DigiCasa EZ Player Help

DigiCasa EZ Player 1.2 © 2003 Copyright Lester Jacobs, DigiCasa
All Rights Reserved

 

Overview

The DigiCasa EZ Player is a full featured, digital music playback software application which is optimised for use on a TV, projector or other large screen display device. It has a full screen interface and can be fully controlled by a typical home remote control using only the directional arrow buttons and the OK/Enter button. EZ Player provides the ease of use of a regular off-the-shelf CD player combined with the advanced functionality and features of a computer based digital music playback system.

 

Key Features

Requirements

1) Microsoft Windows 98SE or higher (has only been tested with Windows XP and Windows 2000)
2) Full Windows Media Player 9 Series install
3) Basic (free) or Plus version of MusicMatch music management program (7.5 or later)
4) Microsoft MDAC 2.71 SP1 and Jet 4.0 SP3 installs (not required for Windows XP)
5) Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime (probably already installed on your system)

Setup

Usage

Each EZ Player view contains hints near the bottom of the screen indicating the functionality available in the view and the buttons/keys required to access the functionality.

On startup, you are presented with the EZ Player Main Menu on which you are given a number of options:

Select Songs by Album - This option allows you to add songs to the playlist using an album oriented hierarchy.  Using the right arrow, you can "drill" down through a number of views until you find the desired song(s).  On each view you can use Enter/OK to add all the songs represented by the current selection.  For instance, if the current view is "Jazz Albums by First Letter" and the letter B is highlighted, then using Enter/OK adds all of the songs from Jazz Albums beginning with B to the playlist.

Select Songs by Artist - This is similar to "Select Songs by Album" except it uses an artist oriented hierarchy.

Select Songs using EZ DJ - This allows you to automatically generate a playlist based on criteria.  The available criteria options are Albums, Artists, Genres and Tempo.  Note that the Genre and Tempo options may not appear if these tags are not filled in your music library.  The "Choose Albums" option allows you to pick albums for inclusion in the generation process.  It has the same hierarchical organisation as "Select Songs by Album".  The "Choose Artists" option allows you to pick artists for inclusion in the generation process.  It has the same hierarchical organisation as "Select Songs by Artist".  "Choose Genres" allows you to choose specific genres for inclusion in the generation process. Only songs from the genres chosen are included in the generation process.  A similar argument holds for "Choose Tempos".  You may use any or all of the four options in EZ Player when specifying criteria.  Note that if you do not select anything from the four criteria options, EZ Player will consider your entire library of songs during the generation process.  When you select "Generate Playlist", EZ Player then randomly picks songs that fit your criteria and composes a playlist.  On the Generate Playlist dialog, you must select the number of songs you wish to add to the playlist.  To increase the number of songs, use the right or left arrows to select one of the multiplier numbers (100, 10 or 1) then use the up and down arrows to adjust the number of songs.  Finally chose "Done" to generate the playlist.  Selecting zero (0) songs is the same as canceling the generation process.

Turn ON Non-Stop Music - Non-Stop music allows you to start instantly playing songs from your library with minimal interaction.  Simply select this option and music starts playing immediately.  EZ Player will continue to randomly play songs from across your entire collection until it is stopped (or it has played every song in your library)

Settings - This option allows you to change the various EZ Player settings.  Selecting this option will present you with several options:

Help - This displays the EZ Player help file.

Licence - This displays the EZ Player licence agreement.

The following additional menu items appear if the user has added at least one song to the EZ Player playlist.

Now Playing - This displays the current EZ Player playlist.  Within this view the user can jump to any song using Enter/OK or remove a song from the playlist using the right arrow.

Playlist Control - This displays a number of options for controlling playback of the current playlist.  Choices include stop, play, pause, etc.  Many of the choices in this view have direct access hotkeys as well as explained in the navigation section.

 

Navigation

The four arrow keys combined with the Enter key can access all functionality contained in the EZ Player, however many functions are also directly mapped to hot keys for convenience.

Up/Down - moves the highlighted bar to choose an item on the screen.

Left - goes back up one view. Repeatedly pressing the left arrow will take you back up the views until you get to the Main Menu (the view you see when you start the EZ Player)

Right - drills down in the hierarchy of albums or artists depending on the view you are currently.  The left arrow, as explained above, takes you back up in the hierarchy.  There is one exception.  Using the right arrow in the Playing Now view removes the currently highlighted song from the playlist.

Enter - selects the currently highlighted item and executes any associated functionality.  Examine the hints at the bottom of the view for the action associated with the Enter Key for particular views/screens.

The following keys are available for those who wish direct access to functionality without navigating using the arrow keys:

P - Starts playing from the current playlist position or pauses play if EZ Player is currently playing

S - Stops playback

F - Fast Forwards playback

R - Skips backward 10 seconds

N - skip forward to the next song

B - skip backward to the previous song

Page Up - Previous screen in current view

Page Down - Next screen in current view

A - Starts the (built in) screensaver

G - Toggle Non-Stop Music mode

X - Shuffle Playlist (playback restarts at first song in the list)

L - Toggle Playlist Repeat

C - Clear Playlist

V - Show Settings Menu

M - Show Main Menu

ESC - ends the EZ Player application (warning dialog is shown before exit)

 

Sounds

You can assign sounds to EZ Player actions via the standard Windows Control Panel. In the Control Panel (Start>Control Panel) choose sounds for the DigiCasa Beep, Error and Select events. EZ Player will automatically use those sounds upon its next startup.

 

Remote Control

You may use your favourite remote control software to map the EZ Player keys to remote control button presses. However, EZ Player has special built in support for one of the most popular of such software offerings, Girder. Included with the DigiCasa EZ Player is a Girder GML file (DigiCasa EZ Player.gml) which you can import into your existing Girder configuration (or start a new one). The included GML file exposes all of the EZ Player functionality. You need only map the Girder events to your remote and you're set!

 

Support

Please email info@digicasa.com for all support issues.

 

FAQ

1) Why is MusicMatch required?
EZ Player is not a music management program but simply a music playback application. Thus it needs an external application to manage and categorize the digital music files for it. MusicMatch was selected because it is available free in its basic version and offers a simple way to export its music library details in a format compatible with EZ Player. It also offers music library management capabilities which are quite extensive.

2) How do I change the visualisations displayed by EZ Player?
The visualisation type cannot be changed directly from within EZ Player. Instead EZ Player uses the current visualisation setting of Microsoft's Windows Media Player. Change the visualisation setting in Windows Media Player (View>Visualisations) and EZ Player will automatically use the new setting (after a program restart).

3)  The mouse pointer disappears when I start EZ Player, how do I get it back?
If you need to restore the mouse pointer (EZ Player hides the mouse pointer by default), use the mouse to move the (invisible) pointer all the way to the left of the screen then click the left mouse button. The pointer should be now be visible. To hide the mouse pointer again repeat the procedure.

4) Hey, I don't have the ability to select Tempo when using EZ DJ. It doesn't even appear on my screen! What gives?
Most mp3 and other digital music files contain tag information identifying the respective album, artist and genre. The Tempo tag is a Musicmatch specific tag which allows you to further categorize your music collection. Chances are you haven't specified the Tempo tag for any of your digital music files in Musicmatch. Once you do so, and re-export your music library to EZ Player, the ability to select songs based on tempo will be activated.

5) Why isn't this program free? What's this shareware nonsense? I don't like paying for software!!
In a perfect world, we'd all like software to be free for everyone. Unfortunately, great software requires lots of resources for its creation, not the least of which is time. In order to justify the amount of time being spent on development of this software we are charging a small fee to those who decide to use it.

6) Ok, I see your reasoning, how do I order the software?
Please see the Licence document included with this installation or access the Licence option on the EZ Player main menu.