALLY OUT

« on: October 28, 2019, 23:48:18 »

So if you got any requests that you would like to see in the next version. Let me know now! (Even if you asked before)

 

I would like to have a "files before folders option" in the sorting settings.

Hiya,

Thank you Mathias for the new release

As mentioned by some users -including myself- on many occasions -including in this thread-,
an option "Sort files and folders separately, Folders *last*" is really necessary
for obvious usability reasons. If you could put it at the top of your priority list and
release it in the next version of Multi Commander that would be really appreciated
by many of your users -including myself-
Thanks a lot to you in advance and all the best

PS: for reference this option has been requested in the following previous messages:
(and maybe in others that I haven't stumbled upon yet):
Explorer panel sorting with files first
Sort files and folders separately, Folders *last*

12

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: Sort files and folders separately, Folders *last*

« on: November 08, 2018, 03:50:19 »

Thank you for your quick answers, very appreciated indeed

Regarding involving people in your dev team, you could think of smarter ways than
simply opening the whole source and waiting for some random people to contribute.

For example, quickly browsing through the forum, we can see that there are quite a
few requests about directory/file sorting (including my own request).

So, what you could do for example, is putting the code related to directory/file sorting into a DLL.

To find people interested in helping you with the development of MC, you could also simply browse
through the Multi Command forum users and make a short list of people who you think could maybe
help you (because they intervene a lot, are well-articulated, seem to have some technical knowledge
and maybe are themselves developers...). Then you could drop an email to that short-list of people
and ask them if they have some (C++ or whatever language(s) MC is coded in) dev skills and if they
would be interested to help you. Then if you get some positive answer(s) from any of these people,
after briefing and agreement you could for example send (one of) them the code of the
directory/file sorting DLL for them to work on it (+ all necessary header/object/binary/project/etc... files to
compile/link with the rest of the MC software)
Once they are done with a particular task you requested from them, you could quickly review/test their code
and release it if/when you think it's OK.
That would probably also be fun and motivating for you to work with other people, maybe you could even
learn some new things along the way, etc...

Advantages of that way of doing things:
* You only have to provide a very small portion of your code;
* The person/people working on your software only have to understand that small portion of code to be able to
work on your project;
* You select the people who work on your project;
* You project-manage people and have fun working on MC with like-minded people;
* If you are not satisfied with someone's contribution you can simply stop accepting their contribution;
* Etc...

Do you think such an approach would be suitable and enjoyable for you?

13

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: Sort files and folders separately, Folders *last*

« on: November 07, 2018, 18:23:21 »

Great news 
1. You are still working on the project;
2. You are able to answer questions very fast if/when you want to;
3. You have put my feature request in your to-do list.
Hence my 3 smileys!

I have a few other feature requests but I will take my time before submitting them to you
as I don't want to overload you with to-do items right now as you have indeed unfortunately
currently allocated meager resources to Multi Commander.

But I would be grateful if you could implement the "Folders last" option asap,
that would bring such a big improvement to MC ergonomics

In terms of MC resource allocation, you are obviously a talented person who is
surely in demand for more financially-rewarding projects/jobs than MC and
that is fair enough that you've decided to allocate only a small fraction of your
precious time to MC dev.

But then why not bring some trusted people in your MC development team?
You could have them work on specific parts of the software for you and/or
help you with MC support.
This would help you boost both MC development and your project managing skills.
Have you thought about this?

Many thanks in advance for a quick reply regarding my suggestion about bringing
more people in your MC dev team,
Best regards

14

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: Sort files and folders separately, Folders *last*

« on: November 07, 2018, 02:30:14 »

Sad not to have even received a short "yes" or "no" answer after a month 

It looks that the author(s) is currently allocating very little resource (if any) on Multi Commander,
that Multi Commander development has slowed down to a crawl and that MC is probably close to
or already in abandonware state.

Sad state of affairs because Multi Commander looked promising.

Fortunately I have found other similar projects where support and development are still active.

Hopefully Multi Commander author(s) will re-activate their project at some point in the future or
transfer its development and support to people who have the willingness and time to work on it.

Best regards

15

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Sort files and folders separately, Folders *last*

« on: October 11, 2018, 00:05:29 »

Hello,

Familiarizing myself with Multi Commander and it looks like a solid software.

There are a few things which are quite annoying/frustrating though.
For example:
There is an option: "Sort files and folders separately, Folders first"
Personally I navigate the directory structure using the tree and
when it is time to access/manipulate files, the folders being listed first
are right in the way of the files so it would be good to also have an option:
"Sort files and folders separately, Folders last"

Would that be possible?
How much time would it take for such option to be available in MC?

Many thanks in advance,
Best regards